May 21, 2008

Synesthesia . . I has it. Any like experienced Monkeys?
posted by rotate180nth 16 years ago
  • Yep. Numbers, letters, days of the week, smells, pitches on the scale - they've all got colors. I was a high school senior studying Rimbaud before I ever knew there was a word for it, and that it wasn't universal.
  • Awwwww man.... that sounds so cool....
  • I think maybe they have
  • Yep, pretty much exactly what TUM said. People have colours too.
  • For a time (during a very stressful season, perhaps that's related?) I obsessed over the taste of things. I would be out in the street, at work, on a car, and could imagine, basically experience the taste of everything around/passing by. The texture, too. Very weird. That faded soon, but sometimes it's there again.
  • I associate a colour with each day of the week, and month of the year. I even see them laid out in a circular pattern. I have since I was a kid. I don't think that's the same as synesthesia, though.
  • I can taste Kit's farts as well as smell them, but I don't think that's the same thing, either.
  • I taste some words and sounds. For example, "Kansas" tastes like tomato sauce. Not ketchup, not spaghetti sauce, the unseasoned pureed tomato stuff that you use as a base for other sauces. The effect happens whether I say the word or just think it.
  • Monkeyfilter: tastes like tomato sauce
  • I, too, have always been envious. Although, a friend of mine that has it says that not always is it a pleasant thing to have. He has certain sounds that translate as smells. While most are floral, some are industrial, and some are... Kit-ish.
  • Actually, "Monkeyfilter" tastes like the wooden stick from a fudgecicle dipped in grape Kool-Aid. But that's not a strong taste association like "Kansas". It's mostly from the "nk" sound. :-)
  • Yes. Everything has a taste, smell, pattern, shape, texture, and color. For a long time I, too, thought everyone had it. It's bothersome sometimes, but sometimes cool.
  • BTW, Monkeyfilter is totally chocolate, thick and drippy, and sort of terrycloth-like.
  • Time is a shape/location, for me, always smooth and round in some way... the months especially are either close to me or waaaay over there, on the far side of the year (points into the shadows). Don't think that's synaesthesia though, I always thought it was more to do with being an Imager. BTW, I am immensely pleased that Monkeyfilter has a flavor.
  • In college my roommate was one of those remarkable guitarists. He could hear something once and play it back. Not just melody and a chord or two, but he could get intricate harmonies, odd changes, and the whole structure in one listen. We'd talk about it sometimes (I was pretty jealous) and he explained that it dated back to infancy when he had a toy xylophone with different colored bars for each note. Since then, C was red, C# orange, etc., and when he heard a song it painted a very clear picture which he simply replayed later. I later painted an octave on my piano in a rainbow of colors and practiced hearing/looking. I didn't get very far but I now have a moderate association between orange and F#; I can pick F# out almost all the time and it hits something inside in the same way orange does. But there's not much useful to do with that skill.