The Upside of Dyslexia
by
Cork Marcheschi
This is a personal account of my experience with dyslexia. My hope is to offer a view that is not part of the common body of dyslexic wisdom. I believe there are many individual paths that can lead to rewarding alternate empowerment and self esteem.
I have written this as a self-help article even though I don't know what you may need help with. For the normal reader this may be a fun read but, for the compromised reader, I hope there is a glimmer of freedom for you.
Put your mind in animation mode: imagine a scrabble board with 20 words spelled out on it. Now grab the board with two hands and give it a good shake. Look at the board – that is what I see when I approach any kind of form (drivers license application, tax form, any printed application). If I can slow my heart and respiration and relax, the letters will slowly do a reverse animation and gather as groups of words. At that time I can attempt to assemble the words into meaning. Hold on to that image as you read the rest of this article.
I have just had a book published and I am not comfortable opening the cover. I had a good editor and proofreader. I spent a lot of time writing and rewriting it, but none of that is of comfort to a lifetime of discomfort, not being able to read or write or fill out forms like normal people.
I was in public grammar school in the 1950s: Washington School, the same school my mom went to and my uncle, my sister and later my son. I had two teachers that had taught my mom and uncle. The '50s were an optimistic period in American history: cars with fins; moms ruled their pastel kitchens; and the atom bomb made the U.S.A. the big bully on the block. In the classroom things were more similar to prewar America than post war. I have fond memories of Washington School: we had geography, history, math, English, art, music and folk dancing. I am now paying $18,000 a year for my second grade daughter to get this in a private school.
My reading problems showed up slowly. In kindergarten and first grade I brought home some kinda hot shot certificates. In second grade things started to get a little bumpy. I went from two years of parchment certificates to the dumb kids; table. It didn't bother me because I didn't understand what was going on. As the weight of learning shifted to reading, my problems got larger. The word dyslexia was not part of the educational system as yet so a lot of us were relegated to the dustbin of the classroom.
I was in a world of my own, so many of the indignities that might bend a normal child seemed to slide off of me. My memory was my friend. I was able to remember enough of what was said in class that I could slide by on Cs and Ds. My handwriting looked like that of a 7-fingered troll and the spelling didn’t make it to the level of atrocious. Even as a child and young person I had a gift for bullshit. If I was called on I could pull words and images together with a confidence that swayed many a teacher.
My greatest fear in school was being called to the board or to read aloud. I still flush at the horrid humiliating memories.
The paradox was that I loved to learn; I took every opportunity that was presented to me to listen and absorb the words, the smell, quality of light and the day that surrounded the piece of knowledge that had entered my personal library.
By the time I had (barely) graduated from high school, the war in Southeast Asia was starting to brew. I knew if I went to the local Junior college (College of San Mateo) I could get an AAA draft status, so off to CSM for me. While there I had an experience that pointed me in the direction that my life is still taking. In a survey class, taught by an alcoholic art historian of some talent, I was introduced to Dadaism and specifically the "W" poem of Kurt Schwitters. In 1919 at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Schwitters stood atop a table, held the letter W over his head and whispered, hollered, screamed, yodeled "W" 250 times in 250 tonalities. Then pronounced it the greatest poem ever written! This was my Eureka moment. I understood this: for the first time in my 19-year-old life I knew what I wanted to do – I was going to be an artist!!! NO questions asked, this was it and I was right. I took art classes of every variety but I also needed to take English. I was of course put into double bonehead English (English 50B). The first day of class I resentfully sat waiting for my stick-up-her-butt English teacher. When Jean Wirth came into that classroom I was floored; she was at least 6' 7" .Her voice was a warm baritone and she wore heels to push her close to 7' tall. She read to us from John DosPasos and asked us what we thought? At the end of her first class she requested that we bring in a piece of our writing for our next meeting. I had seen the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I liked it and I could read it because it had no punctuation, no capitals and the words were arranged on the page in a visual array rather than sentences. I wrote a poem in this style. She liked what I brought in and told me to forget about the spelling and punctuation, just put the words on the paper. The College of San Mateo treated me well. From my experiences in Jean's class and Richard Williamson's class I knew I wanted to teach and to make art.
There were many classes I couldn't pass because I couldn't really read or properly write so my survival skills started to come to the fore. The upside of dyslexia is a heightening of all your perceptual skills. You know inside yourself that you are not stupid, so you find ways to compensate for the blasphemous act of being unable to read. These compensating skills are very similar to chronic alcoholics who have other people bring them drinks at a party so no one ever sees them go to the bar. There is a unique scenario for each reading afflicted individual.
In my case I broke knowledge into two categories.
Numerically speaking: the numbers 1-10 represent what middle class culture takes for granted, that if you are a 20-year old white male in college, you know how to read, how to do math, and have the normal educational skills bestowed by public schools all over America. These attributes are not questioned. So I decided to concentrate on the knowledge numbered 11-20, the information that the average person would not know, making me look smart! Remember these are survival skills not party tricks. You can't imagine carrying around the dirty little secret that you can't read more than one word at a time.
