The Colors, Duke! THE COLORS!

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Particularly Preposterous Packaging Day
Professional Speakers Day
National Day (Cote D'Ivoire)

 

A quote from near the end of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Blue Mars that rather puzzled me, as they talk about people with eidetic memory:

 

“Yes,” Ursula said. “He was less of a freak than some of the others.  The so-called calendar calculators, or the ones who can recall visual images presented to them in great detail—they’re often impaired in other parts of their lives.”

 

Marina nodded. “Like the Latvians Shereskevskii and the man known as V.P., who remembered truly huge quantities of random fact, in tests and in general.  But both of them experience synesthesia.”

 

Huh. That’s all the characters say on that subject; they don’t even indulge in a line of exposition to tell each other what synesthesia is.* But they clearly imply that it somehow gets in the way of normal functioning.

 

Which is odd. I can’t remember a time that synesthesia has actually impaired my functioning—the worst I get is when I’m irritated that letters on signs or bulletin boards are the wrong color. Other than that, it’s either completely neutral to my life—just something I do automatically—or it makes it more interesting. It’s even a handy mnemonic device—I can remember things by their color, or personality, or where they are in the Synesthesia Dimension, and I think it’s one of the reasons I spent so many years as the Human VCR. I’ve heard that some people actually see the things outside of their minds, but really for me it’s not even a nuisance.**

 

Of course, this is from someone who had the following conversation earlier this evening:

妹: I’m having a bit of trouble remembering things today.

DAD: (cheerful) Are you suffering dementia?  What month is it?

妹: (playful) Purple!

AMELIA: No way! Purple was last month! (points) It’s right over there!

妹: …

DAD: …

妹: You really mean it, don’t you?

AMELIA: Yup. We’re in the middle of scarlet-orange-and-greenish now.

 

So what do I know?  Maybe I get lost because I can’t find my way between the grocery store and Thursday.  But it never seemed like you’d describe it as an impairment.

 

It just goes to show—pathology isn’t always an easy thing to classify.

 

 

*Given Robinson’s enthusiasm for describing SCIENCE! in mind-boggling detail, I can only assume this is the work of a desperate editor screaming “For god’s sake, Kim, you’ve got eight pages devoted to the quantum possibilities of consciousness—cut something out!”

 

**It’s other people with their failure to grasp that the letter o is clearly red who are the nuisance.

Comments

[end-in-myself.livejournal.com]

We should start some sort of synesthesia anti-defamation organization. I can imagine the rallies:

"WHAT DO WE WANT?!"
"A PROPERLY INFORMED PUBLIC!!"
"WHEN DO WE WANT IT?!"
*crowd dissolves into argument over what color "now" is*

All we need now is clever name.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Ironically, all the lettering in our banners and graphics will be in black and white if we want to get anything done.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

And we can't have any battle songs either because they'll produce the wrong images :< or feel wrong. Or taste wrong. Or something.

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

I remember reading those books. I'm so glad I friended your journal!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

More reading buddies! I could always use that.

It was pretty good, but slow going. I talked a little about it here.

[shadowofdoubt.livejournal.com]

I would have thought the letter o would be yellow.

(No, I do not know why. XD)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

DAMN YOU.

Interestingly, most synesthetes do see it as white or yellow, or a light color. My bright red is, as far as these things go, in the minority. Apparently some trends do exist, though they're pretty general.

The funniest thing is how very vehement synesthetes are with each other about these arguments--it surprised the lead researcher on it once. But then he realized ... it's because the color is such an intrinsic part of a letter that saying it's another color is like saying o isn't round, because OF COURSE IT IS.

[shadowofdoubt.livejournal.com]

*hides!*

Is it like that with all letters, that you see them differently, or only o?

As somebody below said, I have a strange longing to try hallucinogens (or as my brother says, hallacollusions O_o), just for things like tasting the color blue. XD I think it would be good for my poetic leanings.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, very few synesthetes see the exact same color for a given letter. And since it also gives letters texture, lighting, and maybe even gender and personality, it's almost impossible to find two people with the same image of a letter--and they will be DAMN SPECIFIC about finding the EXACT SHADE OF GREEN, too.

BUT--certain letters do seem to evoke general trends. I remember the o one because it was so different from mine, but I don't remember any of the others. I do remember comparing my alphabet to a few other people's samples and finding that we were all way off from each other.

They say that everyone has a little bit of it, as reflected by terms like "loud colors" or the bouba-kiki effect. So you may have some already!

[shadowofdoubt.livejournal.com]

For some strange reason, I find the idea of letters having lighting as stranger than them having gender and personality, LMAO. Like, I can comprehend the letter u as being female and kind of shy. But the idea of it being backlit is just weird. XD

[luinmir.livejournal.com]

My friend amantedistelle recently wrote a short story about a boy with synesthesia who used the colors of pitches to become a piano prodigy.

Also, interesting bit of history, I decided to stalk you on LJ after reading a comment on one of ursulav's posts in which you mentioned your synesthesia. I had just been reading excerpts from Luria's The Mind of a Mnemonist and was fascinated by the subject at the time. And then I found out you were the same age as me, raised in Utah without Mormonism, were a linguistics-type person, (I was contemplating a linguistics minor at the time,) had two siblings the same ages and sexes as mine, and were taking the same antidepressants I was taking at the time.

