creativity

The idea for this project has been knocking around in my head for so long I can’t remember exactly when I first thought of it, but I do remember what prompted it: sitting in some kind of waiting room, right underneath a clock that was ticking really loudly. I’m a bit obsessed with clocks; I think it’s to do with the fact I have no real sense of time (very common in neurodivergents) so I surround myself with them in order to keep track of the time as it passes. Sitting in the – whatever waiting room it was – I could hear the clock ticking above my head, and as it often does, my brain began to improvise little rhythms along with the tick. I could also hear another clock somewhere else, and it was ticking just slightly out of time with my clock; not just out of sync, but slightly slower so that the two ticks phased in and out of time with each other. I don’t think I knew it at the time, but the way that my brain was enjoying the rhythms created by the ticking clocks is a form of stim; even though I wasn’t making any outward movement my brain was dancing, pushing and pulling at the out of sync ticking, leaning into the messy dissonance of the rhythms and relaxing again when they were back in sync. ‘Stimming’ is how most neurodivergent people refer to the ‘restricted and repetitive behaviours’ that are part