John Harris — Maybe I'm Amazed: A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs
Guardian journalist discusses his book on music, neurodivergence, and the bond with his autistic son, exploring creativity's deep links to neurodiversity.
Why we picked this
Harris turns what could be a conventional memoir about parenting into something more expansive — a meditation on how music creates bridges between minds that process the world differently.
John Harris has written about music for the Guardian for more than two decades, covering everything from Britpop’s rise to the political undercurrents of contemporary pop. In Maybe I’m Amazed, he uses ten songs as entry points into a more personal story: his relationship with his autistic son and the way music became a shared language between them when other forms of communication were harder to find. The book moves between memoir, music criticism, and a broader argument about why neurodivergent minds have so often been at the center of rock, pop, and electronic music’s most original work.
This event takes place on World Autism Day — a deliberately chosen date that gives the evening an added resonance. Harris is not interested in making autism a theme to be addressed from a distance; the talk draws on lived experience and asks what it means to truly listen, both to music and to another person.
Audiences can expect a conversation that moves comfortably between the personal and the analytical. Whether you come as a music fan, a parent, someone with direct experience of autism, or simply someone interested in how creativity and neurodiversity intersect, Harris offers a perspective that is grounded, specific, and genuinely illuminating.