Imagine, that for you, Tuesday always tastes salty and is white, or that the number eight is always sad. That’s a brief introduction to synaesthesia. The etymology of the word is Greek in origin meaning “perceiving together”. Senses blurring to give taste, colour or emotion to words.
Jazz musician Peter Cincotti wrote a song, “The Country Life”, and I can hear the presence of synaesthesia in the lyrics.
The Country Life, by Peter Cincotti
Time can fly, and days go by
It speeds, we can’t control
It’s been thirty years of city life
And now we’re growing old
There’s nothing more we needed for
And there’s nothing left to do
So let’s spend the autumn years ahead of us
Like the summers of our youth
I never knew how much we had back then
But it’s not too late to have it all again
I wanna wake up to the music
Of hummingbirds and harmony
I wanna feel the morning sunlight
Filling up the room
I wanna listen to the silence
That’s singing through the scenery
I wanna smell the roses of our love
The day they bloomed
Let’s go back and find
The simple world we knew
Cause I still wanna live again
The country life with you
Country life with you
Taxi cabs and traffic jams
Subways on the ground
Don’t you miss the days when all we hear
The nature’s quiet sounds
I’m tired of just remembering
When their memories left to make
Just you and me in a hundred miles
Of greenery and lake
Oh, take me to that peaceful place I miss
‘Cause I can’t spend another day like this
I wanna wake up to the music
Of hummingbirds and harmony
I wanna feel the morning sunlight
Filling up the room
I wanna listen to the silence
Singing through the scenery
I wanna smell the roses of our love
The day they bloomed
Let’s go back and find
The simple world we knew
‘Cause I still wanna live again
The country life with you
Don’t it let be another thing
You always meant to do
Just let me live again
The country life with you
Country life with you
When you read the lyrics, it reads normally, but when I hear the song, to me, the metaphors describe a synaesthetic experience. Maybe that’s because the only time my synaesthesia comes out is when I’m writing in a stream of consciousness, and my inner voice narrates it. I’ve written a passage about daffodils marching to a syncopated beat that is purple, from nodding flower heads in a breeze. Why is the beat purple? I don’t know; it just is. And some guitar riffs are red, some are black and some are blue. My synaesthesia seems to completely related to music. It’s just another aspect of my autism.
That’s in a positive sense. In a clinical sense, some clinicians would see that as a hallucination. But blending of the senses is just another sensory processing difference.
Synaesthesia is not exclusive to autism, but autistic people are more likely to experience synaesthesia.
When I asked ChatGPT about links between synaesthesia and autism, this is how it closed the five hundred words I requested. “… the realms of synaesthesia and autism offer a glimpse into the vast spectrum of human perception and cognition. Rather than viewing these differences as deficits, we should celebrate neurodiversity and embrace the unique ways in which individuals experience the world.
“By fostering understanding, conducting research, and tailoring interventions to individual strengths and preferences, we can create a more inclusive and enriching environment for everyone.”
And for someone else’s experience of synaesthesia, there’s this from the Canadian Western University’s “Thrive Online” blog – https://uwo.ca/se/thrive/blog/2021/the_interesting_connection_between_autism_and_synesthesia.html
So if we’re talking and it seems like my focus is suddenly elsewhere, ask me what song I’m hearing and what colour it is.
The Auld Skald's Fudgel 