Synesthesia

Last Friday, I rose early. Finishing the packing job I had begun the night before, I waddled down the stairs with my items for the weekend away, drove to the nearby Starbucks for a good jolt, and pointed my little Taurus north on I-25. Instead of teaching that morning, I was escaping to a music symposium in Longmont, CO where other music teachers in the state would be gathering as well. Though such days can sometimes feel long, they are a welcome relief from the stress of teaching.

Those of us in attendance at the symposium sat under a music educator brought in from Virginia Beach. In an example lesson she demonstrated, I was introduced to the concept of synesthesia. Perhaps you have heard of it, but I had not. Synesthesia is a fascinating medical condition in which a person has overlapping senses. When a certain sense is triggered, a different sense becomes active as well.

A short documentary about a man in the UK who has this condition opened to us the world of someone without typical boundaries between senses. When this man eats, he sees a sheet of color before him. For example, when tasting chicken, a blue color fills his vision. Such palettes of color also appear when he hears music. The french horn, in his opinion, is a miserable instrument, not because of its sound per se, but because he sees a dreary gray color when he hears it and the color ruins his experience of any other instrument playing at the time.

Truthfully, I found this concept of synesthesia riveting. It is estimated that 1% of the population experiences synesthesia in some form. It makes me wonder: who do I know who has this? As our clinician suggested, perhaps geniuses like Beethoven had synesthesia. Is synesthasia to credit for unearthly beauty in the work of some artists? My mind salivated at the thought.

There are times when the world seems almost too marvelous, mysterious, multi-faceted, and mind-blowingly fascinating for me to know what to do with my eagerness to soak it in. I felt this way Friday, as I do now, in thinking on this concept of synesthesia. As always, it points me back to my marvelous Creator. The world is a feast for all senses and is filled with more food for the mind and soul than I can fully experience in my lifetime. I am in awe.