Synesthesia

Returning to my senses - literally.

(Credit: Steve A. Johnson, Pexels)

If there’s one thing people who experience synesthesia love doing, it’s telling other people that they experience synesthesia. So please allow me to joyfully inform you that I experience synesthesia! 😊

There are many iterations of this phenomenon, but my experience is woven intricately with music. Different keys are tied to different colors in my mind; if you laid a pitch pipe atop a color wheel, you could tap into what each one “looks” like to me. When I listen to well-tuned choirs in “live” rooms, I can close my eyes and see starbursts bouncing and zipping about in time with their singing. Certain tempos and instrumentations bring vivid mental images to my mind… sometimes whole stories.

Music has always been a huge part of my life, in large part because of my love of telling stories to others… but also, because the mere sound of it tells stories to me.

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At my lowest burnout point, however, I largely stopped experiencing any of this. And at my lowest point, I didn’t even register the absence — I was so mired down in my own fatigue and sadness and frustration that I couldn’t see past it to acknowledge what else I was missing. All I could see was darkness.

This fact didn’t even occur to me, actually, until this very week, when I took part in a study on synesthesia.

After filling out an initial form about myself and my experiences that was created by a (very lovely!) researcher at Durham University in England, I was invited to take part in a longer virtual activity to explore what music looks and feels like to me, in real time.

Said activity revolved around playing eight different one-minute clips of music. They came in radically different keys, tempos, volumes, etc. My job was to clock my emotional responses to each one, as well as to describe any color associations, mental pictures and more that came to mind while listening.

I pressed “play” on the first clip and set my eyes on nothing in particular. Deep, resonant, steady drumbeats and low, smooth synthetic tones poured into my ears — instantly, my imagination was engaged. “Ominous. A malevolent being. Someone moving in inky-black shadows,” I said almost instantly. Then I helpfully added, before I could stop myself: “It’s giving Darth Vader.” After a shared laugh at my description, I went into much greater detail. A sterile corridor, neon lights in bold shades… even the character’s ill intent. A whole story, in technicolor, birthed from a one-minute clip of music that I listened to from the comfort of home.

Each piece was the same way — a new universe created in a minute. A rural idyll laid before me as light, jaunty strings danced in G major and its related keys, a perfect tonal setting for inspiring visions of green grasses, blue skies and yellow sunshine. A percussion-heavy piece that evoked a brilliant, orange-and-pink sunset on a breezy Brazilian beach, complete with the notion of rum-soaked locals and vacationers dancing in time as drums were layered upon each other.

Afterwards, when I was returned to my quiet reality, I let these stories and visions continue to play in my head — happy to have unearthed the forgotten box that had contained this bit of mental magic, after months of decluttering myself.

~

This week, I also happened upon a book that I’ve been loving so far: “Writing Wild” by Tina Welling, which guides readers through letting one’s senses take the driver’s seat in their creation. It feels so deeply aligned — very synchronous — to be reading a book that asks me to think about how my five senses interact with my creativity.

Especially because I’ve also been feeling called, more and more, to center grounding over grieving.

This summer, I pulled myself back into a cocoon, largely staying at home and spending my time alone, or with immediate family. Reaching out online through my writing, and polished online posts, but keeping things small otherwise. I stand by doing so. I needed to shut down — to “put myself in rice,” as I’d termed it to some.

But there comes a point when you start running the risk of crossing from healing rest to full-on stasis. Forces internal and external have been urging me to shift just some of my energy and focus to the present… and perhaps even to the task of imagining what tomorrow could look like.

Finding this book, taking part in this study… it all feels like an invitation to recalibrate myself so that I’m focused on the “here” and “now” — to take the known quantity of creation as a full-sensory experience… and apply it to writing, and living. To let my craft be the grounding element; to let the visual, the tangible, the audible (and the smell-able and taste-able) connect me to a moment, so that my imagination can race from there.

Not forgetting what was, but reorienting my primary focus to what is, and what else could possibly be.

Welling’s book encourages Spirit Walks to this aim — outings focused on absorbing what’s happening around you, and writing what comes from within as a result. Below is my first stab at this exercise. I have no real feelings about the writing itself… because the point isn’t to pen the “best thing.” It’s simply to be present, and to let whatever comes of it be beautiful in its own way. Whether it’s an annoying morning at home… or a trip in my mind to the stark halls of an enemy cruiser hurtling through outer space.

~

I had a plan. Make breakfast, and then take myself on a Spirit Walk.

Well, we know what often happens to our best laid plans. In my determination to cook — despite the lure of breakfast at a nearby cafe — I slipped and dropped a giant glass bottle of olive oil. And it… went… everywhere. The marble countertop, various appliances, the dish rack (and several dishes), down the front of the dishwasher and covering a considerable portion of the tiled kitchen floor…

At first, I simply stood still, stunned and covered in slippery, deep-yellow viscosity and surrounded by near-countless shards of forest-green glass. Everything was glossy, and shining under the sun pouring in through a nearby window and the glow of an overhead light. Olive oil, it turns out, comes with a surprisingly present (if mild) scent, one potent enough to activate my taste buds. At least the mess was smooth and savory.

And then, a miracle: I remained utterly calm.

As I began to look around with more discernment, to assess the totality of the mess, my mind went back to a paragraph in “Writing Wild” that had been bouncing around my mind ever since I’d read it the previous afternoon: “[Our] healing lies side by side with our wounds. Our answers come from the exact place our questions arise. Where else would they be?”

The answers to this problem did, indeed, come from my surroundings. Soap, and water… bags for safely gathering glass, and paper towels, and Swiffer wet mop pads, and my now-ruined sleep set and slippers… all within arm’s reach. More answers, still, came from my own mind — an order of operations to ensure a job thoroughly done, wanting most of all to ensure that my husband’s strong hands and son’s forever-bare little feet remain protected from my error. The calmness to carry it all out.

What’s miraculous about this is: There is a version of me who existed not so long ago, mere months ago really, who would have melted down in this moment. She would have been overwhelmed by the size of the task ahead, viewing it as a looming, dripping beast rather than a temporary annoyance. She would have viewed this as an insurmountable derailment of her plans — or worse, a universal discouragement of them.

But this morning, I found the answer inside the very being that dropped the bottle in the first place: Make this moment into the plan. Make my Spirit Walk into a Spirit Clean. My months of soul-focused hermitage morphed me into someone who doesn’t cry a single tear, whose breathing remains steady, before or during a 45-minute clean-up job.

The time passed. The tasks were ticked away. Deep-yellow and forest-green, all shimmering, were eventually encased in white plastic. The smell and taste of oil was slowly but surely replaced by cleansing, bright lemons.

I wasn’t derailed — my healing journey was simply anointed with oil.

(That said, I am writing this from that nearby cafe, my now-empty breakfast plate resting just left of my laptop. I’m healing, but also human.)