45#Dream World

Sometimes my brain falls asleep while I’m still awake. I don’t know if my having synaesthesia affects this in any way, but it’s something that happens to me quite a bit when I’m tired, run down or stressed. It used to give me panic attacks, but now I’m used to it. It happened to me last night because I’d had too much valerian tea. Valerian is a herbal sedative, I tend to drink a lot of it because I find it calms me down a lot. Last night, I stayed up late and was watching TV and doing some sewing and I noticed that I was starting to hallucinate. I hallucinate all the time because of the synaesthesia, but it’s a different kind of hallucination. Synaesthetic hallucinations don’t feel like hallucinations. They just feel like another sense. Like hearing a noise is normal to most people. Seeing a noise is normal to me. I know when I’m probably hallucinating because the images start to take on a story, and I start to observe them.

Last night I noticed that I was starting to see a little boy and girl crawling into a purple box. They were taking out toys and appeared to be floating in a black night sky. I felt like I was standing over them watching what they were doing. That’s when I realised that I was starting to drift off, even though my eyes were open and I was engaged in my sewing. When you start seeing imaginary children and purple boxes you know it’s time to go to bed. I didn’t see these things as if they were actually in my room, it was as if they were in my mind’s eye. They weren’t here, I was there, if you know what I mean.

The only time I confuse these images with reality is when I wake up mid-dream. I hate when that happens. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and my brain will still think that the dream reality is real and will keep showing the movie, so to speak. So I’ll have two realities superimposed on each other. For a few seconds I’ll not know I’m awake, then I’ll realise, and feel trapped because I know I am dreaming but I can’t escape from the dream. When that happens I have to get up, or start to read. Now I keep graphic novels by my bed, so that when I have those weird moments I can immediately start reading, which stops me having panic attacks.  It’s a way of telling my brain to wake up I suppose.

It’s one of the reasons I don’t drive. Even though I like to think that I have a very good grasp of what is tangible, and what is not, in my life, still I sometimes react to things that happen in the imaginary world, as if they were real. I’ll see a yellow triangle come flying towards me and I’ll put my hands up instinctively, not immediately realising that the yellow triangle is actually the sound of a car horn.

41# Songs to See Stars To

I was recording songs for my new EP ‘Fear No Faeries Voices’ last week. Recording is such an interesting experience for me as a synaesthete. It’s a time when I pay special attention to how I feel, and particularly, how I visualise the music, not just listen to it. Having the condition can be so useful in the studio, because it enables me to spot little blips and discrepancies fairly easily, because they register as oddly coloured objects, breaks in patterns, or glaring smudges.

Sometimes it can be distracting though. When I’ve got headphones on and am listening to loud playbacks, it can feel as if I am completely encapsulated in the music as it swirls all over me. The louder the music, and the more vibrant the hallucinations (whether manifested as colour, pattern, texture, smell or taste).

It can also be lovely, though. All of the songs on this EP were inspired by folklore; some from classical mythology, others from snippets of tales I’ve discovered in my research as a postgraduate historian. As I listened back to one of the songs, I saw the music like a dark blanket of space, sort of black-purple. The notes of the guitar, made bright and extended by reverb, created star-like patterns all around, so I felt as if I was actually floating in the night sky. I know that must sound a bit soppy, but that’s just how it was. I had no control over it, but it was beautiful.

Synaesthesia can make things difficult for my sound engineers. I have a tendency to talk about the music the way I see it, and forget that other people don’t experience it that way. I have to stop myself from saying “aah that bit feels too blunt, I don’t like the texture of the backing vocal…” or whatever. Though luckily, most musicians, even if they aren’t synaesthetes still seem to have a good understanding of music as something more than just notes. Which is useful, because it usually takes me a while to work out how to ask for what I want in a mix in more technical terms! Like I said, I try not to be too confusing with my descriptions or requests though sometimes I’ll get confused.

One prime example occurred last week when I was asked “What do you think?” by my (extremely patient and very awesome) sound engineer after listening back to a take.

“It looks great!” I said…

Fear No Faerie Voices was recorded by Dean Stevens at BearCat Studios, Belfast, and will be available soon! Teaser album artwork by Kris Telford at Silent Canvas Media.

