Stoned, awake & bereft.

When Alex awoke during the night she felt something was strange and disconcerting. A deep uneasiness rose in her; something 'essential' was missing. Still slightly stoned from the previous evening it took some time to realise that her synesthesia was absent. It was new feeling - how plain and one dimensional the whole world seemed. Alex lay awake through the night, gutted by the gnawing loss, and waiting. Was it permanent?

As it turned out, no, it was not permanent. She is since reinstated with her full rainbow of sensory brilliance. Needless to say however, the hash cookies before bed time have been avoided!

In the wee hours that night, Alex had had a peek through my sensory window. Well at least us Flatlanders can safely enjoy good weed - rumoured to even add sensory dimension to our world!

A.S.M.R. Braingasm? It's real.

Oh my, I am so thrilled to have discovered this phenomenon and will write more about it. BUt as a place holder in the meantime here's some info and a link to a nice description:
http://anti-valentine.hubpages.com/hub/ASMR

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a term used to describe a sensory experience characterized by a pleasant tingling sensation in the head and scalp, which can be triggered by sounds like whispering or brushing, and visual stimulus like painting or drawing. On YouTube, the phenomenon inspired the creation of “whisperer” videos, in which people attempt to trigger the viewer’s ASMR by speaking in a soft voice and making various sounds with inanimate objects.

Mr Whizz Fizz & Coconut Ice girl.

Although not a synesthete, Jules 'tastes' people. She doesn't lick them as such (well not everyone) but she metaphorically induces the taste of a person - as a lolly. One guy she knows for example is definitely a Whizz Fizz, while his Dad is Jamaica Old Gold. I'm told I am a banana. While I'm not thrilled about this as I dislike banana lollies, I'm happy to "stand out in the bag".

Jules claims the lolly test doesn't lie. A rather tasty, lemony friend turned into a carob licorice stick over time. A bit dry and weird. Not very sweet. A bit cracked and disappointing.

In the interests of gaining synesthesia I was keen to give it a go. For a while I had no success, and then in my peripheral view, this image flashed past my screen as I scooted through ads at high speed. Instantly the long forgotten memory of my Aunt's sickly sweet Coconut Ice flushed to mind. I rewound and screen grabbed it, keen to let Jules know that "I'd done it". She agreed with my tasting, but we also though this chick had more than a dash of marshmallow about her too.

Pitchy Pomegranite

This has to be one of my favourite visualisations of Synesthesia. Brilliant work Terri Timely.

Synesthete #6 - Healing Powers?

The other night I was talking to a Reiki Practitioner. She explained that she could see auras, which she incorporated into her practice, and considers it a healing gift.  She also has a daughter who she says is "a really powerful healer" as the colours she sees are far more vivid than her mother's.

It was a revelation to me, that perhaps in the absence of any other explanation or understanding, so called 'healing powers', or 'energetic abilities' might be in fact synesthetic experience. I wonder how many shamans,  healers, enchanters have synesthesia. Or indeed those conjurers of words, poets.

Catching synesthesia

Douglas Adams famously said that flying was as simple as "throwing yourself at the ground and missing". I'm hoping that catching synesthesia is at least as easy. From what I've read one can have a synesthetic experience in the moment before sleep, that time when your senses settle down, and just before they shut down. I'm trying to pay attention to those spaces. Like the instant after a loud, sharp sound, and before my brain says "crap, what was that?" It's in these gaps of consciousness I'm starting to observe little hints of abstracted experience. A sharp sound will pierce the air in front of my head like a shard, or a bird song will be hard bubbles popping around me.

Obviously I'm trying to avoid actually taking LSD which may turn out to be a short cut, but I'm going with the brain plasticity concept for now. I think I can, I know I can...

Synesthete # 5 - How should your logo taste?

I'm sure my friend Andrew won't mind my talking about the design job we did together to brand his new events company. Someway through the process I found out Andrew was a synesthete. I jumped on the opportunity to practically interact with synesthesia. We abandoned the usual conversation of 'market positioning, audience demographics blah blah' and instead asked him how he thought his logo should taste. His eyes lit up, he leant forward and made a sound like he was sucking on a lollypop. After rolling the idea around for a while (apparently in his mouth) he described a particular limey flavour, with a slight fizz, a crispness, but not too sweet. Like an edible glass lozenge?

This led to a fascinating design experience for me, and we threw ideas around until Andrew was happy with the 'gloopiness, flavour and the glassiness' of his logo. Excellent! Such awesome fun. I wish all my clients had such awesome brains.

