The great Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov had it. American physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman had it. David Hockney and John Mayer have it.
I wish I did too. Ever since reading Nabokov's lyrical autobiography, Speak, Memory, the neurological condition known as synaesthesia has compelled and eluded me, frustratingly out of grasp.
Synaesthesia, according to the British Medical Association, is 'a condition in which stimulation of one of the senses (by a sound, for example) produces an additional response, such as the appearance of a colour in addition to the normal perception associated with that stimulus'.
Nabokov saw each letter of the alphabet in a different colour, always the same colour for the same letter. Interestingly, the English alphabet appeared in different colours from his native Russian letters. (This involunary, specific and consistent nature of the linked modalities is a defining characteristic of synaesthesia.)
To another synaesthete, particular words could have distinctive 'tastes'. Or tastes might produce touch sensations. Certain sounds might project shapes in the air. And so on.
An actress friend and I were looking at a painting in an exhibition. She commented distractedly that one corner was making a noise. Elated to finally discover a real live synaesthete, I wanted to know all about her sensory map. She was confused and a little embarrassed. Didn't everyone have that experience? She'd always had it. Some images made noises ... Was it really called synaesthesia?
Not surprisingly, many synaesthetes are creative.
To me, synaesthesia is metaphor made flesh, the figurative rebirthed as experience. I desire it.
Most people with synaesthesia are born with it. A few experience it with drugs or meditation, or after a stroke. Some researchers believe, however, that it is vestigial in all of us from childhood. And that is my hope, for surely we can relearn what we once knew? Perhaps, in fact, our richly metaphoric language and story structures derive from the synaesthetic quality of the developing human brain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
I wish I did too. Ever since reading Nabokov's lyrical autobiography, Speak, Memory, the neurological condition known as synaesthesia has compelled and eluded me, frustratingly out of grasp.
Synaesthesia, according to the British Medical Association, is 'a condition in which stimulation of one of the senses (by a sound, for example) produces an additional response, such as the appearance of a colour in addition to the normal perception associated with that stimulus'.
Nabokov saw each letter of the alphabet in a different colour, always the same colour for the same letter. Interestingly, the English alphabet appeared in different colours from his native Russian letters. (This involunary, specific and consistent nature of the linked modalities is a defining characteristic of synaesthesia.)
To another synaesthete, particular words could have distinctive 'tastes'. Or tastes might produce touch sensations. Certain sounds might project shapes in the air. And so on.
An actress friend and I were looking at a painting in an exhibition. She commented distractedly that one corner was making a noise. Elated to finally discover a real live synaesthete, I wanted to know all about her sensory map. She was confused and a little embarrassed. Didn't everyone have that experience? She'd always had it. Some images made noises ... Was it really called synaesthesia?
Not surprisingly, many synaesthetes are creative.
To me, synaesthesia is metaphor made flesh, the figurative rebirthed as experience. I desire it.
Most people with synaesthesia are born with it. A few experience it with drugs or meditation, or after a stroke. Some researchers believe, however, that it is vestigial in all of us from childhood. And that is my hope, for surely we can relearn what we once knew? Perhaps, in fact, our richly metaphoric language and story structures derive from the synaesthetic quality of the developing human brain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
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