I envy you such a colorful world. Ever since I read about this in Speak, Memory I have been facinated by it, but only as an outsider.
My only quirks are a poor linkage between my visual and auditory centers (I don't hear words in my head when I read unless I try) and a network of shimmry dots that overlays things on my visual field and becomes more aggressive before a migrane. If I experance any synthesia it is more on the lines of taste/smell and weaker.
By taste/smell I mean I have sound only word associations with these, like words ending in ive tend to be astringent to me and lots of o's and b's make a word seem creamy or rich which explains why I like saying Obama
Ooh, that sounds delicious. What other taste sensations do you get with words? It would be awesome to compose for yourself a complete, multi-course meal.
I'm glad you mentioned Speak, Memory. I was so delighted when I found that book- not only does one of my favorite authors share the colored letters thing, but he also has the narrator-before-sleep thing! Do you ever get that? I was also very vindicated to hear him say he doesn't really "get" music, either. I've always fancied myself retarded in that regard, but hey, if it's good enough for Nabokov...
I don't have synaesthesia because I'm not cool like you. I have plenty of other weird mental quirks, but it's probably best that I don't start discussing my dissociative episodes or the really, really weird shit when I close my eyes to try to sleep. I have a hard enough time convincing people I'm sane as is.
In a public forum like this, it's perhaps best not to get into detail, but let's just say I that if you run down the DSM IV guildelines for a certain few personality disorders I don't quite qualify, but I trip a few more flags than average.
I assumed that the author had done her research, or is a synaesthete herself, but it's very cool to hear a real-life person describe this exactly the same way as the main character in A Mango-Shaped Space. I'm reminded of the way that character has trouble on tests, particularly math, because of the way her perceptions of the colors and personalities of the letters and numbers affects her (she also feels bad for numbers not getting their fair share of attention). And it makes me wonder, since the experience had such a profound experience on the character in the book, did you ever try acupuncture?
It intensified her perceptions of her colors in a downright euphoric experience, and also temporarily introduced new synaesthetic perceptions (for a little while afterwards, she saw moving, colored auras around people, which may have been stimulated by her body's unconscious perception of other people's pheromones).
The character found out that acupuncture had that effect on some synaesthetes from a website that I'm pretty sure is real (I was listening to the audiobook, but the physical book has a list of websites for readers to look up), so I imagine the author was describing something that's a real experience for some people. I'd say she might have been exaggerating/fictionalizing for dramatic effect, but how would I know? Plenty of people reading thought at first that the book is magical realism because it's hard for them to believe there really is such a thing as synaesthesia. Fascinating!
I wonder how common it is? I've known you since 2000 or thereabouts, and never knew 'til now that you were a synaesthete.
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My only quirks are a poor linkage between my visual and auditory centers (I don't hear words in my head when I read unless I try) and a network of shimmry dots that overlays things on my visual field and becomes more aggressive before a migrane. If I experance any synthesia it is more on the lines of taste/smell and weaker.
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that is very cool.
will now have to think on this.
>^..^<
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Just...eccentric.
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The character found out that acupuncture had that effect on some synaesthetes from a website that I'm pretty sure is real (I was listening to the audiobook, but the physical book has a list of websites for readers to look up), so I imagine the author was describing something that's a real experience for some people. I'd say she might have been exaggerating/fictionalizing for dramatic effect, but how would I know? Plenty of people reading thought at first that the book is magical realism because it's hard for them to believe there really is such a thing as synaesthesia. Fascinating!
I wonder how common it is? I've known you since 2000 or thereabouts, and never knew 'til now that you were a synaesthete.
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