Synesthesia
I am a synesthete. I see colors and movement to music – to all sounds, actually but music makes everything prettier. I also see words, I can feel them. My synesthetic experience has always been beautiful but I never paid extra attention to it. The colors, the movements and the feelings have always been there.
Recently, I have been expanding my musical experience, and I am enjoying it greatly. I am paying more attention to what I see, to what I feel.
It is hard to explain. I wish I could paint it, but I can’t. So I wrote a poem.
The format, the capitalization, the punctuation, are an attempt to be true to my experience.
I am writing about other songs, about different music styles. These were chosen first because they came to me as I began exploring my synesthesia. Each stanza references a different song.
Music: Hugh Dillon and Canadian band Headstones
Warning: brief use of the f-word
Music, Colors, Movement, Feelings
It starts here
Sorrytown in Durham County.
Evoking loneliness
The word feels like a gentle stroke
The melody sips in and through my body
Absorbed, it lulls me
It appeases my soul
A fading orange
The voice awakens me
Gentle, potent still
Circles – fire red
Slowly forming everywhere,
Eternity
A mighty ball of energy
Yellow, it spins
Blue
Drops
Orange
Drops
Radiating light
Van Gogh I am not
And this is my “Starry Night”
I hear circling and spinning – I see red
My stimming Autistic body squees.
The frozen motion before the bliss – Bright red
I silently scream
Fuck yeah!
Silence, no more.
It’s unspoken
Yet
Liberating
Words quickly form in the air like a prism the spectrum of colors
Slowly they vanish
One by one
New words emerge
Notes… and….tunes …. glide… on… a … rainbow
“Pinned down” to the polychromatic air
My body exhilarates
Surrounded by a cyclone of yellow and orange
I am the center
A towering cyclone of yellow and orange
Harmonious harmonica
Riveting
Ecstasy. I embrace it
I SEE a sound of sorrow
Gradually giving in to hope
I’m in a bubble
I feel empathy
In this midnight
I breathe yellow
THE LOUD NOTES come with
Previously unexpected blue
THE NOTES SOAR from behind
The cotton-like textured wall
They reveal themselves to me
Until they hide again
Allowing for words to form in the air
Music and colors and movement
In my nearly motionless body
I revel in them
I celebrate
I discover
Colors
Sounds
Feelings
Joy
Amy Sequenzia, 2015
BRILLIANT, Amy!
((Amy Sequenzia)) I love this!
An exhilarating ride through synesthetic experience. Love it ((Amy))!!
f-yea! amy, my i promote your perfect poem on twitter and maybe loud mute radio? impressed synesthete b
I’m also a synesthete, sound>shapes/movement.. do have any sounds you don’t like the colour or movement of?
for me I think my synesthesia makes autistic overload even worse- babies crying and violins are very pointy sounds for me, I hate pointy or spikey sounds..
of course I love some sounds and find them absolutely amazing.. each time i hear them i’m amazed at how beautiful sounds can be.