23# Twitchy People Sound Shapes.

Sometimes, especially when I’m tired, movements that I see translate to “sounds” inside my head. Yesterday evening I was on a bus heading into town to join friends for some drinks. (I don’t drink – my hallucinations are purely synaesthetic FYI) I was feeling tired and a little grouchy, and my synaesthetic responses were playing up so I was finding it hard to ignore them. A man in the seat in front of me was being especially distracting. He was stinking of booze (well, it was Saturday night so fair play to him) and kept making erratic movements with his hand. He would rub his ear repeatedly, sometimes leaving his fingers resting there for a moment, before sticking them into his mouth. I tried to ignore this by looking away, but I was still aware of the movement, and the dull circular sound-shapes which appeared in my mind’s eye every time his hand made contact with his body. It was the same with another man in the seat up ahead of him, who kept reaching up to grab the pole in front of him, then pulling his hand away to rub his bald head. All of these movements and impacts make sound-shapes which I see in my head and also feel on my tongue.

I know I’m describing this really badly, but it’s hard to know how to explain it. I suppose you could think about it like a signal going between different electrical devices, like from a wall socket to a speaker system and into a microphone. The input in this case is (almost silent) movement, which translates in my head to a sound, which I don’t hear, but which looks like the image of other sounds I’ve “seen” and which simultaneously produces a sensation on my tongue.

In the end I had to close my eyes and I tried to concentrate on the music I was listening to. Music is useful for drowning out sound-shapes from sounds I actually hear, but doesn’t successfully block out the ones I see from movements. As I’ve said, this is usually only a problem when I’m tired or sick, as at those times the movement sensitivity seems to be a lot more heightened and makes me anxious when going out in public.