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By Teri Floyd
In my head, the letter "N" is green. The number 5 is blackish gray, and in his early 20s. The month of February is lavender colored and covered in ice.
So in case you haven’t guessed, I have synesthesia.
I’ve had it all my life, I suppose. People who are experts on such things say that we are born with it, that it is a brain disorder. The wires in your brain get crossed, and you experience all five senses simultaneously. They overlap where they should be separate.
Everybody who has it has a different form of synesthesia with minor undertones of other kinds. Mine mainly exists with letters and numbers. I see numbers, letters, words, etc in color. All of my letters and numbers have different colors, personalities, textures, ages and gender. I literally see them as living beings. Colors themselves also have gender. When I was a child often I’d play ‘house’ with my crayons instead of dolls. Seriously, I’d have red and blue get married or green and orange have a sordid affair. My grandma used to think it was so funny. It was just normal to me. Words have colors – for instance, my son’s name, Callum, is a bright, sunny yellow with flecks of baby blue, particularly in the L’s.
The inside of my head kind of feels like a Jackson Pollock painting. All splotches and globs of brightly colored paint, roads leading nowhere, just an explosion of thick, goopy color with a nonsensical message. Convergence, 1952 by Jackson Pollock is my favorite painting. Probably because it’s the colors of my name. Yellows, a hint of orange, lots of black, and a little fleck of blue peeking out; all of it streaked into oblivion. My name looks just like that; it did long before I ever saw a Pollock painting.
I also have synesthesia with regard to music. Certain songs bring vivid colors into my head. If I listen to "Happiness is a Warm Gun," by the Beatles, my head fills with alternating flashes of mustard-yellow and bright, silvery white. It has a distinct pulse and a gritty, sandpapery feel. David Bowie’s voice always invokes a bright sky blue that sometimes turns darker, or has shades of gray, depending on the mood of the song. Rap music invokes a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes all spiraling through my head at warp speed. I prefer one sole theme, which is why I think I don’t usually care for rap music unless it’s really unique or exceptional (for instance, Lil Wayne’s voice is a silvery gray with purple undertones that I find really pleasing). Classical music takes me through a landscape of color, shape and feeling. Usually I close my eyes when listening. It’s like having my own personal DVD of "Fantasia" playing through my head whenever I listen.
Usually when I tell people about my synesthestic experiences they look at me like I’m some crazed hippie. I probably am a crazed hippie in reality, but what I experience is more than just psychedelic. It’s spiritual. My synesthesia is so ingrained into me that if I lost my ability tomorrow, I would feel as if I’d been blinded or deafened.
Occasionally I experience the other types of synesthesia that have to do with taste, sensation and smell, but only occasionally. Smells and tastes definitely invoke a distinct color in my brain. For instance, the smell and taste of fresh garlic makes my head fill with bright, vibrant green. Diet drinks with their saccharine sweetness always appear in my head as being a shimmering, blinding silver.
It can be strange, having synesthesia. If I’m out to dinner with a friend, and they scrape their fork on their teeth, my brain fills with unnamed metallic colors, and my ears roar with the sound of it. I can’t stand it. I can taste the metal on my own tongue and it is unbearable. It can cause obsessive compulsive behavior sometimes. Occasionally the sound and taste of silverware is so loud in my brain that I have to use plastic cutlery when I eat.
Synesthesia certainly enriches my life as an avid reader and a writer. It always helped my poetry and as I become better at essays and stories I find that it enriches them, too. Certainly F. Scott Fitzgerald was synesthetic. No one can read "The Great Gatsby" and tell me that he wasn’t. I think that is why I feel so decadent and wistful when I read his books. I’ve read "Gatsby" dozens of times and never tire of the language and the way his words flow in an endless barrage of color. Many artists and celebrities are synesthestes, including Tori Amos, Eddie Van Halen, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stevie Wonder, Vladimir Nabokov and many, many others.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t grateful to have synesthesia. I have had it so long that it is like second nature to me now. I often forget that I do have it, and just go through life assuming that people are experiencing the same sensations as I do. I see the months of the year like a giant Rolodex, spiraling through an open space. They all have colors, genders, ages and personalities. I also benefit from having a somewhat photographic memory with directions, phone numbers, addresses and names, because I see them as a pattern of colors.