I established a flat C, a perfect 2.0 average, so I was able to transfer to California State College in Hayward. For 2 years I took art classes, but none of the classes that were required for graduation with a Bachelor's degree. I wanted to teach on a college level and needed a Master's degree to do so, but couldn't get the Bachelor's degree that was necessary to get into grad school.
I wasn't about to let my lack of reading and writing queer the deal for me. So I took what I had learned as a person whose view of the world was not through the written word. Dyslexics see patterns. I understood patterns and had mastered the patterns of regular people so they would never know my charade. I was and am a survivor. My parents were in no place to financially support me – love me, yes, but they were blue-collar folks who were making ends meet and that was it.
I had the proper number of units but not in any of the proper classes. What those units could get me was the right to fill out an application form for graduate school at the California College of Arts and Crafts. When you apply to grad school you do it about eight months before you would start. There was no test – it was a review of your sculpture. I was accepted! I was excited and freaked out. I knew I would never be able to graduate with a Bachelor's degree, so what to do? OK. I am going to enter ART SCHOOL not an MBA program. Art is considerably looser than traditional academia. These art people have other things on their minds; they are not going for dotted i's and crossed t's. The plan was to postpone my entrance into grad school from the fall semester to the winter semester. My thought process was like this: no one is going to think I would try to get into school with out a bachelor's degree (we are back to the 1-10 thing) so I am halfway there. Then by putting my entrance off by a semester and paying in advance it should get my file into the paid folder and I would slip under the radar…and I did.
The next order of business was to find out how you get a job as a college teacher? I asked my sculpture teacher from Cal State and he recommended I speak to the youngest member of the staff, a young teacher named Ron Gazowski, who had recently got a job at Cal State Hayward. I asked Ron how to do it? He said he would be happy to hand over his application package from the year before. I had a relative who was a secretary. I rented her an IBM Selectric typewriter and I bought 80 pound typing paper. Joanie retyped Ron's letter removing Ron's name. The letter was not folded and stuffed into a tri fold envelope; rather it was presented in a manila envelope. Joanie wrote 110 of those letters. I got 107 rejections, three maybes and finally one school said yes and I got a job.
My graduate school didn't find out about any of this till two weeks before I graduated and they waived the bachelors degree because I had already received a teaching contract. I was their only grad student to have a job.
My thought process on becoming a college teacher and not being able to read or write well was summed up in one word: SECRETARY. In 1970 the faculty was supplied with a secretary and I knew Linda (my new secretary) would make me look good.
At 25 years old I had an MFA degree, no BFA, BS, or BA, and I had a contract teaching foundation studies at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. During my first semester of teaching, I was having dinner with the family of some new friends. Bob's wife, Sandy, was a teacher for kids with learning problems. I asked her what it was about and she demonstrated by putting Bob, myself and their two kids on the couch and she stood in front of us showing us flash cards. We took turns, when it was my turn I confidently spoke my word. Sandy stopped and looked at the word and then looked at me. She dug through her cards and pulled about 8 from the pile She said to me – read these as quickly as you can. I did and she said, "Did you know you are dyslexic?" I had never heard the word. My life changed that night. I met Sandy after her school the next day and she tested me and confirmed that I was the proud owner of a case of dyslexia. She gave me a few tips on how to best help myself. The first tip was to get a typewriter and look at the keys as I type. The second tip was to slow down and breathe before I touched pen to paper and re-read everything I attempt to write, by doing this I would start to recognize words that I thought were on the paper but were actually in my head. And finally to come out, put on my purple tutu and run through the streets screaming, "I CAN'T READ.!!!!!!!!"
It has been 36 years since that event and I have worked to gain some understanding of what this thing is. The upside has been the development of exceptional powers of observation. That is in both the physical world and the subtler world of the psychological. I learned to listen and to watch. There is no way to overstate the importance of listening and observing – they are the key. I broke down the contents of situations and conversations into their component parts and filed them as if they were objects. These skills have allowed me to succeed in my job, the world of Public Art. This particular arena is constructed of many shades of grey that shift the moment you avert your eyes. Being comfortable in this vague minefield is not a skill that responds to logic or common sense. It is the Hitler Youth Choir singing at the Temple Beth Israel (with Mel Brooks directing.)
The important lesson in all of this is to understand that you are different but you do not look different. This is the seat of your power. You are camouflaged. Give yourself permission to make the transition from shame to that of power. You are invisible. People will speak to you thinking that you understand their paradigms and codes. If you nod or smile you have confirmed the secret handshake of the normal people. It is not possible for the speaker to know you are dissembling, recording their speech and filing it. Over time you will start to recognize phrases, tones, pauses and expressions. All of this stuff is being experienced by you as chunks of material being dropped around you. The great benefit of this is that you are not tied to societal meanings of the words; you have made your way through the world without words, so there is no reason to start giving them too much weight at this point. Try to see it this way: everyone else is listening to the words and believing the words exactly as they are spoken. YOU see a landscape that has structure, you understand where you want to be and you negotiate this landscape as you see fit, to arrive at your desired destination.