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39#Taste the Rainbow

The other day I saw a spectacular sunset. It made me feel a bit teary actually. I was fine until the gorgeous reds, pinks and oranges of the sky suddenly came into contact with the audio visual hallucination I was having whilst listening to a piece of music through my headphones. The song must have changed, and the new tune had these wonderful peacock colours – aquamarines, sapphires, emeralds, grape purple. As I looked at the sky both the colour schemes merged to become this dripping rainbow all around me.I could taste it in my mouth. Do you remember the ad campaign for Skittles sweets which said/says Taste the Rainbow? Well I can. And rainbow colours do taste sweet, and juicy.

(Real rainbows actually taste very different. They are a bit gritty, and can be quite flowery.)

As I was walking along, listening to the music and watching it meet the sunset in a big multicoloured wash, I felt a lump in my throat because it was one of the most beautiful hallucinations I have ever had. One of those ones which makes me think “isn’t nature perfect” and “how lucky I am to have this magnificently screwed up brain that creates these moments which only I can experience.”

I was trying to remember what song it was but I can’t seem to think of it. I’ve been going through my phone music list looking for “blue/green” songs, but can’t find it. That’s another handy thing about having synaesthesia, everything gets tagged and categorised according to colour, which makes things easier to remember.

Usually…

36# Sweet Words

I’ve just been reading a book chapter for a seminar I have tonight. I came across the word ‘éclat’ in a sentence. Now I can’t concentrate because all I can taste in my mouth is an odd combination of chocolate eclairs and the colour purple. (This particular purple tastes like grapes and artificial lavender).

29# The Colour of Darkness

I love the dark. My ideal conditions for sleep are womb-like, or perhaps even more sensory deprived than that, as I prefer silence and pitch blackness. I think this has a lot to do with the visual hallucinations I experience when I hear sounds. Even the soothing low hum of my fridge can keep me awake because it creates an undulating landscape of grey, brown, and white wavy lines in my mind’s eye that is as persistent and impossible to ignore as when you get an ‘ear worm.’ (a pop. culture term for getting an song stuck in your head).

I’ll be jolted awake in the middle of the night with an image of a sound in my head, but have no idea if the sound happened, or if I just imagined the pattern. So I might think in my half-awake daze “was that glass breaking real, or is this yellow spikey speech bubble which has left its imprint on my mind, just part of a dream?”

Smells can keep me awake too, for the same reasons, but if they are soothing smells which look pretty, then they can calm me and surround me in lovely, coloured mists. Lavender, depending on whether it is real (green tinted) or synthetic (lilac or blue tinted), can produce a very pleasing cloud which envelops me in colour and helps me sleep.

Otherwise I prefer good old fashioned darkness. I love the weight that darkness has, that lovely, rich, velvety brown, russet, blue, black, purple fabric which presses down on me as I settle to sleep. Decent, near total darkness has a way of enveloping you completely and sinking into all the crevices. I find its weight very reassuring, though I know a lot of people find it claustrophobic. Of course, it’s impossible to get a totally sound proof environment to sleep in, so ‘silence’ always contains a background static. Visually, it reminds me of the map of the Cosmic Microwave Background, only in monotone colours.

17# Magicians are Purple.

I love rainbow notebooks. The ones with the multicolour pages. They’re perfect for me as a synaesthete because I colour code ideas in my head.

I used this tactic when I was writing my undergrad dissertation. I had a big note block filled with lovely coloured pages. I made a note, and months later I was able to find it in amongst all the masses of other scribbles, purely because I knew that it was about magicians, and since it was about magicians it had to be purple.

I bought a new notepad for my Masters research today. Looking at all the empty rainbow pages makes my mouth water with the tastes of all the colours mixing together in a juicy mess.

12# The Tasty Artwork Of Rory Nellis.

Disclaimer: I have no intention of using this site to just plug my friends’ artistic talents, but I will if they have synaesthetic relevance. I’m proud to have so many creatively inspiring friends.

The other day as I was scrolling like a zombie through my Facebook feed (as one does in this day and age) I spotted the artwork for Rory Nellis’s new album. I instantly loved it, not just because it’s a fantastic image, but also because it tasted fantastic.

The combination of colours and patterns on the cover gave me an instant taste in my mouth of sweets/candy; a sort of syrupy taste like golden syrup mixed with a flowery flavour like Parma Violets (if you’ve ever eaten those). It also made me smell flowers, and I got a whiff of woodsmoke, which I think was a result of the ember-like glow of the warmer, reddish colours in the image.

It’s very rare that I get image-to-taste&smell synaesthetic responses like that, so it surprised me. In a very pleasant way of course.

Photo by Colm Laverty, design by Loki Creative.

Check out Rory’s music and new album Ready For You Now, here:

http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/readyforyounow

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.