It all tastes blue to me.
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Leave a Comment:
LCD is now called synesthesia!
I think you mean LSD. I have experienced that synthetic form of synesthesia ... as well as the organic forms - back when I was young and adventurous. It's a beautiful thing when you first experience tasting color ... but even more beautiful when it goes away. I can't imagine enduring that full time.
If you mean LSD, it should be pointed out that synaesthesia is something the person is born with. Don't assume that it's a result of drug use. Although it is true that some drugs can lead to synaesthetic experiences, people that actually have synaesthesia have these unusual sensory experiences all the time and have had them since birth.
Wow, I had no idea that my new tv is also a powerful hallucinogen ;)
i have a very light case of this i never knew it had a name or anything.. cool :)
I have a light case of synaesthesia too I think. If an unexpected big noise like a door shutting violently, I see a bright rainbow of colors! The first time I saw this was during a thunderstorm, so I just thought it was the lightning, but it was not.
I have music-to-color/movement/texture, with occassional flashes of sound-to-taste.
Like most synths, I didn't realize what I was seeing was special since I grew up with it. One of my earliest memories is telling my father I liked classical music because it 'made the best pictures'.
The few times I mentioned it to friends, I was told that I was crazy and that I needed to stop the drugs.
I've tried to describe the experiences, but it's tough. I've actually found a few videos that are good representations:
I love my synth - I honestly can't imagine how the world must look/sound without it.
I found the Apple iPod Nano commercial here I think. On YouTube the video is called "New iPod nano commercial 10/08/2006." Sorry, the actual link to it wouldn't post here for some reason.
I enjoyed reading this first person description of synesthesia. I do wonder whether your perceptions of particular things are personal or whether they are similar to others with synesthesia.
Also, I'd like to mention, for anyone interested, that synesthesia is a central topic in a children's book titled "The Name of this Book is Secret" by Pseudonomous Bosch. I believe it is the first in a series, though I don't know if the others include synesthesia.
Hi! I'm glad you enjoyed the article. I believe from what I've read that all synesthestes are different. For instance, the letter A to me is a deep cherry red, but others may find it to be light blue or green or gray. So it does differ for each of us. I also find that people's personalities do influence the colors of their name for me. If I have two friends, both named Amy, the one who is the nicer, kinder, giving person may have the slightly pinker name, while the one who is more rude and brash has a more reddish orange tone to hers. I hope that makes sense.
When I was younger(and I still think of it sometimes) colors and the letters of the alphabet had their own specific gender. Its probably not even remotely similar to what you experience, but your article made me think of it. :) For instance, yellow and red are/were female, as are/were the letters A, H, M, N, and W.
It sounds to me like you have synesthesia. It can vary from person to person. Maybe you just have a mild form?
I had never heard of this and what an amazing gift you have! I never thought much about this, but I have always seen calendars in a shape. A year has a shape and a week has a shape. Each day even has a slightly different shape. I just always thought it was weird, and I have never mentioned it to anyone. Might this be a form of this? I have a memory that is sensitive to smells and sounds, but not colors or textures. I can hear or smell something and I am taken back to a certain scene in my life and I can remember every single detail of that scene. Thank you and blessings!!
I also have space-time synesthesia. The calendar is this weird curvy loop. Months from May to September are much longer than the winter months. April and March are just fractions, and I always forget what order they are in. Same with the weeks, they loop around, and for some reason tuesday is some sort of rhombus, and much larger than the rest. Maybe that's why I always hate tuesdays.
Same thing with counting.. 1-12 are horizontally in my head, but then up to 100 they are a steep vertical.. after 100 they sort of squiggle/loop and can get confusing.
I have space-time synesthesia too! I wonder if you started calling it that because it seemed appropriate (as I did) or if there is research that calls it space-time synesthesia. Whenever I try to explain the directional number thing to people, it's hard for them to understand. For instance, if I'm looking back on the entire last century, it's South, but if I'm looking back at the last 40 years, it's East, which is to my right, and the years at first 'glance' are side by side, but then when I think about them individually, January to December goes North to South, but somehow December and the next January are connected, even though they're side by side. Like an Escher drawing perhaps.
