For a while now, I jokingly kept telling my friends over and over that I am very “accordion-coded” or that I sometimes feel as if I am an accordion wearing a human skinsuit, you know, as a joke.
What if I told you that accordions apparently explain my personality and autistic experience better than any psychology test? And that I find them deeply relatable?
WELL STRAP IN because this is going to sound a little crazy.
BY THE WAY: I do NOT believe I am literally biologically an accordion or that my brain is literally wired differently than an ordinary human being.
I am human, I am autistic, I am sane, and this article is mostly a personal little study of my experiences and accordions as a symbol my brain naturally reaches for when it tries to describe me or to make life more understandable to me.
It’s Human To Nonhumanly Express
Even if it sounds strange to the normal ear, for someone to create a symbolic identity, neurodivergent folks and artistic people have been doing this a whole lot since the dawn of time.
Sometimes, symbolic identities can help people express themselves metaphorically with more emotional accuracy than merely describing themselves through personhood, which is why they create alter egos that embody animals, machines, vehicles, elements of nature, concepts, materials, or anything else.
Diogenes the Cynic, the ancient Greek Philosopher from ~400 BC, identified himself symbolically as a dog that barks at the hypocrisy of Athenian society.
Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter, adopted an ocelot animal persona named Babou to project the aura of untamed and bizarre elegance.
Franz Kafka, the writer, used symbolic nonhuman identities to explore his identity, like how he turned into an insect in his book The Metamorphosis.
Daft Punk famously had robotic identities and were known for their rejection of human visibility.
Kraftwerk also had robotic identities, and they legit stated in real interviews that the real robots on stage they had used on stage were the “truest, most perfected form of Kraftwerk’s identity”, free from human exhaustion, ageing, and error.
It’s part of human expression to do this.
And apparently, as Mark of July (and August as i am editing this article) 2026, the accordion seems to click very well. I’ll tell you why.
Accordion: Instant Drama Machine
Accordions are very well known to be instruments that will make almost every emotion sound thrice as intense as it’s normally supposed to be.
I’m talking:
- Happiness ➡️ EVERYONE LET’S PARTY WOOHOOO unrestrained exuberant EUPHORIA
- Sadness ➡️ TRAGIC sorrow. Sounds like HUMAN CRYING. Tearful fucking GRIEF.
- Tension ➡️ Intense dread and suspense, room-filling unease everywhere
- Love ➡️ DEEP YEARNING, misty-eyed nostalgia
- Anger ➡️ Real FURY. Roaring engine of aggressive pounding rage.
Accordions feel big feelings.
Accordions express big feelings.
They also experience things with sensitivity. Every movement on their keys and bellows will change how they sound. They feel EVERYTHING.
I have always experienced my emotions VERY intensely, to the point of being called “too much” or “overdramatic” when I was merely expressing what I had inside.
My emotions are felt intensely, so I will also express them intensely.
Me too, accordion. Me too.
If I get to experience an intense emotion, I will write an article, an essay in a vent to someone or my notes, will keep rewinding to it until I’ve processed my emotions, and I will be expressing it really rawly the entire time in all these methods.
Some people who don’t know me that well will assume I am having a spiral or a mild crisis if I am caught venting to them, only for it to have been my natural method of screaming it all out.
Something upsetting that someone told me or did to me will turn into a complete life-changing tragedy with deeper meanings about human nature.
Something exciting that happened in a day will be my internal newspaper headline, and I will feel the urge to write an article or keep excitedly yapping about it and analysing it to the bone to see indirect meanings and connections to my life and the topic with the world, until I’m satisfied.
People who happened to have a different operating system or emotional processing mentality have sometimes accused me of being self-centred or an attention seeker because of how intensely I spilt my feelings to them in the past.
It’s not for everyone, and with maturity, I’ve gone to great lengths when it comes to learning not to scream a loud emotional chord at people… sometimes.
One thing that I know for sure is that if I don’t let my feelings out, I WILL EXPLODE INTO CONFETTI AND TEARS, which is why this website exists. It’s the acoustic hall where I can scream my music.
Overwhelming Sometimes
Accordions are LOUD.
It’s what makes them polarising to people. You either love the accordion, or you hate it.
You either feel like it’s kissing your ears or biting them.
An accordion will bring its big feelings into the room and scream them so loudly that all of China will know it’s there. This same intensity I bring to the table is really reminding me of the polarising nature of the accordion’s voice, as I like to go deep with everything.
Casual chat? Nahhh, let’s talk about our most vulnerable, innermost feelings about life for 3 hours.
Acquaintance? Mutuals? Never heard of them. Prepare for real connection, real hanging out, real loyalty, and me actually wanting to know all your sides. All or nothing, most of the time.
Small post? Fuck no. Take the 5000-word article and the highly detailed, rendered comic. This is why I post infrequently, btw.
