Mouseover Text: If you see two numbers but they’re both the same and you have to squint to read them, you have synesthesia, colorblindness, diplopia, and myopia.

XKCD comic for May 17, 2013

a-synesthetic-world:

The father of modern synesthesia research, Richard E Cytowic, author of The Man Who Tasted Shapes

Now all I can think of is this:

Alison would say WORD TO THIS. As I suspect the OP may know. :)

storyboard:

Strumming Along With Musician Andrew Bird 

Once upon a time (the mid 90s) in a gloriously music-laden land (Chicago), a lanky, sharp-witted, sharp-featured tenderfoot (Andrew Bird) graduated from Northwestern’s acclaimed music conservatory and dove into the sea of indie rock. Inhabited by hard-edged musicians who took pride in their lack of skill and almost-affected amateurishness, it was about passion — forget technique. Live shows were supposed to be truly live, and in-concert mistakes were nothing less than standard. “Experience the sound in its raw, unadulterated form,” they’d say. And Bird — despite his “super-trained” background — fit right in, rolling with the sonic tides to the eventual mid-ocean calm of celebrated musician status. 

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It’s a good interview and the things he says about creativity and performance are worth hearing: I think a lot of them apply to writing as well. But my favourite thing about this talk is that the first 30 seconds or so are peppered with synesthesia metaphors. I wonder if Bird is a synesthete — I almost think he has to be, after hearing him talk like this.

a-synesthetic-world:

I’m not sure if you’ve posted about this before, but the book The Phantom Tollbooth is a synesthesia goldmine. For example:

“‘Here, taste an A; they’re very good.’

Milo nibbled carefully at the letter and discovered that is was quite sweet and delicious — just the way you’d expect an A to taste.”

The author, Norton Juster, is pretty much a confirmed case. In The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth, it talks a bit about Norton Juster’s childhood:

“Home for this elusive child was a more frightening place than his parents could have imagined: a world, as he later described it, in which ‘there were no inanimate objects — shoes, chairs, silverware, vegetables, dishes, toothpaste tubes — everything had a life and a personality of its own and each ‘thing’ had to be dealt with in its own special way. Some were friendly and understanding like the dining room table, others quite stern or antagonistic like all the marbles that were blue. There were enemies and alliances, touching loyalties and base betrayals and, of course, a few ‘things’ who were simply not trustworthy and given the slightest opportunity would surely do harm.”

Also it talks about how Juster overcame his math difficulties:

“Juster — doubtless driven by sheer frustration — had discovered that it felt right to associate each of the numbers from zero to nine with a different color. By applying this private color-coding system as he wrote out math problems with colored pencils, he made addition and subtraction into manageable operations.”

So, I was wondering if any other synesthetes grew up enjoying The Phantom Tollbooth too? (Forgive me if you’ve already posted about this!)

I’ve actually never heard of these, so this is pretty awesome :)

YES! The Phantom Tollbooth has all kinds of synesthetic goodness. Like when Milo conducts the orchestra that plays the sunrise, or meets Dr. Dischord and the Awful Dynne. I’ve loved the book ever since I discovered it in my mid-teens, and still re-read it every few years.

I do not! Which is one of the reasons I find it so endlessly fascinating. But my 12 year old son has OLP (his numbers have gender and are either “fat” or “thin”). His numbers used to have colour as well, but that’s fading now.

a-synesthetic-world:

I find it difficult to assign single colors to numbers. Here’s why… - Imgur

WHOA. Can I have 12, 14 and 24 forever, please? Though 1 and 2 are gorgeous in their way as well.

And this is why I envy synesthetes, even with the danger of sensory overload.

a-synesthetic-world:

For all the non-synnies :)

Story of my life.

Mind you, if I’d had it, I would probably have not thought of it as anything particularly special, or at least I wouldn’t have known how to articulate it in a way that non-synesthetes could understand. And then I wouldn’t have written ULTRAVIOLET. So there’s that.