Hearing colors, tasting shapes

Everyone has secrets. Today one of mine is out of the bag–synesthesia. I started thinking about this the other day when a friend asked me where an author’s voice comes from. I was thinking of all the random bits that make up a person’s perception of the world, things that are unique to that indivdual.

When I was little I thought everyone thought of numbers , days of the week and letters as colors. For as long as I can remember, that’s how I’ve  experienced them. It was quite a shock when I discovered most people didn’t know what I was talking about. It wasn’t until I was in my early 20′s that I learned that this type of perception has a name, synesthesia. Wikipedia explains the condition this way: ” stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. “  I have grapheme–color synesthesia. I don’t see letters in color on a page of text, but they are always  the same color in my mind’s eye. I also have certain color-sensation crossovers as well, for example, orange is the color of a headache. It’s that McDonald’s/Home Depot bright orange and the headache is right in front over my eyes.

When my daughter was 12 she asked me if I saw days as colors. Synethesia does have a genetic component. We don’t see letters as the same colors though! My son is a very different type of synesthete–He’s a shape taster. This is a rarer form. Foods /flavors all have a specific shape associated with them and the shape is felt in the mouth. How weird is that?

My husband doesn’t have any form of synesthesia and sometimes feels left out:)

What does this have to do with writing? Maybe nothing, but I wonder if it doesn’t help with an early development of metaphor–making connections between two things that are not usually connected. It does seem that many synesthetes are in the arts.

Look for synesthetic traits in my characters; you’ll find them. To learn more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia