02 September 2007

Synaesthesia


Most people think of the word grass as being green, or the word sea as being blue. But to me all letters, numbers, words, days of the week, months of the year and names have colours. To me the word grass is green with a hint of red, and the word sea is also green. This is called letter-colour synaesthesia. Synaesthesia (or synesthesia) is quite rare. Most synaesthetes are surprised to find out that not everyone sees the world the way they do. My synaesthesia makes my world very colourful, and helps me to remember things.

I hadn't met any other synaesthetes until a few weeks ago at the art college when, through a chance comment by a friend of mine, I met two!

12 comments:

sr. calavera said...

cute alphabet!!!! :D

AnI Testone said...

very nice work!

Kathleen Rietz said...

Interesting. I also have a friend like this! Very creative!

PS What color is my name?

kate

HOLLi CONGER said...

Very nice! I think it's my favorite IF piece this week!

Emma said...

Thanks for the comments, everyone! Most of the time a person's name is the same as the colour of the first letter, so yours is purple to me, Kathleen. Of course, each synaesthete sees different colours.

Laura said...

how interesting - very creative alphabet too, love it!

Fio said...

Hi :) I was surfing the net and I stumbled on your blog. I must say that I love all your drawings and artwork; you're a very creative person!! :D

princesstomato said...

I love the drawing of "your" alphabet. And I thorougly enjoyed reading about synaesthesia! I am tempted to go wake up my daughter right now to ask her some questions! I think she has this, too. Can't wait to explore and pay more attention when she says "mom, when i think of the word tuesday, i think of purple fields".... i just thought she was in love with words and full of imagination!
teri

andrea joseph's sketchblog said...

Oh this is dead interesting. i want to be one too! can i learn to be oneor does it come naturally? I see everything more like maps. things, letters, numbers have places as opposed to colour. don't know if that makes any sense? I know what i mean!

LOVE your alphabet. and a little bit jealous of it too!

Alison said...

You've done lots of lovely work since last I visited your blog. I love these letters

Emma said...

Andrea, it's something that comes naturally rather than being memorised. But it sounds like you have a sort of synaesthesia too - I do too in the way I visualise numbers and dates and so on.

Anonymous said...

For me, grass is blue, and sea yellow... actually, the most colourful letters are voyals !
That's why a very long word is often marroon for me : too many colours ;) !
I always thought that everybody felt the same : "seeing colours" with letters...
I also often associate firstnames with people : and once that's done, I can't get used to his/her real firstname... I wonder if it comes from synesthesia too !

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