I've always envied true synesthetes. I often have a textures-from-sounds mental association but almost never a color-from-sound reaction to anything. When I do have a reaction, I typically feel different fabrics based on what music I'm hearing, but most often it's not definable with one exception: instrumentals are almost always velvet regardless of the genre--it could be classical, techno, or guitar solos!
I can't believe someone else has this too! I'm excited!! After I read this article, I actually tried, for the first time, to explain it to someone, and even tried to draw it. They think I'm crazier now than they did before!! My calendar is a loop, too. It's almost like a half circle for me, January beginning at the top, February curves outward and when you get to May, it begins to flatten at the end, and June and July are flat, then August begins to curve again. December just stops the curve. Weeks are the same basic form, the weekends being the flat part. And, January to May goes in a North to South curve, June and July East to West, etc. I have to ask my Dad if he has any of this. Very cool!
I, too, hear textures and shapes in sounds. Certain voices can feel like velvet or broken glass. A few days ago I heard something break in a crowded room and somehow I "knew" it had to be a ceramic mug; I could imagine just how big it was and that it had a green and black glaze. I wish I sensed colors as much as some synesthetes, though. Some letters and numbers have colors (A is red for me, too!) and some smells have colors and flavors, and textures.
Sometimes I wonder how much the connections are truly synesthesic and how much they're based on associations I've made from memory and experiences. For example, I remember when I was in first grade and learning addition and subtraction I associated certain numbers with different situations (i.e., 9 and 7 were picking on 16). As an adult I don't really do that anymore, so was it synesthesia or just a mnemonic system I developed on my own?
Great article! I had no idea I had this until I was 41. My parents were taking a Life Long Learning course on the brain and called to tell me about this fascinating thing they'd learned. My reply was, "Tuesday isn't yellow to you, too?" I've always been this way, with the calendar loops, number roller coasters, colorful words, letters, etc.
So glad to know Eddie Van Halen is also a synesthete. Now there's yet another reason for this mom to have a VH bumper sticker on her van! I wonder if a study has been done on how often synesthetes choose artistic careers. When not taking care of my family, I work as an art therapist and love to paint and garden.
Looking back, the synesthesia helped me greatly academically, particularly with memorization--similar to how most of us file papers in folders with colorful tabs.
Mhunter-3057810 : I have the same experience with months as you do! From January to June, months are so short in their representation in my brain, but the others, especially summer months are ridiculously long! Also, week days and months have colors (I had a hard time with the sony PSP calendar when they put colors for each months! It was weird to me haha).
I guess we all have a sort of synesthesia.
I read a book The Man Who Tasted Shapes by Richard E. Cytowic that explains in layman's terms the fascinating phenomenon of synesthesia. Written by a neuroscientist, the book is an easy, amusing and educational read that I highly recommend.
What a wonderful beautiful way to go thru life. With all its beauty it is possible to see more. This man is so talented. His words flow like a stream. I think I am half way in love with him and his beautiful poetic nature.
I'm female, but thank you for the sentiments!
Teri-
The "intensity" of my synesthesia seems to vary from time to time. Does this happen to you?
Sunday is Yellow, Monday is Blue, Tuesday is Brown, Wednesday is Orange, Thursday is Purple,
Friday is Black, Saturday is White! :)
Terri-
Wow that is amazing. I can't think of a better "disorder" to have. As disorder when you can experience all your senses or multiple senses every time. Do you goto schools to educate little kids and give them an insight as to what their names would look like to you? Heck I am curious!
Haha cobigred! But you are right, Teri you are an extremely talented writer.
Well love knows no gender right?! LOL! And Teri- you're welcome! :-)
Oh, how interesting! I do the same thing, but never knew it had a name or anything. Mine's different though-- I do the same connection of names to colors ("Callum" was yellow to me too, even before I read that the author said it was yellow!) and I experience touch through colors. How cool!!
