What is Synesthesia?

Synesthesia is a neurological condition that affects 2-4% of people in which the affected individual experiences 2 or more senses from a single stimulus simultaneously. The thing that makes it interesting is that one of those senses is usually a “wrong” one.

What, exactly, does that mean?

For me, it used to mean smelling colors: when I looked at most shades of red, for example, I would see the color and also smell red food coloring. When I looked at shades of blue (especially that very specific Monet blue) I would smell chocolate chip cookies. Green smelled like linseed oil, especially the shades of green Van Gogh used for grass. The medium in which the color was distributed didn’t (and still doesn’t) matter: plaint, printed, digital, etc, I could still smell the color. My mom once tested me at an art exhibit by having me turn around and letting my kids play with color filters on a screen; 9/10 times I told her which color filter they had turned up by smell.

As most of you probably know by now, COVID-19 is notorious for altering people’s sensory perception, especially taste and smell. After I had COVID for the first time, I lost my synesthesia completely (oddly, my cooking suffered more than anything else). One day, about a year later, I was trying to match a color for a painting and suddenly, my teeth felt like they were buzzing. Which is extra weird when you realized you teeth are fixed in your jaw. It happened a few more times and then, one day at my piano lesson, my teacher was having me parse a piece of music and asked me too explain how a specific passage made me feel; the only thing I could come up with was, “purple.” And that was when I realized that my synesthesia had come back but it had shifted.

Now, instead of smelling colors, I hear them and taste them. My brain also turns songs into images.

So I use my weird brain trick to make art, combining my love of color with my love of music to create sound paintings.