C’mon, Just Love Me for Who I Am
Brady Rymer’s new CD, Love Me for Who I Am: Songs Celebrating Children of All Abilities, strikes responsive chords. Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to different states of being, specifically “disorders” such as autism, Asperger’s, and ADD. Are these descriptors convenient diagnoses for people who don’t behave the way other people dictate?
Think about cooking. I’m a pretty good cook, some people can’t cook at all, and others are superlative. I’m no good at paying attention (unless I’m hyper-focused), some people are pretty good, and others are nearly undistractable. So who decided cooking was a talent that some people have and others don’t, and the inability to pay attention is a disorder? It can’t be because practicing cooking skills leads to improvement, because some people are just lousy cooks and always will be. Why is it that if we don’t think like the “normal” majority but we make people laugh, we’re clever, but if we don’t think like the “normal” majority and make people uncomfortable, we’re disturbed or, ugh, “abnormal”? If brown-eyed people are the majority, are blue-eyed people abnormal?
Rymer’s songs were inspired by students at New Jersey’s Celebrate the Children, a school for children with alternative learning styles (autism, Asberger’s syndrome, and related conditions). One of the things the listener discovers is that some of the things that differentiate an autistic child from the rest of the population are accepted in adults as “just the way they are” (“Picky Eater,” “I Don’t Like Change,” “Who Wants to Wear Shoes,” “Tune Out”).
Love Me for Who I Am is alive with musical influences—rock, reggae, folk, bubble gum, gospel, and funk—and sentiments that apply to everyone (“Love Me for Who I Am,” “Bein’ with You”); haven’t we all wanted to tell someone “Please don’t try to fix me, Love me for who I am.”? Laurie Berkner is featured on “Soft Things” and Bernie Worrell performs on “Tune Out.”
Love Me for Who I Am is not just for kids who have been classified as having a disability or impairment, but for all the special people among us who are individuals—and that, basically, is everyone.
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