Acts of friendship or sharing love with people become physical love letters, parcels, or drawings.
Committing to a hobby becomes talking about it all the time and spending so much time on it that I forget to eat and shower.
When I want something, I usually want it to the point of obsession, and if I don’t want something, it will repulse me to the point of becoming dysfunctional.
This either creates imbalances of energy in my connections, like an accordion cutting through the whole ensemble. Or, once per year (or more rarely), I find someone with the same intensity and get extremely happy.
Someone like Rodney, who is a significant person, thankfully enjoys the intensity. The accordion is blaring like a siren next to him (TOWARDS him), and he is INTO IT. WHAT A MADMAN. That’s the kind of people I need in my life.
Deep Accordion Familiarity
When I look at accordions or hear them, I genuinely feel like I can immediately understand how they work, even if I am not verbally able to express it or name the parts like a technician.
This familiarity runs REALLY DEEPLY.
It runs so deep that after performing a repair on Blackjack, my 40s 120 bass piano accordion, I’ll word it not as just a technical achievement, but also a very emotional moment of being able to hear the difference, and perceiving the difference as HIM BEING HAPPY.
It runs deep enough for me to map my own bodily and emotional feelings with accordion anatomy, too.
I’m over here mentally imagining my belly as bellows that expand and compress a bit when I breathe – not literally thinking I physically have bellows, it just feels a lot like it.
I keep describing emotional tension as if it’s air pressure.
I legit like to use phrases like “I am honking about this” (angry/overwhelmed) to describe emotional states.
Accordion mechanics metaphors describe my internal emotional experience well, as if it comes from a feeling of relating.
Reeds Are Friends
I get an unusually social recognition-like feeling when I listen to accordions, because, to me, they sound as if they are beings.
I don’t know how to explain this without sounding insane, but I process their timbre, like their vocal quality, as if I am recognising a person’s voice. While it doesn’t actually sound like a person talking, nor am I hallucinating it.
It feels familiar, it’s like recognising someone instead of something.
I can tell its sound apart from other instruments inside songs and even separate it from the sound of harmonicas or melodicas pretty accurately most of the time.
It doesn’t sound just pleasant or just like an instrument, but as if I am picking up the sound of something alive.
Again, I don’t claim that accordions are physically legit alive, but the feeling of their sound, to me specifically, sounds like hearing a friend or family member.
Artificial Human Shell Vibes
It’s a recurring pattern I’ve noticed across my entire life that I constantly express myself with things that don’t look organic. I’m talking nonhuman personas in art, or even wanting a signature smell that evokes synthetic or factory-made materials.
It’s probably an autism thing, who knows.
What matters is that out of all smells, I want to project the fragrance of something plastic or coated in celluloid that came out of a factory product line.
I am SO deadass about this. I for realsies spent ~400 FUCKING EURO in perfumery materials and equipment when I mostly wanted to smell like balloons and soft rubber between 2024-2025, way before I discovered the accordion smell that came with my accordion Blackjack.
So, now I am a proud owner of a small stash of perfumery materials that smell like varnish, glue, synthetics, soft rubber, clean floors, plastic and vinyl.
I will probably work on my personal fragrance soon, as aggressive artificial inorganic perfumes are very expensive, avant-garde, artistic and hard to find in Greece, all while bigger brands are trying to please the masses and tame their fragrances more and more.
Now that I live alone, I can practice my attempts to finally smell like my body came out of an accordion factory with fresh plastic wrap.
The accordion smells like accordion, not flowers (unless it’s an accordion inside a flower bed).
I Talk Like Accordion Music
This is probably one of the least noticeable parts, but I personally think that the way I express myself, especially in text, feels like how accordion music sounds.
It’s sincere, vulnerable, kinda spicy, and there’s some sort of movement where I build tension, release it by saying something LOUD, emotional, funny or STUPID, soften and repeat the pattern as if it’s rhythmical bellows movement.
It’s a dynamic range of expression that feels like accordion breathing between being soft and BEING LOUD AS FUCK. It follows a pattern like this:
- Saying something heartfelt, vulnerable, meaningful, calm
- HOLY SHIT HAHAHAHA FUCK AAAAAAAAAAA, absurd visual images, or absolute fucking hilarity
- Saying something heartfelt, vulnerable, meaningful, a small observation
Visual example:
Accordions don’t say “I am experiencing a moderate, normal amount of joy calmly”.
They say:
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH
Tiny delicate phrase
BWAAAAAAAHHHHHH
It breathes.
By the way: If you’re a chill accordion, no offense! This article refers to a specific accordion archetype, so if you are a serious accordion, you’re still valid <3.
Accordion players sometimes do this too for emotional emphasis, by the way. Bellows articulation, or other techniques, can make an accordion overdramatise something because why the fuck not.
