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Please read before listening to this song in 2022. This song was written in 2010. It's a short story about bullying which is told using music. I am Autistic. This song is about my experience as an Autistic person. I've only recently been diagnosed. I've also lived with mental health issues for a huge part of my life, and when I was a teenager and young adult I wasn't managing these issues very well. I had developed agoraphobia, and I was experiencing derealisation and depersonalization. As a teenager, I was bullied because of how these issues influenced my behavior. I was treated as odd, weird and “stupid“ by people who didn't understand my situation. Peers and teachers. In Limerick, where I come from, the word that was most often used against me was “spastic”. This song addressed my experiences of bullying, and learning to accept my intrinsic value as a human, and how I would escape bullying through my love of art and music. To do this, I used the simple story of a caged hawk, who is being excluded by the other hawks because he is different to them. I used the word in this song, to reclaim a label that had been thrown at me during bullying. In its Limerick specific context, and in the specific context of how it was used against me. The overall context and intent of this song is compassion. It's a song about recognising and cherishing our own intrinsic value and the intrinsic value of other people to feel freedom from exclusion. It's a song that demonstrates the harm of reducing someone to a label. The word “spastic”, is not used in this song, as a joke. It's not intended to punch down. The word is spoken by the characters of the hawks who are being bullies. Even though parts of this song are humorous, it’s not a joke or comedy song. It’s just a song that happens to use humour and absurdity. When I wrote this song ten years ago, it meant a great deal to me. I felt a catharsis and freedom from the pain of being bullied when I was younger , through the healing power of making art. I was processing my experience of being Autistic, even though I didn't know this about myself yet. However, in 2022. I’d ask you to please take the above on board when listening to this song. Specifically around the word “spastic” I wasn’t aware at the time of writing the song, that the word spastic was a slur, which is directed exclusively against people with disabilities. It’s just not something that was in my awareness. “Spastic” was a word I grew up with in Limerick, and it was used to police who was behaving “normal” and who wasn’t. . I’m sorry to anyone who’s been hurt by the use of the word in this song. Please understand that the context and intent of this song is not to be hateful, or poke fun. It was me trying to navigate the harm of putting labels on humans, and reclaiming power from a word that had been used against me.
