la_belle_laide: (Mappy)
[personal profile] la_belle_laide
Original character Kris has always been a synesthete and I never knew it until a few weeks ago. I thought he was just sort of like everyone else in that way.


"I hate the colors," he said, raising one hand to his forehead as if to sheild his eyes. "Orange especially. So loud."

...He shrugs and tries to brush her off, knowing that brushing her off isn't ever an option, but still making the effort. The sun is shining. The weather is warm and tastes like melting chocolate.

...There was black, white, blue, red, and a horrible screaming orange that seemed to lurk in the background of all of these colors. Those colors had voices. Black's voice was a low, even hum, white's voice was a whistle. Blue screamed in a jagged, high pitched voice, and red was a coarse shout. Orange though, was the loudest. It shrieked at an even higher pitch than blue, and their frequencies and volumes changed everytime they moved.

I never questioned it, having taken it from my own experience. Write what you know, right? I never knew it had a name, even.

I always assumed everyone saw, felt, and heard colors. Red has always been heat, right? Fire, lust, anger, all kinds of passion, things associated with fire and blood. Blue has always been chilly, things associated with ice. This is not so unusual, is it?

But I can remember getting colors wrong in kindergarten, most specifically blue and brown. Because chocolate has always tasted blue to me. Mrs. MacCrimmon used to get on my case for mixing those colors up all the time. It used to bug me how Count Chocola was brown, because his cereal was supposed to be chocolate, and chocolate tasted blue. I just naturally assumed that everyone understood that chocolate was blue, and I remember that my Mom finally corrected me on this when I asked her why Count Chocola was brown. I could not get over it. How could chocolate not be blue? I remember her telling me that blueberries were blue, and this confused me further. Blueberry clearly tasted yellow, or maybe light gold. (Wasn't there a cereal called BOOberry at some point?)

Yet I can remember my friends and family always discussing the colors of voices: a yellow voice, a blue voice, things like that. As a teenager, I knew that Geoff Tate from Queensryche had a voice that was vanilla ice cream, or a creamy off-white. Not a metaphor, that's just how I hear it. It only goes one way, though: Vanilla ice cream does not taste like Geoff Tate's voice.

Guitar solos are usually yellow (usually ones from before the 80s) but some are silver. Drums are brown, deep bass notes are blue, and synthesizer sounds are gold. Pain--especially head pain--has always been orange. Loud noise is orange. The wind is blue. Fear is shining copper. My own voice is yellow, but I wish it were brown, because I like brown voices; they are sexy. Dog barks are also brown--big dogs, at least.

It just really shocks me that there is a name for this and it's some kind of condition. I always just figured that everyone had these associations about some things.

Date: 2006-02-25 07:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] arianadream.livejournal.com
Oh yeah, I remember learning about that in mental health class in high school! I always thought it was a fascinating concept. Not to mention it suggests, at least to me, a high level of creativity and a very...how to describe it? An open spirit, a more wide-ranging way of seeing the world.

I sometimes get vague color impressions of things, though usually I would have to think about it a bit to decide what color something sounds or smells or tastes. And usually there's an association with a color we generally see as going with that sensation. For me it's more of a way of describing things in new and interesting ways, rather than how I automatically see things.

Date: 2006-02-25 03:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shonagonchan.livejournal.com
For me it's more of a way of describing things in new and interesting ways, rather than how I automatically see things.


Maybe that's an aspect of creativity and imagination, and synesthesia is when you can't help it, and those colors / sounds / whatever won't leave you alone. For instance, chocolate still tastes blue to me, even after all these years, and as a child it took a lot of straightening out before I could get my colors right.

Very odd!

Date: 2006-02-25 08:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] awakesoon.livejournal.com
Ooo, it's funny you brought that up, since just yesterday we (erm, as in class) were talking about abstract art. I'd mentioned how when I'd seen Barnett Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis (which is all red, but for one white line and one black line) and was completely overwhelmed, I was almost crying and had to leave the gallery.

And people all together have a color, not just voices. ^^ My mom is warm, light blue. My dad and my sister are both brown, but dad's more gold. My grandma was silvery, with a little gold around the edges. Both of my grandpas were blue and white striped. ^^

Date: 2006-02-25 03:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shonagonchan.livejournal.com
Could you be seeing auras? I always thought that's what it was when I "saw" colors in people.

Of course, seeing auras and synesthesia are probably two terms for the same thing, and it depends on whether you ask a spiritual person or a pychologist. ^_^

Date: 2006-02-25 04:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] awakesoon.livejournal.com
Maybe! I don't really know, because I don't really -see- it per se... It's sooo hard to describe. It's not visual, except sorta to the back of my eye.. and it's almost tactile.

Yeah, I think we take for granted how stimulating one sense is to the others. I have really strong scent memories, too.

Date: 2006-02-25 05:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shonagonchan.livejournal.com
Yeah, I do, too! The smell of something can put me right back into that one place and time, as if I were right there.

Date: 2006-02-25 10:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] knorg.livejournal.com
I hadn't ever heard of this before.

Date: 2006-02-25 03:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shonagonchan.livejournal.com
Yeah, this is a new one on me, too.

Not sure where to leave this, but

Date: 2006-02-25 04:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] heywood.livejournal.com
Your GAFF PM inbox is full, it can't deliver the reply I've been trying to send you.

Re: Not sure where to leave this, but

Date: 2006-02-25 05:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shonagonchan.livejournal.com
I know, and I jsut cleaned it out yesterday, too. Thinking there is a glitch, but I don't want to bug SG with it. You can send it to my email, JulesKD at optonline dot net.

Date: 2006-02-25 05:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] balyn.livejournal.com
I have had similar experiences, tho they are pretty difficult to really describe. Lots of things have "flavors" for me, but they aren't really "tastes" as such. Other similar things as well, but the situation dictates to me, so it isn't always the same flavor for a same event. Or judging food tastes as, "It is a high(pitched) flavor, but it needs the (color?) toned down a few notches" kind of thing. So I have had that kind of experience, just not in that way.

Date: 2006-02-25 06:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shonagonchan.livejournal.com
That's interesting. I was reading a page on this last night and apparently there are different types of synesthesia.

But now the idea of "synesthesia" is starting to bug me. Why do we need a name for everything? ;)

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