SYNESTHESIA: A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another. (Dictionary.com)

One of my writing partners suggested this word last week, and I have been researching it ever since. Synesthesia is a great word, describing the phenomenon which occurs when someone sees a particular color when they hear a particular sound. That’s not the only application of the word, but it is the one that catches my attention.

Someone once described this phenomenon to me without naming it. They were referring to persons who are blind from birth. A blind person can have interior visual stimulation when listening to music, sometimes in color. I think that’s incredible. It gives another whole meaning to the effect of music on people. If I were a serious musician, I would be over the rooftops over this idea, composing music with a blind associate who could describe the colors as various sounds are created. Imagine composing a whole piece of music, even a symphony, which has this goal in mind. In addition to a cacophony of sound, a cacophony of color is created.

We who dwell in the seeing world tend to see blindness as a handicap, describing it as a visual handicap. But to the person who is born without sight, there are other ways of envisioning, based upon touch, sound, taste and smell. Among them, it would appear, is synesthesia, the ability to attach a color to a sound. That may be a form of visual purity, which does not rely upon familiar ocular tags, but creates a vision which is unencumbered by that familiarity. I find myself closing my eyes tightly and listening to a piece of music, looking for the color attachment. It doesn’t work for me yet, and I remember my friend saying that synesthesia did not apply as readily to persons who were born with vision but lost it at some point. Their vision is polluted to some degree by the memory of colors and shapes.

However, a researcher, Colin Blackmore, disputes this statement, indicating just the opposite, that a person blind from birth does not show synesthesia. His research says that it can only occur in persons who have experienced ocular vision earlier in life. So much for the issue of certainty in science!

I hope to keep synesthesia in my lexicon, but I also hope to keep its concept in mind as a way of relating to music and art. If this is true with the transfer of sound to sight, it is also true of other sense transfers. The touch of a baby’s skin may be able to stimulate a sound or a scent. The taste of a fruit may stimulate a sound or a vision. The possibilities are limitless.