Process images.

Synesthete #4 - Blind Osteopath feels colour

I love my Osteopath. He is a legally blind Albino who uses colour to guide his touch and coerce the muscles. I say coerce because his touch is so light - like a muscle whisperer. On top of years of anatomical and professional practice, he uses synesthetic feedback as a tool.

I watched the osteo treat my son's sore back the other day. As he worked he described dark purple muscles with sinewy strands of green running through them. These are what he needed to knead out to clear the tension and ease the discomfort. Purple is the colour he says, of my muscles too, and after a while they become a softer, lighter shade, eventually becoming a nice healthy pink under his magic touch.

Synesthete #3 - Tuned in Twin

So it turns out my designer buddy 'A' is also ridiculously synesthetic. She experiences everything from the classic number / letter / colour experience and audio 'vision' to full blown crazy psychadelic orgasms.

 'A' has such extreme experiences, she often needs to tune it out and tries to turn the dial down on it - especially when listening to a concert. Perhaps that explains why, in her photography she prefers to work in black and white. She is asking her (fraternal) twin about her experiences and is going to get back to me.

Synesthete # 2 - Gender Fingers

Today I met another (naïve) synaesthete. My second 'discovery'. I'm not sure its always a good thing telling someone that they are different / special. This lovely, strong, and enviable woman found it hard to comprehend that she was unique and insisted we can all 'see it' if only we tried - tried to shut out the clutter of daily life - shut out the noise of the business of living.

Apart from some fairly common forms: colour / numeric / auditory, she remarkably had what I believe may be a new type of synaesthesia. She described gender specific digits. Each finger was a male, female, young male etc. How wonderful. She assured me they did not have a life of their own.

The clue to her special senses was when she talked about doing maths homework with her daughters and asking them to "pay attention to the colours".

P.S. I've met her again and she also has incredibly lucid flying dreams. Lucky girl.

Synesthete #1 - Lucky Luc with the Fantasia orgasms.

Luc is a brilliant artist working in the film industry. When we were speaking about a script he had been developing in college, he mentioned that his co writer seemed to be creating a story with a "different shape" to explain their subsequent abandonment of the project. My ears pricked up at this visual descriptor, which I suspected was more than just an 'English-second-language' quirk.

Sure enough, to my delight and his surprise, he is completely and profoundly synaesthetic. More so than anyone I have met. His world is a chaos of colour, shape, placement in space, sound, taste, vibrations and language. Luc is a talented professional and obviously highly intelligent adult who has mastered more than two languages. His hard won success, he now knows, is in spite of the challenge of layers of 'noise' superimposed on his world, especially in the school setting as a child.

Luc explained to me that for him, numbers, letters, names and words have their own colour. But a word will have a different colour depending on whether it is in English or French, and whether it is spoken or written, and even how it is pronounced! I think he may even experience them as taste too?

He also experiences the world according to his health and body temperature, his synaesthesia serving as a visual thermometer. The closer to fever he gets, the 'greyer' the world becomes. We spoke often about his sensory experiences, and a group of us, fascinated, and pleased for the distraction from our production schedule, would ask him to draw his synesthetic experience. The flavour of Gruyere was a soft white, rounded wedge shape that fit in the mouth and the more piquant blue cheese was a stringy stream that he felt around his forehead. He also had a special colour for each of us according to our name, how long he'd known us, the sound of our voice, and how he liked us! It changed over time.

After many conversations I felt I could ask a most personal question. "How do you experience orgasm?" To my complete envy he described a fantasia of exploding colour and shapes. Damn! He is one lucky guy, and I'm sure there are many out there who literally experience what we only can metaphorically.

I'm grateful for Luc's patience with my obsession. He is an awesome painter with a phenomenal sense of colour and light. To drive around in his brain for just a day would be a dream.

Synesthesia Envy

In my travels through the world of film and art I have met some astoundingly talented people who think with their hearts and touch you with their minds. Some of them are different from you and me. Their world is more vivid and wildly surreal than an ordinary one. From gender assigned body parts to literal Fantasia like orgasms, their unique experience of the world is because they have synesthesia.

According to my favourite neuroscientist David Eagleman, about 4% of people have synesthesia. It is harmless, it is not a disorder, it is probably heritable, and I want it.

In this blog I'm going to catalogue my meetings with synesthetes, my 'discoveries' of them and their reactions, and my efforts to 'gain' synesthesia.


A bit more info:
http://www.eaglemanlab.net/synesthesia