Thanks for the beautifully written article! :)
Teri - thanks for sharing your story. I have a very similar form of synesthesia, which I've experienced for as long as I can remember. Letters and numbers all have distinct colors, and of course people's names, as you described. I've even done paintings of peoples' names - not the letters, but the image, color, and texture I see/feel when I hear or read their name. Nicole, for example, is fiery streaks of red, orange, and yellow. The other part of my synesthesia has to do with touch - I have very visual reactions to touch, seeing colors and patterns that simply stream through my mind when I am touched. It happens all the time, so it's not a distraction - I'm just used to it. One thing I thought it was interesting about this piece was that the subtitle of this story referenced "synesthesia sufferer"...yet I can't imagine really suffering anything from it! It just seems natural to me...and in fact, I've read that most people have varying degrees of synesthesia, since it occurs across a wide range of magnitudes and types of signal crossings. Anyway, thanks for the story!
Marci- that is really cool. Can you tell me how you would paint my name....it is Seanne. I do not have the "disorder" but found the article very interesting and all the comments are making me wish I had it. What a special gift!
Beautiful! I think this sounds so fascinating and lovely. My first thoughts were not about psychedelic drugs, but of beauty. Almost magical! I wish my mind worked this way. I'm sure, as you mentioned, that there are down sides to it, but for the most part, you seem to have made the best of it, and can really appreciate and enjoy it for all it's worth.
I did the same things with marbles and color crayons growing up. I never realized it meant anything. I am a graphic artist and certain elements of my work flow from that sensory intuition. Interesting. It's just a feeling, but I work best if I pay attention to it.
I did the same thing with marbles and color crayons as a child. I never knew it meant anything. I am a graphic artist and use a sort of sensory intuition to do my work. Very interseting. Must have a lesser form of the same.
I taste some peoples' voices as caramel.
Some music I see as colored sparks.
This is outstanding. I love how you vividly describe the details of whats around you. If you wrote a book about this, I would go out a buy a copy. This is awesome...
Teri, you wrote so beautifully, and you were really able to express to us what you experience. Thanks for the fascinating insight! Best to you...
It is very interesting that this is an actual condition. People thought I was odd when I would tell them that certain things smelled blue (or purple, green, etc).
Thanks for this article.
In a very small way I can relate. I am a bit dyslexic and speak a few languages, and many times things, letters on the keyboard, sounds suddenly seem so out of place. My most typical thought being "oh, they are speaking English", so am I...
I recall the name of a song "Smell the color 9", that name, to me that made perfect sense, maybe the artist, Chris Rice, sees the world that way also.
Thanks again.
Ivonne
I taste in color. Hot and spicy foods seem to be orange with purple highlights, fresh vegetables are usually sky blue with sparkles, and chocolate is red. I can look at a spice rack and see a different color for every jar. I even think that way when I cook and get funny looks sometimes when I suggest a dish needs "more yellow" or "less blue." I'm a glass artist and I get a lot of inspiration from meals!
When I was a child, numbers had gender and personalities. In elementary school, if the teacher wrote a number combination on the blackboard that put opposing personalities next to each other, it would make me feel very uncomfortable. For example, number 4 was a female and her friend was a male number 5. In the last year or so, I have noticed that while watching TV, I frequently can smell what's on the screen.....a fire, or food etc.
I bet people with Synesthesia make great artists.
Sounds awesome to me. I'm sure it's considered a disorder and many people have it who don't like it, but I would love to experience the world in such a colorful way.
Thank you for this beautiful description. I first read about synesthesia in Discover Magazine, and find it fascinating. I wonder, for example, whether the physical color of numbers or letters alters the way you perceive them. If the letter "N" normally appears green to you when printed with black ink, how does it seem when yellow or red ink is used? If you see colors when driving and listening to the radio, is it that your whole field of vision is filled with those colors, and is it a distraction? (Though, as this is normal for you, maybe it would be hard for you to judge that). I think I would love to have some experience of synesthesia, but at the same time I'm afraid it would be overwhelming to my ordinary senses. Thanks, again, for sharing what you see!
Linda, hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and mushrooms can give a sort of hint of what this is apparently like, but based on my own (ahem!) experience, it's not quite the same as it is for people who have this for real.
