On Neurodivergence and Otherness
12. Synesthesia, Creativity, Artistry — Part II
In addition to seeing colors in response to orthographic symbols [letters, numbers, punctuation marks], there are a number of other “odd” spatial experiences linked to my form of synesthesia.
When people speak, I see words and sentences running through my mind like subtitles. Days of the week are organized in a specific way (from left to right), as are months of the year (from top to bottom). Research has shown that these kinds of spatial features seem to be a rather consistent experience among synesthetes.
Over the years, I’ve grown quite attached to my synesthesia. If I am extremely fatigued, ill, or waking up from surgery, I immediately “check” if my synesthesia is still instinctive and strong, for fear of losing it. I love this aspect of my brain and my sensory experience, despite some of the quirks associated with it. On the upside, I am quick at spotting typos or mistakes, as well as items on a list because my brain kind of sorts by color as my eyes flit over the writing. —Quote and photograph by synesthete artist Kristina Kasparian, Veni Etiam Photography blog
Profiles of artist/physicist synesthetes continue. Unless otherwise noted, the source for this post is: “Synesthesia (Language and Literature): Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms,” compiled by English/rhetoric professor Richard Nordquist, PhD, University of Georgia, Thought Co.
Visual Artists
Vincent Van Gogh
Post-impressionist Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the world’s most famous artists (unrecognized during his lifetime) and may have had bipolar disorder. According to art historians, he’s also thought to have experienced synesthesia, suggesting his use of bold expressive colors and swirling emotive brushstrokes was influenced by his synesthetic perceptions.
In a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh wrote:
“Some artists have a nervous hand at drawing, which gives their technique something of the sound peculiar to a violin.”
If not for his synesthesia, Van Gogh may’ve become a pianist. His piano teacher, upon realizing Van Gogh was associating notes with colors, took it as a sign of insanity and ended the lessons. [Arts Academy in the Woods]
Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1889, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Vasily Kandinsky
Russian Constructivist artist and art theorist Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944), the father of pure abstraction in modern art, wrote extensively about painting and invented the term Constructivism. He titled many of his paintings “Compositions,” and there’s a definite musicality to his use of bold form and color. Kandinsky wrote about his synesthesia and belief that colors and shapes had inherent emotional and spiritual qualities. He intended his abstractions to lead viewers to perceive the “sound” of color, creating the same emotions in art that music’s abstractions could convey.
After a 1913 performance of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, Kandinsky wrote:
The violins, the deep tones of the double basses, and especially the wind instruments then personified for me all the strength of the twilight hours. I saw all my colors in my mind, they were before my eyes. The wild lines, almost maddened. They were drawn in front of me. —Vasily Kandinsky, quoted in “Painting with Sounds, Composing with Colors: On Synesthesia,” The Flute View, by Elisabet Franch, flutist/flute professor, Centro Superior de Música de Galicia
Vasily Kandinsky, Composition 8, 1923, Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. Photo: Kristopher McKay
Novelists and Poets
Vladimir Nabokov
Russian-American novelist, poet, nonfiction writer, translator, chess master, and entomologist Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), author of Lolita and Speak, Memory, had chromesthesia — seeing a “colored alphabet”:
The color sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline. The long a of the English alphabet … has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French a evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hard g (vulcanized rubber) and r (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal n, noodle-limp l, and the ivory-backed hand mirror of an o, take care of the whites …. Passing on to the blue group there is steely x, thundercloud z, and huckleberry h. Since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, I see q as browner than k, while s is not the light blue of c, but a curious mixture of azure and mother pearl …. My wife has this gift of seeing letters in color, too, but her colors are completely different. —Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, 1966
Vladimir Nabokov. Photo: © PHILIP HALSMAN/Magnum Photos
Nabokov’s synesthesia has been further analyzed by Sylvia Karasu, psychiatrist/clinical professor of psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medicine. She writes, “The Alchemy of Synesthesia: A remarkable, luminous way of experiencing the world,” Psychology Today, “Nabokov first noticed his special sense when, at age 7, he told his mother that his alphabet blocks were all the wrong color. His mother agreed and admitted that she, too, saw colors not only in letters but also in music. His colored alphabet also appears in his 1963 novel The Gift. The writer protagonist describes how the letter a is a different color in each of the four languages he speaks — “from lacquered black to splintery gray.” Karasu quotes Nabokov on his “colored hearing”: “‘The confessions of a synesthete must sound tedious and pretentious to those who are protected from such leakings and drafts by more solid walls than mine are.’”
