11# The Sensory Hierarchy

Sometimes, when I’m really tired I can’t tell the difference between hot and cold when I’m running a bath. I’ve burnt myself a few times because I thought the water was still cold. This is because the more extreme the temperature, the more white the colour of the sensation becomes on my hands, regardless of temperature. When I’m really exhausted or run down, even normal temperatures of hot and cold can confuse me.

Experiences like this have made me realise that I actually rely more on the synaesthetic colour/pattern information my brain receives, than on my other senses. I look for the colour/pattern first, and when that isn’t clear, I fall back on just using my ears, hands, eyes etc. But it’s hard to switch because sometimes I forget how that works.

The thought of waking up one day and finding that I no longer have synaesthesia scares me. I rely on it for so much in my daily life, it would so hard trying to adjust to life without it.

10# Sound Sharks

A sound (and image) surely capable of striking horror into the heart of any audio-visual synaesthete, is the sound of catering employees dragging chairs across bare floors. A truly gruesome sound regardless, it creates an image (for me) of a gaping, dark chasm with jagged edges reaching out to consume my face.

Just pick the chairs up people.

9# Sound Dodging.

Swerving to avoid an audio hallucination that no one else can see, in front of a (very long) queue at the library cafeteria. Scundered.

8# Neonsomnia

Yesterday morning I stupidly left a pack of bleach cleaning wipes open on my bedside table. I couldn’t sleep last night because the room smelled so strongly of neon colours.

7# Musical Fiction

Synaesthesia means I often get my senses confused. They are frequently interchangeable. The patterns evoked when I imagine fiction and when I hear music are similar. Looking forward to reading some fiction online, I plug headphones into my laptop thinking briefly that, reading the words will allow me to hear them also.

6# Am I Boring You?

It’s not just my emotions that are visible, I can see other people’s moods also. It’s not a psychic thing, it’s a vibe thing. Maybe it’s pheromones, who can say. It can make for stressful meetings and social situations. You think you’re doing a good job of explaining something in an engaging way, then you look over and realise that the other person has switched off, which is exactly what it looks like. When people are interested in what you have to say, they have what looks like a varying electric field about them, the minute you start to lose them, the field begins to fade or just switches off. I can see it happening in other people’s conversations too. It makes for fascinating visual eavesdropping.

5# Clouds and Linings

Emotions have colours. Unfortunately there’s a beautiful colour of purple (I love purple) which represents particularly sad emotions: grief, heartbreak, that sort of thing. Every strong emotion has a corresponding colour which hovers over me like a cloud. I guess if I have to experience sad emotions, they may as well look appealing.

Every cloud has a silver lining. Or in this case, purple.

4# The Wrong Type of Blue

When I was little, I loved a particular shade of electric blue which my mother hated. Years later I started wearing a perfume, which my mother (who is also a synaesthete) disliked (Chance by Chanel). We finally worked out that I loved it and she hated it because it smelled exactly like that particular shade of blue I had loved as a child.

3# Violent Sounds

In some respects, winter is a synaesthete’s nightmare. Sitting in a lecture hall surrounded by people coughing, sneezing, snuffling, blowing their noses. Whenever someone nearby coughs unexpectedly I get bombarded in the face by sharp, pointy exploding stars.

2# Loud Smells

Smelling something awful, then automatically turning up the volume on my ipod thinking I can drown out the pattern of the stench. Sometimes it works. But sometimes the patterns of the music clash horribly with the smell.

It’s a sensory roulette.