JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

My apologies to Amanda Witt: I hope this post doesn’t cause her or anyone else too much pain. Literally…

Monday morning I was listening to NPR when I heard a story on synesthesia that fascinated me. For Pianist, Music Unleashes Rainbows of Color:

When pianist Laura Rosser performs, she hears more than sounds. She hears colors — each note has its own associated hue. Rosser has a rare neurological condition called synesthesia. Stimulation of one sense produces the sensation of another.

Synesthesia is rare. Perhaps one person in several thousand has it. Most of these people don’t have the form that allows them to perceive sounds as colors.

I don’t have synesthesia, but my first reaction was to want it. How cool it would be to hear colors in music!

Then as synchronicity would have it, I read Amanda Witt’s post What color is Saturday? in which she described her own synesthesia.

Only some of the letters have colors for me; but color infiltrates elsewhere. One example: When I’m in severe pain, I see the color orange; so when I was in labor, instead of telling Jonathan, “It hurts so much,” I said, “There’s so much orange.” Conversely, the color orange strikes me like a physical pain, and if I am visually assaulted by it for very long, I’ll develop a bad headache.

I realized that if I had synesthesia I might not like orange (or other colors) as much as I do. Orange was associated with pain for Amanda Witt and discordant music for Laura Rosser. Recently though I can’t stop staring at my tulips.

That afternoon at Home Depot (a store that is rather orange in itself), I couldn’t resist taking a couple poppies home with me. On the phone earlier that day I had mentioned to someone who is mentoring me in one aspect of my life that I was sick and Ted was traveling. Do something for yourself she said, suggesting a babysitter. Instead of a sitter, I got myself fiery flowers.

With their crinkly colorful petals, the Icelandic poppies reminded me of crepe paper bouquets we kids would make at school for Mother’s Day. So captivated was I, I stopped the cart in the store a few times to try to take a picture and I even snuck one on the way home at a stop light…

I can’t imagine the color orange giving me pain. Or seeing orange when I am in pain. Since learning about synesthesia, I can’t think of colors the same. Periwinkle sonatas and vibrant alphabets sound enticing, glimpses of a world I wish I could enter, additional dimensions I’ll never know. But I’ll be content admiring my poppies.