Linda-3057578: I have often considered how I might describe that very thing to a non-synesthete. For me, at least, when I read, this page for example, I still see black and white. However, the color is part of the very nature of a letter or number. Just as you know a tree from a bush because of its trunk and longer branches, even though not every tree looks the same, so it is with the letters. I know 'k' is pink and 'n' is deep orange and so on. I am sensing color through another sense, or another part of my brain; not my eyes. For myself, there is emotion and memory and dreams connected to colors, and colors connected to words and letters and numbers. Everywhere I go I find myself particularly sensitive to what I read and see--the world is so evocative! As a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and so it is with the colors; in any other ink, the 'k' is just as pink.
Teri, I enjoyed this article, and the comments, because I've always wondered if all synesthetics see things in the same colors. Now I know it's different with each person. By the way, for me, Sunday is red, Monday orange, Tuesday a medium blue, Wednesday bright yellow, Thursday rich blue-violet, Friday brow, and Saturday is forest green. When I was a little kid trying to memorize the day and month names, thinking of the color helped me to remember. Do you find that your synesthesia can help you remember things? I wonder if anyone has tried to see if the colors someone sees correlate in any way with that person's general personality or intelligence type. For example, do engineer-type synesthetics see similar colors, but different from, say, a creative writer-type person.
I have synesthesia and participated in a study about 15 years ago on synesthesia after reading "The Man Who Tasted Shapes". I learned that we don't all associate the same colors & other values with numbers and letters, but your own associations do not change during your life. They may go away, but they don't change. Also, there are a few numbers and letters that have high consistency rates among synesthetes. I don't remember them exactly, but I recall that they included black, white, clear and maybe yellow. For me that's K & T (black, although K is a slightly purple-ish black), I (clear), 1 & 0 (white) and 3 & E (yellow). If I had a white letter or black number, I've lost it.
"The Man Who Tasted Shapes" is out of print now, but if you can find it, it's fascinating. It was written by a neurologist who first heard of it when his friend was cooking dinner and after taste-testing it said "too many points on the chicken." The book explains a lot about what causes it to be muted & heightened (mostly, mental relaxation as I recall, including drug & alcohol use). The author at the time speculated that we're all born with those associations working in our brain, but we un-learn them as our social environment fails to support them.
The human mind is an amazing and phenomenal thing. It senses, processes, integrates, and ascribes meaning to various elements of perception depending upon experience. Most of us have a fairly concrete perceptual/meaning system which keeps everything in nice neat categories, but obviously, as the article and the many personal experiences shared above indicate, it is not the same for everyone.
It is a good thing that our society a whole is recognizing these unique qualities and is able to embrace and celebrate them. Imagine how the medieval community would have interpreted such experiences. Witchcraft! Satanic posession! Luckily, we are getting beyond such naive spiritualistic explanations for the incredible variety of human experience and are beginning to explore and understand better the way that the brain actually works.
I wonder how the brains of synesthetic individuals would appear in fMRI scans and if perhaps their unique qualities could tell us anything about how the brain handles sensory information and how the special meanings get attached to certain things like numbers and colors, as these folks describe.
Anybody working on brain studies/perception/consciousness have any comments?
I am 72 years old and I have had this as far back as I can remember. When my husband and I are trying to remember a name, I can see the color and tell him what it starts with, and then he can remember the name. It works for us most of the time. My daughter sees letters, numbers and names in color, but most are not the same color as mine. I read about this back in the 1970s in Psychology Today. I was surprised that other people have it and that it has a name. I was pleased to read your article, Teri, you have more of it than I do.
I don't see colors around letters or words, but I can hear flashing lights. The tone depends upon the color and intensity of the light as well as the frequency of flashing. I can hear anything from little 'peeps', to mechanical 'clicks' and electric-sounding 'wooooomp'.
You should read A Mango-shaped Space by Wendy Mass. The protagonist has synethesia. Taking a foreign language in school is so confusing to her! A terrific book!!
It was great to see all the comments to this article. I have this "disorder" as well and have for as long as I can remember. For me, the biggest thing that sticks out for me is eating utensils: forks are male, spoons are female, knives are older guys BUT big spoons are grandmothers! I don't know why big spoons are more specific than the others. And large forks are like older men with white mustaches, very formal. I always think of them like this. Never thought it was strange...just the way it IS.
woodstock