an aura-reading synaesthete (part 2: music)

this weekend's mental adventures have made it plain that part 2 of this explanation needs to be written. although what i'd really like to write about is aura-reading and how it affects my
experience of other people, i feel that the music section needs to be written first. hopefully sequential sections will inform each other.

although words on a page evoke color, shape, and texture for me, those images are based mostly on the spoken sound of a word. i hear a narrator in my head when i read, as many people do, and its (her?) voice creates the auditory basis for my perception. so, my synesthesia is mostly sound-->color synesthesia, with associated grapheme-->color synesthesia (as per the omniscient wikipedia)....i think.

so: since sound causes colors, shapes, and textures to occur in my mind, music must be particularly ...there's an adjective here, but i can't quite get to it. intense? affective? picturesque? that'll do. when i listen to music, all the parts fit together to form a moving painting of sorts. i tend to think of something like the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor from the original Fantasia, especially the part from about 5:30 to 7:45 in this video:


i experience dynamic landscapes of music. if i sit directly in front of a set of speakers, i feel the shape of it rolling towards me like the red hills at 7:10. i love that feeling like i'm surrounded by the music--as long as the composer and the musicians did a good enough job putting the right colors together in the right way. just like writing, all the pieces have to fit right. if they don't, i am made extremely uncomfortable.

different kinds of music fit right into my ears at different times. there are some types of music that never do. i can't stand popular country (too bright), and most mainstream rap is just painful (too sharp). favorites, on the other hand, include Gustav Holst, certain types of jazz, DJ Tiesto (who i am convinced is god because only a divine entity could create works of such beauty), and almost anything by the Foo Fighters (who even have an album titled "The Colour and the Shape"). volume also affects the shape of music--much like when you look at the waveform on an oscilloscope, or the green-and-red equalizers on an old tape deck. the color and texture of a person's voice usually affect whether i get along with them, because if the sound doesn't fit right, i can't stand to hear them talk, and we obviously can't be friends.

*it seems important to note at some point in this sequence that my experience is enhanced by certain substances and dulled by others. alcohol definitely damps it.

i find it particularly interesting when a person and the music produced by his instrument are not the same color. but elaboration on that will have to wait for a future installment. =)