The Sound of Kaleidoscopes

I like to think I have a colorful personality.  Maybe there is a neurological quirk that explains it.  Some months ago while listening to Public Radio, there was a segment about  synesthesia.  It is a neurological condition by which the stimulation of one sensory system involuntarily stimulates a secondary sensory system.  I might be a dumb guy because I never heard of the condition but now, I find it extremely exciting.  Synesthesia is not a troublesome condition unless it goes to an extreme in an individual.  In fact, synesthesia can aid a person in their creativity and productivity.

I find the thingamabob intriguing.  I will call it a thingamabob because “condition” makes it sound like there should be a telethon or a 12-step program for synesthesia.  It is intriguing because I think as a child I experienced it.  For my 6^th or 7^th birthday I received two striped t-shirts.  One was blue and yellow and the other was red and green.  The blue and yellow shirt I called my 6+4 shirt and the other was my 7+3 shirt because those were the number that the colors represented for me.  Being the ever-transparent schoolboy, I explained the correlation to my family.  The explanation was received immediately with laughter and scoffing.  Thus, I repressed any further synesthetic connection between colors and numbers.

People with full-blown synesthesia tell of their mental processes.  As I have mentioned, some people might think of it as a malady.  I think the possibilities are endless. Usually thesecondary sense stimulated is color. In the radio interview I listened to, a young man told how music is a kaleidoscope of color.  Composing music for him is also a coordination of colors.  It raises the question if some of the master composers of the ages were also synesthetes. This makes me wonder if those people who play by ear (a talent I would kill for) have a form of synesthesia.  Golly, have those electric keyboards with color-coded keys screwed up any synesthete who could have been the next Liberace?

Other synesthetes connect numbers and colors.  These are people who do rainbow mathematics in far more advanced forms than my banal 6+4 and 7+3 t-shirts. The complexity of advanced mathematics must look like the largest box of Crayola crayons possible within their minds.  That would mean to me that an abstract subject like math becomes a little more concrete and visual.  On the flip side, there are synesthetes who see art (abstract and traditional) as numbers developing a pattern or a formula.  Again, may some of the great master painters have had a correlation of color and numbers.

Still other synesthetes give color associations to their sense of taste.  Different foods or tastes stimulate visions of color for the individual.  Broccoli may be green but will taste “violet.” Apples may be sky blue. One interviewee sampled a glass of chardonnay and said it was aqua. I could see an individual being a picky eater because they do not want their foods to clash.

Here’s my point:  synesthesia is a thingamabob far more than a condition.  Unless the thingamabob gets out of hand I would think synesthesia might really be a real enhancement to a person’s perception of life.  Meanwhile, I regret that my erstwhile visit to synesthesia had not been repressed.  It would have made balancing the checkbook much prettier.