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I’ve always thought it’d be interesting to be a synesthete. Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sense, like hearing, automatically and spontaneously stimulates another one, like sight. The response is always the same for a specific stimulus. Like, you might experience that a certain tone looks green.

It can also get a bit more complicated. Words or feelings might have an aura of another sense around them. It’s all involuntary and I think the phenomenon is really interesting. I obviously am not a synesthete. But I find that sometimes I have some slight synesthesia tendencies. I’m pretty sure they’re all learned behaviors though.

For example, the word “prudish” always reminds me of the color purple. A very deep purple. Kind of like the color of prunes. Which I also associate with the word. Not that I think prunes are prudish, but that I always have vivid mental imagery of prunes when I see/hear the word “prudish.” Now, this is probably just word association. The words “prune” and “prudish” share the first three letters. And prunes are a dark purple. That’s probably how I ended up associating “prudish” with a dark purple. But still, I find it interesting and mildly entertaining.

The other example that I can think of right now is strawberry lemonade. It smells like the color. If you gave me something that looked the same color as strawberry lemonade, I would think that I would also smell it. If I were to smell the scent, I would automatically see the color. The smell and color just mesh so nicely together. Taste is a different matter though. I don’t automatically associate the color or smell to the taste. Which might be considered weird. But oh well.

So, synesthesia. Interesting stuff.


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