Go back to my example of believing that the art school would not check to see if I had a BFA. Their position is: Who would attempt to enter grad school with out an undergrad degree? This is a perfect example of how to use your heightened perceptual skills and desire to move you through the other world. The world of normal people is not so special, there are millions of them who respond to the same signals. Lets take a little detour here. People who are serious about fly-fishing will go to a stream or lake and observe the situation. What direction does the wind seem to come from? Next they spend a little time looking at types of insects that are landing on the surface of the water. They may turn over a rock to see what is under it. At this point the fly fisherman will open the many compartmented tackle box and tie a fly for this situation, based on what he has observed. The normal world is the stream or pond and you, my word challenged friend, are the fly fisherman. Did you ever think you might have the upper hand? Normal is important for all of them, but not so important for us!
The most practical skill of all is estimating someone's practiced credulity. If you take the skills that I have mentioned and apply them to the structure of someone's belief boundaries, you will have a great tool. By understanding what a person is able to believe in, you can gauge their ability to act and in what directions those actions will be.
A simple example is when I purchased my home in San Francisco 20 years ago. The two women who sold me the place were not completely honest and that fact didn't present itself until I had packed up my house in Minneapolis and moved all the stuff back home to San Francisco. Upon arriving in my raw space, I found out that the condominium I had purchased hadn't been converted yet. The city wasn't going to let this place be converted. The two women I was buying this place from wore clothes that were too tight, they wore very high heels, they had winter tans, obvious gold, and drove Mercedes. The space I was buying had plumbing and electrical, but the wall and ceiling joists were exposed. It was like camping indoors. What these women didn't understand was that I am an artist. I can live anywhere under any circumstances. This fact was beyond their practiced credulity. It was not possible for them to believe anyone could live in this raw space. I intentionally did nothing but move into my space and start to live there. After six months the two women in tight clothes started to fight with each other, after a year they stopped directly communicating with each other and after two years they had to sell me an additional floor so they could get out of the property. By looking at all the pieces you can come up with a good portrait of someone and realize how to work a situation to the best possible outcome. Doing nothing but living in a situation that was impossible for these women changed the rules and they didn't know how to play by nonlinear rules.
When someone is born they have intuition as their functioning antenna, the limbic system is working and we sense our world. If you want to see a baby scream and cry, sit her next to a real estate developer or banker. The kid can sense the lack of a heart and get frightened. With each skill we develop as children, we move ourselves away from our intuitive nature. As with anything that you do not use on a daily basis your, intuition atrophies. Use it or lose it! Every acquired skill chips away. Reading and math really help move people away from their natural intuitive skills. I am by no means suggesting you do not learn if you can, but if you can't, don't kill yourself and be ashamed – put your energy into what you have and develop it. Readers and writers are dirt common, they are not very special and the insistence that we must all share the same skills is a major oversight of American education. Ideally both skills can coexist if you allow for them and you use them. When I was teaching art, I did a seminar on the Nature of Intuition. Artists are a good group to talk to about intuition because they are looking for intangible information and they will accept it any way they can get it.
Imagine the freedom if you are not tied to the linear world. The readers go from 1 to 2 and then 3. If you are not linear any number is yours any time. Each number exists as a unique entity. 47 is as complete and distinctive as Ralph. What is this good for? Well it is possible to manipulate a system. Imagine that the readers are a fat man who when he looks down can't see his penis any more. He knows it's there. He thinks it's there but can’t see it. The government is much like this also. And what this does for you, the dyslexic? It allows you to operate directly under the belly of the fat man.
As an artist I look at materials with little concern for their proper use. I have an idea that needs something that has this shape or function and I look at the entire world for the part. I do not trust experts because of their narrow focus, the expert can't reach 47 with out going through 46. The expert won't send you to a kitchen supply store, toy store, the McMaster Carr catalog or cruising the local flea market for an unknown answer. The dyslexic can think laterally – not so good linearly but laterally is great. Math and grammar are very abstract and linear: they go nowhere in particular, but a story has a beginning and an end, same with a piece of music. Dyslexics can memorize lengthy stories and pieces of music because they are complete. They are a circle. Dyslexics also have the ability to experience certain situations with a clarity that is uncanny. The total experience of an event that happened decades before can be accessed and re-experienced as full body experiences. This can be a great tool for story telling.
The single biggest irony in all of this is that dyslexics make great teachers. If you have had a difficult time learning you know more about the strategies of learning than someone who got it the first time. Being a great teacher has to do with presenting information in such a way that students can discover the facts for themselves. When you have been led to discovery, you will own the information and never forget it.
— by Cork Marcheschi
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February 12, 2008
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