Arthur Rimbaud
“I invented the colors of the vowels!” Arthur Rimbaud. Image: Leemage/Getty
Nabokov’s synesthesia has been further analyzed by Sylvia Karasu, psychiatrist/clinical professor of psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medicine. She writes, “The Alchemy of Synesthesia: A remarkable, luminous way of experiencing the world,” Psychology Today, “Nabokov first noticed his special sense when, at age 7, he told his mother that his alphabet blocks were all the wrong color. His mother agreed and admitted that she, too, saw colors not only in letters but also in music. His colored alphabet also appears in his 1963 novel The Gift. The writer protagonist describes how the letter a is a different color in each of the four languages he speaks — “from lacquered black to splintery gray.” Karasu quotes Nabokov on his “colored hearing”: “‘The confessions of a synesthete must sound tedious and pretentious to those who are protected from such leakings and drafts by more solid walls than mine are.’”
According to Doctor Hugo Heyrman, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was the “anarchic visionary, precocious boy-poet of French symbolism.” Heyrman also quotes a contemporary of Rimbaud’s who called him the “mystic in the savage state,” who wrote of “colored vowels” in his 1871 poem Vowels. Today he would be identified as a grapheme-color synesthete — as made clear in the poem, which, Heyrman writes, helped popularize synesthesia, according to Arts Academy in the Woods:
Black A, white E, red I, green U, Blue O — vowels,
Some day I will open your silent pregnancies:
A, black belt, hairy with bursting flies,
Bumbling and buzzing over stinking cruelties.
Pits of night; E, candor of sand and pavilions, High
glacial spears, white kinds, trembling Queen-Anne’s lace.
—Arthur Rimbaud, Vowels, 1871
Charles Baudelaire
Rimbaud’s contemporary, French poet Charles Baudelaire (1828-1906), blended senses like scent and sound in his work. Baudelaire felt a spiritual sense of all aspects of existence being connected, as illustrated by this poem [source: Arts Academy in the Woods]:
Perfumes and sounds and colors correspond.
Some scents are cool as children’s flesh is cool,
Sweet as are oboes, green as meadowlands
—Charles Baudelaire, Correspondances, 1857
Étienne Carjat, Charles Baudelaire, photograph, 1865
The Actor
Marilyn Monroe
Legendary 20th-century actor Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) reportedly saw music as colors and tasted food in colors, starting in her traumatic childhood, notes Robin Wright in her article, “I Have Something in Common with Marilyn Monroe—and You Might, Too,” The New Yorker. Monroe’s first husband, Jim Dougherty, told Norman Mailer for his 1973 biography on Monroe about “evenings when all Norma Jean served were peas and carrots. She liked the colors. She has that displacement of the senses which others take drugs to find. So, she is like a lover of rock who sees vibrations when he hears sounds.”
Marilyn Monroe, photography by Alfred Eisenstaedt
The Physicists
Richard Feynman. Source: Nobel Prize
Richard Feynman
Nobel Prize-winning physicist and American author Richard Phillips Feynman (1918-1988) is known for his work in the “path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as his work in particle physics for which he proposed the Parton model” [Wikipedia].
Feynman spoke of seeing his equations’ variables flying around in various colors. “When I see equations, I see the letters in colors. I don’t know why. I see vague pictures of Bessel functions with light-tan j’s, slightly violet-bluish n’s, and dark brown x’s flying around.”
Feynman was describing his grapheme-color (GC) synesthesia — a condition of sensing colors associated with letters and numbers.
In the first of the next two quotes: Pharrell Williams could’ve been thinking of Feynman. In the second, Feynman regards his grapheme-color synesthesia:
Feynman diagram of simplest interaction between two electrons (e−): Two vertices (V1 and V2) represent emission and absorption of a photon (γ). © 2007 Encyclopedia Britannica.
But if you go up and you look, you’ll realize that most genius mathematicians, they’re synesthetes. If you ask them what their process is, especially people that can add or divide 10-digit numbers, it’s because they see those numbers in colors, or sometimes the sizes will vary. That’s called a grapheme synesthete. That’s one who sees things, sees numbers or characters in a different way. —Pharrell Williams, “Genius Mathematicians”
When I see equations, I see the letters in colors – I don’t know why. As I’m talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde’s book, with light-tan j’s, slightly violet-bluish n’s, and dark brown x’s flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students. —Richard Feynman, What Do You Care What Other People Think? 1988, W. W. Norton & Company, [1, 2, 3]
Serbian-American Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was not only a genius polymath, but also famous for his untreated obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Though I intend to focus on his synesthesia, I was so taken by the brilliance of this man — called by many “the man who invented the 20th century” — I plan to read his autobiography.