And I just kept reading. :)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall your telling me this. We are relevant to each other's interests!

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

*is deeply envious*

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I wish my letters had colors! It sounds so fascinating.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I've been starting to dig into my own brand of oddness (Shadow Syndrome, the lowest level on the Autism spectrum), and there have been a lot of those little moments of "wait, you mean most people don't do that?"

I like being different.

[shadesofmauve]

I like those "Wait, other people don't do that?" moments that apply to everyday life, as well. We all tend to unconciously view our own experience as the normative baseline, and there's an interesting feeling when you realize how truly unique your experience is.

For example, remember a conversation you and I had - "You mean most people's families DON'T have half again as many conversations concurrently as there are people in the room?"

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Another huge one is the gap between people who grew up in families with or without a history of alcoholism. There's a whole range of weird codependent stuff that is pretty much exclusive to alcoholic families.

Reading Al-Anon stuff is actually one of the easiest ways to start getting a feel for what it's like to live in a world with completely different base assumptions, since so much of that is just different ways of explaining that "No, that's not normal."

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

That was my reaction the first time I saw an article on synesthesia. "If you see letters and sounds in color," it said, "you're not crazy, just wired differently!" and I thought, Wait--that's NOT normal?

Of course, certain things fell into place at that point ...

[shadesofmauve]

What a bizarre thing to say... I've always been fascinated by synesthesia, as someone who doesn't have it, partly because it's one of the...hmm, not disorders, but abnormal mental wirings...that doesn't seem to have a downside! People with it don't want to be 'cured', except for occasionally being surprised that not everyone sees like they do there's no different functioning. I suppose I kind of thought that was common knowledge.

If I ever take mind altering drugs (beyond alcohol and caffeine), it would be hallucinogens to try to replicate synesthesia. Unlikely, but it's the only thing about the whole gamut of 'recreational' chemicals that's even vaguely tempting.

Also, you could write an amazingly Through the Looking Glass type story if you wrote it like that "Purple was last month, it's right over THERE" line WITHOUT explaining about the synesthesia first. :)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I've explained it to people as "I'm on a permanent LSD trip!" before.

I think The Phantom Tollbooth had some stealth synesthesia in it when a guy was selling letters and talking about how they taste. I'll have to dig that book up.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there was something like that. That was a really cool book; it's been way too long since I've read it. I think there's still a copy around here somewhere, I'll have to take a look.

[10cents.livejournal.com]

I'm curious: when you make up your own alphabet for your languages, do the letters/etc in them have colors as well (and if so, does the color affect your decision any)?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Not usually--they may reflect something else that "looks like" the sound, but often the colors show up later, and it's anybody's guess as to whether they'll match their Roman equivalent.

I do use the synesthesia heavily in another way, though--languages themselves have color schemes based on the sounds, the syntax, the way it looks when you write it in Roman, and a lot of different factors I couldn't even fully name. Often working out the phonology creates a color scheme for the language, which also influences wheter I'll represent a sound with a diacritic (like á) or a diphthong (like aa) or something. Individual words get the same treatment, too--and a lot of words you wouldn't expect to be onomatopoeic are in my head.* It's not like other people will know that Luamavan is a rainbow language, or that :rimulet is much more subtle and elegant, or that Rredrra has a predatory edge to it, but I do.


*True of a few English words, too--for me, "bottle," "swelter," and "garnet" are all onomatopoeias.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

Synaesthesia is something I always like hearing about, because it's one of the "conditions", by being harmless on its own, that the main factor that makes other conditions harmful is often the context that's being put around them. The context being put around synaesthesia is relatively harmless, that is, our society doesn't judge, condone or condemn people based on whether they know that o is red or not (even though it obviously is). The less importance is put on someone's perception of something being the same as what it's assumed to be, the less that difference in perception matters. I hope that humankind can eventually extend that logic to other conditions as well.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

The interesting thing is you do sometimes encounter vaguely hostile reactions to synesthesia--a few people seem offended by the idea that I colorize things. But usually it's more a "That's weird, you're weird" passing thing--this quote was the first time I'd ever seen someone describe it even obliquely as some sort of "impairment." And even the first reaction is very rare--normally the people I talk to are fascinated, curious, even jealous.

It is enough to make you wonder about the things we classify as "conditions." Even the word "condition" has a connotation that something is wrong--just to say "it's a condition" makes it sound that way, even though it should be a neutral word. We don't even HAVE a neutral word for My Brain Is Wired Slightly Differently From Yours. A gross oversight of language, that.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Quirk, perhaps?

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Odd indeed-- I don't consider it a pathology either, although I know some people with synaesthesia experience minor difficulties with basic math (numbers adding up to the wrong colors, for example, as in the excellent novel "A Mango Shaped Space") and some sensory overload problems (commander_d, for example, has tastes associated with colors, which can make art appreciation a bit hazardous).

It is true that many people with exceptional memory, including Luria's mneumonist, are synaesthetic. I believe the ability to associate things so heavily is a boon to memory rather than a detriment. Either that, or the neural differences that cause synaesthesia are in some way linked/related to those that increase memory.

Have you read "Born on a Blue Day"?