29.10.11

thoughts on | synaesthesia


a couple of weeks ago i was reading this blog and i came across the term "synaesthesia" (or synesthesia). the author asked "how can heather be a brighter name than george? how can a calendar surround you?" it seemed entirely normal to me. i thought, "i know exactly why it's brighter! and of course a calendar can surround you. the reason heather is brighter is because h's are orange, and e''s are red, whereas g's are black! and my calendar obviously surrounds me, it's like a racetrack and i'm in the center." 

okay, crazy right? it's even crazier for me because i assumed everyone thought this way. synaesthesia is when multiple senses come together. for example, when i hear sound, i see colour and space. others, when then hear numbers see visual maps or associate them with personalities. and a very rare few, hear words and taste it on their tongue! 

when i was little, i used to ask my friends "what colour is december?" and most of them, without fail would say "red" or "green." and i said "black." because in my mind, it is. just as september is very red, february is undoubtedly green and june and july are various shades of orange. part of this has to do with the fact that certain letters for me are certain colours. f's are always green and j's are bright orange. "friend" is green, "foe" is green etc. and when i think of days, months and years i don't just think of it, and i don't imagine a traditional calendar. i literally feel myself in the space of time and can "see" the years, months or days ahead, in varying patterns.

i have trouble imagining how others think of these things, if they aren't experiencing what i am (what do you mean march isn't on the other side of the track and it's not blue??). but on the other hand, i suppose it's hard for you to know what i am seeing/feeling. below are some quick drawings of how i envision thing like a year, a week, a decade, the alphabet and numbers. and give me your feedback on how all this sounds to you or let me know if you have a certain degree of it.


9 comments:

  1. your calender is counterclockwise. this is strange to me. i also see it as a circle but it's clockwise with january at the top and june and july at the bottom. i also do not see letters as colours. at all. my week matches yours though. this is very interesting.

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  2. not at all do i think of things this way. interesting.

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  3. I do the exact same things. For me, numbers have personalities, as do letters, and I do the color thing with names. My year is shaped in a line with peaks and falls based on the months :)

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  4. That's a very special skill :) There's a BBC documentary called "Derek Tastes of Earwax" on Synaesthesia, it is well worth watching. Here's link to the crappy online vod if you can't find it:

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4297264301326388608

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  5. I'm synaesthetic <3 I never knew until we were reading a poem in my A Level English class and it turned out that she had it (she would associate words with colours) and that's when I chimed in with more examples of my own :D

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  6. i've never heard of this. but it's kind of awesome. like you ;)

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  7. PS. I just googled this shit. it's crazy! (also like you ;))... let's go for drinks and talk about this! i've never heard of it before...

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  8. Wow! This is so awesome! I do have a certain feeling when I think about certain months, like I can feel it in my chest...and that may sound strange in itself as well...I don't think its the same but its something alright! haha. Thanks for sharing...I found this so so interesting! :) -Lo

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  9. Thanks for posting this! Every time I try to explain this to someone, they look at me as if I've grown a second head. My year is more like a ladder that goes down (January at the top, December at the bottom). And I associate colors with letters and numbers, and textures with sounds.

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thanks for your comment, i love hearing your thoughts!