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What An Emotion Looks Like . . .

December 11, 2005 - View Single Entry







Synesthetic Dreaming

November 22, 2005 - View Single Entry

I had a wonderful dream in which I was playing a harpsichord  (in real life I have never done this). This particular harpsichord had a series of overlapping squares of color laid across the top. Their placement over the strings didn’t interfere with my playing in the least. To the contrary, I was able to play the colors so well that by the end I had discovered I could draw out an extended vibrato perfectly. It was quite a thrill. The only surprises upon awakening were the colors themselves. They were almost primary and dark in tone while in real life the sound produced by strings – at least of a harp – always make me see pastels. In the dream, the colors included red, burgundy, rusty brown, and navy blue. I do not know what this means but I am guessing that when the sound becomes baroque, the colors must deepen. Patricia Duffy includes this dream of mine in her wonderful book Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens.



A Dream: Playing by Ear

November 18, 2005 - View Single Entry

A DREAM


I am upstairs with my niece Jessica who is sitting nearby. I am playing the piano, only instead of reading regular sheet music, I am playing the seams of a gold dress flung on a chair I see in my peripheral vision on the left. When I mention this to Jessica, she is bewildered.

"What do you mean, Aunt Marcia, how can you play the seams of a dress?"

The answer was so obvious, there were no words to explain it. I decide she must  be joking. "Oh sure," I joke back, "like playing a dart or an in-seam would be hard."


This is what the music looked like:






Man on the Steps of Civilization

November 09, 2005 - View Single Entry



I see the scaffolding for civilization, I always have. It's similar to the scaffolding for the personal self except that the stairs are wider and its networking extends throughout the universe. This is a picture of man on the steps of Civilization.






Why Is Gospel Blue?

November 08, 2005 - View Single Entry



Why Is Gospel Blue?

I am
the singer in the robe,
second from the right, singing my heart out
while the blue sound
is
made possible by the red



 

Embracing the Universe

November 06, 2005 - View Single Entry





Picture from my childhood: I remember this feeling, when touching my feet to my head was a form of embracing the universe. I can't feel happier than this. My synesthetic signals send me to a place that feels like this. Taking pictures today feels the same way.

House Arrest

November 05, 2005 - View Single Entry





Self-Portrait

November 04, 2005 - View Single Entry





Language and the Memory of Color

November 03, 2005 - View Single Entry
                                           
   

When I look at this image, I hear a vibrato. How? From the shape of the bridge. The colors influence the sound I hear because they are responsible for the instruments that might produce the sound of the vibrato -- browns typically produce a lower register sound like cello -- but what would happen if I took away the colors? What would I hear then?

I would still recognize a vibrato because that shape can have no other meaning; but without the colors, the image would become a symbol that means vibrato but does not automatically sound like one. That is, I might not hear it, but I would still know it. Does that make sense?

In other words, I could put the image on sheet music and use it as a musical notation for vibrato, but would I still hear what I hear now? Or, since I saw the image originally with color, would I still hear it the same way, just from the memory of the color?

That's what happened when I experimented and made the image black-and-white. I saw the shape, knew it was vibrato, and then added the sound from memory of the color which was the extra step necessary to convert the symbol back into the original experience it represents.

Could this explain what happens to people who are deaf but were once able to hear? Is this how colors work for synesthetes who see letters with color, do they supply the colors from memory?

Whatever the answer is, it points to the importance of Memory in the Synesthetic experience, and it also underlines what I already figured out: that pictures travel faster than words.



Interrupted Thought

November 02, 2005 - View Single Entry





Juggling Time

October 31, 2005 - View Single Entry


This is how I see the months of the year . . .



After I made it, I noticed that if I rotate the page 90 degrees counterclockwise, my map of time turns into a man . . .  well, sort of a man: his right leg is November, his left leg is December, his right arm is September and it looks like he's juggling time.





Bureau of Consciousness

October 26, 2005 - View Single Entry





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