I hear in colors. My earliest accounts of listening to music all involve some sort of palette. If your first reaction is, “Wow, that’s odd and probably would’ve been worth investigating”, then your instinct is right. But when you grow up hearing rainbows pour out of every guitar and speaker, you too might normalize the unusual. It wasn’t until after my 18th birthday that I first learned that audio stimuli didn’t create visual manifestations for everyone each time they turned pressed play on their iPods. I was scrolling through a popular Tumblr post when I noticed that people in the notes were amazed by this neurological phenomenon and it immediately gave me pause. (“Wait, ‘Amazing Grace’ isn’t cloud white and charcoal gray to you? Well what about ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)’? This has to be a joke . . .”) I quickly realized that this quirk of mine was much less common than I thought, and it had a name: synesthesia.
At their core, synesthetes are people whose senses are cross-wired, and a number of combinations exist within the mixing of the senses. The types of this neurological disorder include grapheme-color, in which letters and numbers come in different pigments, mirror-touch, where sensations on person A’s body are replicated on person B’s when viewed, and lexical-gustatory, that allows different flavors to be tasted upon hearing certain words, among many others. My particular form, known as chromesthesia, or sound-to-color synesthesia, produces optical responses whenever I listen to music. While some sight-based synesthetes are projectors who have their reactions embodied in the 3-D world, others, like myself, are associators whose linked reactions are set in their minds’ eye.
Once I became aware of my condition, I noticed a pattern in my music preferences. There are a number of reasons as to why someone might dislike a particular song. It could be the genre, timbre of the vocalist, bass levels, tempo, or a number of other details, whether larger or small, that might hit the listener’s ear wrong. While I cope with these same factors, I also deal with each song being uniquely painted. My taste is heavily influenced by my synesthesia, so I prefer songs and albums that are palatable not only for my ears, but for my eyes as well. “Lights” by Ellie Goulding is one of my favorite records, it’=s track list filled with nothing but shades of purples, greens, blues, and golds. The title track has a sapphire backdrop, with splatters of cobalt dashing throughout the choruses. “Under The Sheets” shimmers with flecks of soft gold over a rich plum base. “Salt Skin” is another favorite, with hues somewhere between forest/Kelly green that transition into canary yellow. As a whole, “Lights” is cohesive both sonically and visually and this has proven to be key when it comes to how and why I interpret music the way I do. Conversely, Feist’s “Pleasure” is way too disjointed to enjoy. Dyed in platinum, navy, cream, mauve, clay, and oxblood, the mixture of colors proves to be a ghastly assortment. My lack of appreciation from an audial perspective directly correlates with my distaste for its cacophony of pigments.
In general, I prefer going for a run to hot pink and neon green, lilac or silver as I’m driving, and playing muted jewel tones if I really need to concentrate. Any time there’s a new album I’ve been meaning to check out, I can tell if I’ve really listened to it by my impression of the colors afterwards. When I can’t recall a single specific hues after an hour, I know I was absent-minded in letting it just run in the background, and I need to hear the whole thing again.
Most people who learn about my abnormality are somewhere on the spectrum of shocked to intrigued. Nine times out of ten, they launch into a series of questions and ask me about the associations I have for whatever’s on the radio, how long I’ve been like this, and if it happens all the time. Because the syndrome is thought to be so rare, it’s unsurprising that I’m the first synesthete that many people encounter. Still, a large part of me isn’t captivated by this rare magic. I’m so used to the colors that, unless I choose to be a bit more cognizant, they’re really only there on a subconscious level. There are times where I’ll listen to a song on repeat, and the fourth instance stirs the musician in me to notice a noteworthy harmony or captivating section of an arrangement. Similarly, I can hear a piece of music several times before going, “Oh, I love the maroons and orange in here” or “I’ve been looking for a good red song!” But more often than not, the colors are an added dimension to my listening experience that’s unremarkable, because they’re always there.
I know that it may sound like I take this experience for granted, but that’s not always the case. I definitely have days when the one thing urging me to not give up on a workout is the tunnel of electric purples and sky blues. Sometimes the only way I can fall asleep is if I’m bathed in a song that’s as white as untouched snow. Synesthesia has been an enduring part of my life, regardless of how much mental space I choose to offer it, and I wouldn’t change that for the world. There’s nothing like getting in your car at 5 o’clock on a Friday and blaring the most piercing indigo song you can think of, or what color was on your heart the last time you fell in love, while Nat King Cole gently crooned in the background. The soundtrack of my life is saturated, and I’m so thankful for that. If this gift were gone tomorrow, I don’t know what I’d do. Although it may prove to be a distraction on occasion, I’m so happy that each song I hold finds a way to hold me too.