BLJuly2021ToWeb

The Column
By Chuck Van Riper
Synesthesia
G
rowing up, my brother and I would very rarely argue.
Being identical twins, we thought very much
alike about many things. We had the same dreams, finished
each other’s sentences, and had many of the other characteristics
associated with twindom. I don’t expect anyone
to fully understand these things unless you are a twin. One
thing we did disagree with from an early age, is that Tuesday
is blue. Billy thought it was yellow. “How ridiculous,”
I thought, it is very clearly light blue. Similarly, it was clear
to me that the number 4 is red. Billy thought it was brown.
Ok, pretty close. To me, the note “G” on the second line of
the staff is dark blue. Billy thought it was orange. Orange!
What kind of demented brain thinks G is orange!? One
thing we agreed on: the month of April is red!
We’ve always associated all these things with colors.
We associated words, notes, days, numbers, months,
names and many other things, with colors. Didn’t everybody?
Apparently not. Synesthesia is a condition where a
sensory stimulus presented to one modality elicits concurrent
sensations in additional modalities. In other words,
synesthesia a neurological condition in which information
meant to stimulate one of your senses stimulates several
of your senses. Color sequence synesthesia (CSS) is a
neurological condition in which sequential stimuli such
as letters, numbers, or days of the week trigger simultaneous,
involuntary color perception. Synesthesia comes
from the Greek “synth” meaning together, and “ethesia”,
meaning perception. People who have this condition are
called synesthetes. Approximately 2-4 percent of people
are synesthetes. Interestingly, amongst identical twins, approximately
73.9 percent have CSS. Explaining it this way
makes it seem like an affliction or something negative. I
assure you it is not.
In high school, I once did a project where I assigned
each of the 12 notes in the chromatic scale with each of the
12 colors on the color wheel. Studying music and art for
most of my schooling, it seemed like a natural connection.
As you may know, in color theory, white is the absence
of all color and black is the presence of all color. In light,
however it is just the opposite. Black is the absence of all
color and white is the presence of all color. So what would
happen if you assigned each note to a color in the color
wheel and each note would change its color value (closer
to white) by the velocity (or loudness or softness) of the
18 - Brevard Live July 2021