Synesthesia

A few folks have asked about synesthesia.

I am far from being an expert on it, but here are my personal observations.

Most synesthetes are grapheme/color synesthetes. This means the inducer, the stimulus, of seeing letters and numbers causes them to also see colors. The letter or number itself takes on the color. In words, one letter predominates and frequently the whole word takes on that color – the first letter, the first consonant, the first vowel, the last letter… I don’t have that sort of synesthesia.

Letters are whatever color they are printed in to me.

Sounds, however, induce color and shape. In Disney’s Fantasia, where the orchestra is represented by colors and moving shapes, that’s sort of how I see sounds, only super-imposed on everything. And I associate different colors than Disney used, which always causes a weird disconnect when I watch Fantasia. The intensity and clarity of the color is not related to the intensity or volume of the sound. It’s like my own private MTV. I have color animators in my head, projecting their work just in front of me so I can see it even if my eyes are closed.

I first realized other people didn’t see sounds as I did when I was somewhere around 6 years old, when I first started school. The music teacher was frustrated that I never looked where she wanted me to. I was watching the color show, why should I ignore it to keep my eyes fixed on one spot? It took several severe talkings and punishments before I realized that I wasn’t allowed to acknowledge what I really saw. It took many years before I realized it wasn’t wrong to see them, as I’d learned at 6, but that others simply didn’t see what I saw.

But that’s not the only form of synesthesia I have.

Smells come up as colors. Orchids, for example, always smell purple, a rich, clear, jewellike purple. Roses, regardless of their petal colors, always smell of a smudgy tomatoey orange-red, a little bitter, and a bit green. Cooking chicken always smells of a soft, slick beige with tiny cracks in it. My grandparents always loved when I yalked about mingling smells and colors, they thought it was very poetic. Fortunately, no one ever taught me this was wrong, and as I got older, they encouraged the imagry as “poetic”, and I was in my 20’s before I realized other people didn’t get color overtones with their fragrances.

Textures evoke fragranges – sandpaper rough smells like hickory woodsmoke and puppy fur smells of lavender baby powder and a splinter is searingly electric green, with a smell like the ozone of a flash of lightning. A cat’s tongue licking smells of cinnamon and pepper. I don’t think I ever really talked about this with others, as I lived in a very scent-laden world as a child. It wasn’t until I was nearly 40 before I knew other people didn’t get that overlay of fragrance with touching things. The doctor thought it was some weird chemo side effect until I convinced him I’d always been that way.

Emotions come in a whole smorgasbord of tastes as complex as any gourmet meal. I taste love as mashed potatoes with sharp cheddar cheese and scallions, and friendship is salted tomatoes, chalk, and chocolate, and hate is oranges, acrid and sharp and tingly and a little bit exciting.

Pain and temperatures have texture. I can tell when the chicken is done by how many points it developes, and when something burns, even before I can smell the burn, it gets all prickly in the palms of my hands. When my hand hovers over a meal, I’m testing the shapes to see if it’s cooked, and when I or someone close to me is hurting, I can feel their pain in the same way. Except not always with my hands. Sometimes, I feel the square edges or the bumpiness of it in my elbow or behind my knees.

And then there’s the non-linear time. I don’t think that’s synesthesia so much as it’s just me.

I remember dragging my daughter to grocery store after grocery store looking for slice peanut butter through most of the 80’s and early 90’s, and finally gave up, thinking maybe I’d misjudged the date when the sliced peanut butter would be created. And lo and behold – we now have sliced peanut butter on the grocery shelves.

I’m still looking for the coffee table design I will remember owning someday. And while the baby high chair I desperately searched for when my children were small still doesn’t exist, perhaps it will for the grandchildren. And I suppose it will be a long time before the catalogs I remember looking through exist.

But that’s OK. I will have remembered using them, and that means at some point they will exist.p>If I concentrate really hard, I can remember things happening in other parts of the world right now.

Sometimes, I dream of other people’s lives as they are living them right at that moment. It’s how I can tell when my friends in other states are at home and available to take calls from me, or know when to call them to congratulate or commiserate with them.

Past lives aren’t as easy, because the time stream muddies as I pass through it. Distant time is easier than recent times, but not impossible.

Problem is, I remember not the famous people, but ordinary people like me. It’s harder to find them to validate the memories if they are historically undocumented, past, present, or future. It can be done, though. And I’ve met a few people I remembered before I met them.

So, there, in brief, my synesthesia.