I feel like I have very little to say today. I got a lot of the basics out yesterday, but I know I have more to say! I guess I can talk about how I did my sophomore English project on synesthesia. One of the things I enjoyed most about that project was getting to find other teenage synesthetes. There were a few things that I wanted to know from other people, and so I started with the one synesthete that I personally know, who is a year ahead of me. After asking him a few questions, I realized that there was a group of questions that I wanted answered by every synesthete that I could find, and so I drew up a survey. Wanting to hear from more people, I joined a synesthesia group on Facebook and called for any teenage synesthetes to email me if they wanted to take part. Many people responded and I got some wonderful responses. I asked people when they realized they had synesthesia, if they found it useful in any way, where their syn "is" (I'll come back to that), and what types of syn they have.
Synesthesia is fascinating in that the language that people use when they describe their synesthetic experiences is vague to the general populace but when expressed to another synesthete makes so much sense and echoes their experience as well. For example, most synesthetes that experience colors in some form or fashion will tell you very specifically what color they see when they hear a note, see a letter, etc. But they'll often have trouble specifying exactly what the color is--the shade of the color feels almost other-worldly because the shade simply cannot be expressed. This is how I feel about the note F, by the way--it's a strange overlapping of green and blue and black all at once but isn't a mixture of those and isn't a single one of those. A fellow synesthete would know exactly what I mean. Hearing so many descriptions of these vague colors led syn researches to deem these "Martian colors" because they don't believe that those colors exist on Earth. Sounds a bit kooky, but when I researched this I found it really quite enlightening. Syn researchers proved that their are colors that we (the human mind) can see that don't exist on this Earth. That's incredible to me; for years people have said that every color that can exist has been made and is in the light spectrum, and syn has proved this wrong! Amazing. Anyway, when someone asks me what color F is, I have a lot of trouble explaining, and they often probe me, saying that "it must be a color" and not understanding why I can't describe it. But other synesthetes would understand. They also use the word "feels" a lot which most people can't get their arms around but synesthetes comprehend so beautifully. For example, the day Monday is hot pink to me, and the entire day just feels hot pink. Most people will say in response to that, "what do you mean it feels hot pink?" But synesthetes will know that the day is simply drenched in another layer of being that is pink. It's too hard to explain, unfortunately. But as I read what other synesthetes had to say about their experiences, I felt like part of a club. These people practically spoke in code--I code that I happen to understand--but it made so much sense to me and resonated what I had felt my entire life.
I said that I'd come back to the question of where syn "is." People describe their synesthesia differently, but a few categories have come up as to where the synesthetic experiences actually appear. When I read, for example, each letter on the page literally appears to be in color. Yes, I know that the actual text is black; I can see that, my eyes see that, but my mind projects colors on top almost in another layer. Researchers have appropriately deemed this "projector" syn. Other types of syn create feelings, like I mentioned earlier, or create images in the mind's eye. When I'm listening to music, I kind of feel the colors that I'm hearing; I see them in my mind's eye. They aren't projected in front of me like a fireworks show, but I can still see them in the back of my mind without having to make an effort. When people ask me what I mean, I usually tell them that I see these colors in the same place where you see a memory that you imagine. It's not right in front of your face but you still have a little movie screen back there that lets you see what you're imagining. The only difference here is that I don't have to conjure the colors like I would a memory; they are simply a side effect of hearing music.
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