Tesla spoke eight languages (Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin), according to Futurism. “He had a photographic memory (memorizing entire books at a time). He could do advanced calculus and physics equations in his head (for this, he was accused of cheating as a young man by his teachers). He also had an incredible talent for visualization — the ability to see a solid object in great detail in his mind, as if it were real.” —“Nikola Tesla, A Trailblazer in Science,” Futurism.
Tesla was an inventor, electrical and mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist, best known for contributing to the design of modern alternating current (AC) electricity. He may have had a highly precise synesthesia of visualization.
Tesla received advanced degrees in engineering and physics in the 1870s. In the early 1880s he worked at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. He emigrated to the US in 1884 and became a citizen. His groundbreaking inventions earned more than 700 patents and advanced lasers, x-rays, wireless communications, radar, lighting, and robotics — some of which was classified by the US government after his death.
Tesla showed OCD symptoms around 1917, when he became obsessed with the number 3. At the public pool, he swam 33 laps every day but, if he lost count, he had to start over. He had to circle a city block 3 times before entering a building. When leaving, he could only turn right and walk once around the block before being “free” to leave. After dinner at 8:10 p.m. every night, he’d resume work until 3:00 a.m. For exercise, Tesla walked 13-16 km/day (8-10 miles) and curled his toes 100/each foot, saying it stimulated his brain cells. Tesla’s 369 theory linked the power of 3, 6 and 9. In studying circles (360 degrees is 3 + 6 = 9), he discovered any division of these numbers would always be 3, 6 or 9.
Photo: ullstein bild Dtl. Credit: ullstein bild via Getty Images
Tesla showed OCD symptoms around 1917, when he became obsessed with the number 3. At the public pool, he swam 33 laps every day but, if he lost count, he had to start over. He had to circle a city block 3 times before entering a building. When leaving, he could only turn right and walk once around the block before being “free” to leave. After dinner at 8:10 p.m. every night, he’d resume work until 3:00 a.m. For exercise, Tesla walked 13-16 km/day (8-10 miles) and curled his toes 100/each foot, saying it stimulated his brain cells. Tesla’s 369 theory linked the power of 3, 6 and 9. In studying circles (360 degrees is 3 + 6 = 9), he discovered any division of these numbers would always be 3, 6 or 9.
And the Unfamous
Etan swan
In telling Etan about synesthesia, which I thought as an artist he’d also find fascinating, he says, “Yeah, I have that.” It took me writing about synesthesia to discover my 33-year-old son is a synesthete! This is reflected in others’ writings — many people with synesthesia don’t remark on it because they don’t find it remarkable. It’s just what they experience. So, I’ll end this list with my American son, Etan Swan (b. 1991), an artist, animator, illustrator, designer with his version of synesthesia:
I didn’t know about it and didn’t identify it as synesthesia until a few years ago. It’s also so mild I didn’t think it was anything. But when I asked my friends, Does this happen for you?, they said no.
Here’s how I experience it. If I see a GIF or a repeating image, I’ll hear a song in my head — not actually hearing it, but it’s like my brain assigns a rhythm to what’s happening. I start to hear it in my head. It also happens in reverse. I’ll hear music and get visuals not related to the content of this song — just a feeling of a form or something repeating whenever I hear that particular song. I see colors at times when it’s not about making color. Though not a super strong palette, I get a feeling of color from a sound.
I’ve had strange things happen with the white noise machine I use. Even though it’s just static, I’m able to identify a pattern in the static — actually hearing the repetitiveness of the pattern bothered me, so I had to switch to a different setting. I was with K at the time and I asked her whether she heard the pattern. She said, What the heck are you talking about? —Etan Swan, in an interview with Jan Swan
I was watching an episode of Shetland — a BBC murder mystery set on the northernmost islands off the coast of Scotland — where the aurora borealis (northern lights) were playing out in the sky above a tense nighttime scene on the beach. These colorful bands of light common to anyone living close to the Arctic Circle were barely noticed, except by us, the audience. Synesthetic experiences are intriguing to those of us unable to conjure multiple and overlapping sensations for ourselves.
Coming Up Next
The artist and thinker profiles end my series-within-a-series on synesthesia. I took this detour because of my interest in the arts and creativity — and the points where artistic or innovative types live on the edge of normalcy and crazy. If you’ve ever experienced that fish-out-of-water feeling, you will relate. No matter how brilliant or talented, if you are different in how you are, perceive, think, behave, dress, express yourself, or love, you are at risk of being ostracized or even accosted by the people you encounter. The best revenge is fully believing in yourself and celebrating your difference.
Post 13: From “Mental Defectives” to Asperger Syndrome begins several posts devoted to autism, the autism origin story, its controversies, theories, and theory reversals, the terrible truth about Hans Asperger, the rise and fall of “refrigerator Moms,” and the modern recognition of autism as a spectrum disorder.
English 