Accordion Loves Impact
Accordions don’t exist quietly, and their entire existence is about vibrating the air and the people around it.
Without vibration, a squeezebox is, well… a box.
The accordion isn’t narcissistic. It just wants whatever leaves its body in the form of music to physically reach somebody else.
Historically, accordions were party machines that made crowds shake their ass before synths or loudspeakers were a thing. They were the literal life of the party.
They drove entire village gatherings, moved around, projected sound loudly without electricity and entertained all kinds of people, especially the working class, immigrants and sailors.
Interestingly, accordions like intimate moments too, as it’s not as much about visibility as how much resonance is going to exist in at least one person who is watching.
An accordion wants to resonate, to connect, to say something, and to hear a honk back.
I feel you, accordion.
As Mark, I noticed an interesting pattern: I’ve seemed happiest when something leaves my brain and reaches someone else.
Stuff like this seem to bring a HUGE amount of joy to me:
- Someone reads my article all the way and emails me something about how they felt
- Someone hears my music and says something about my technique or the emotion
- Someone reads my comic and gets it
- Someone smells my homemade plastic-smelling perfume and goes like “Ooh!”
- Someone keeps visiting my website from a specific area and reads my articles
- Some weirdo says an interesting take on something I made
- Someone likes the topic of my work and the thoughts behind it and wants to collaborate
Someone from the audience reading this might say that, well, all humans do this and experience the need to connect, right?
Correct.
Except this works very well for accordions, because they are also MADE for expression and connection.
They are manmade, for humans, for expression. Duh. STILL ACCORDION.
I WANT TO HONK MY MUSIC AND WANT SOMEONE TO WIGGLE THEIR ASS TO IT OR HONK BACK.
MY ULTIMATE JOY.
It stays as the ultimate joy for as long as I don’t honk just to people-please by sharing art/articles/whatever just to appease a certain group of people without actually liking what I am doing, though.
I want my honks and wheezes to stay pure to how I really feel, and if someone connects with it then YAY!
If not, I will keep honking until someone does. 🪗
Sincere Keys
Accordions are deeply honest, with a very clear sense of cause and effect.
A key opens a valve and air goes through the reed it represents. No complexity to the mechanism. It’s on and off, like a light switch.
An accordion will honk exactly how it feels with pure honesty.
It doesn’t know padding or how to “be nice” in a room, and it will quietly wheeze or scream depending on how you pump the bellows.
There’s no exact middle zone where it can be extremely quiet and barely audible, or its sound can get choked. There’s only “aaaaaaaa” or “….”, no other setting.
I feel similarly when it comes to how I express myself, as I usually communicate without ulterior motives or hypocrisy. In fact, I don’t even do social niceties sometimes, not at all, which can be taken badly.
Neurotypical folks, or neurodivergents that mask very well, communicate socially with indirectness and unwritten rules, and the autistic accordion’s intense honesty and vulnerability can catch them off guard.
In the opposite sense, when I don’t get context and when something isn’t communicated accurately, I’ll not be able to play the tune.
Likewise, incompletion and lack of clarity in a process will feel as if I had bellows that were left expanded and not squeezed back to their comfortable, closed resting position.
My interests are tangible as FUCK for this reason too, with a crystal-clear timeline of events. A drawing has a start and an end, and so does an article or a repair on an old thing.
When there is waiting, uncertainty, social silence after sharing something, mixed signals and human ambiguity, the bellows stay tense. Suspension feels almost as if it hurts physically. It’s a little scary.
The accordion is meant to be played in a way that makes sense, as it is made out of metal levers, reeds and plastic keys. They are connected mathematically, and it expects to be played sensibly, as it can’t assume what you want to play.
And The Accordion Visuals
And because I always take things to the maximum all the time, I drew myself an accordion form, as you might have expected already.
Behold, the Markodion:
The colors teal, sky blue and dark blue are some of my favorite colors, and red makes great contrast.
I took colors that I feel represent my soul well, and created a persona that shows my true self as an 80s neon-colored 120 bass accordion which I call Markodion.
What’s even MORE epic is that I drew a humanoid version of said accordion as well, the Final Form of Sideburned Accordion Man (my latest persona):
Typically, I design characters when I am fascinated enough to do it. So you can tell that this was a bit important.
Final Honk
I may be an accordion.
It can be hard to live as an accordion sometimes, because around me exist different instruments in the ensemble. Some like me, some don’t. Some wish I could shut up or that my sound pierces their ears and is embarrassing, and some others think I have a brilliant sound that can warm everyone’s hearts.
Life is hectic, life is messy.
Me understanding myself with accordion terms is oddly effective to me personally, and if you want you also have the freedom to create a symbolic self of yourself, nobody is stopping you!
It’s part of being artistic to do this, and I am very happy to have shared this with you!
Feeling like sharing your thoughts about this?
Honk back at me in my Contact Me page!