The Other Me

Welcome to the Cerebellum Theater

Where Admission Is A Dream

I have a question: could Synesthesia be a form of dreaming when awake? I think of synesthesia and dreaming as fraternal twins who swim in the same sea of memory. At the very least, they exchange fluids filled with imagery on a regular basis. I straddle states of consciousness, each foot on a different tectonic plate of being. And arms akimbo, I stay balanced, and learn best from a sidelong glance. I suspect it felt the same for earliest man.

For more versions of the Cerebellum Theatre, visit blog entries:

Mirrors and Molecules

Self-Portrait

Bureau of Consciousness

The Other Me

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Welcome to the Cerebellum Theater

Where Admission Is A Dream

For more versions of the Cerebellum Theatre, visit blog entries:

Mirrors and Molecules

Self-Portrait

Bureau of Consciousness

What Does Synesthesia Feel Like?

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If you look closely, do you notice anything unusual in this picture? Look up high, on the left, near the mast . . . yes, that’s a fish that was swimming so close to the surface of the water that it became a part of my picture which is why I named it Fish in the Sky. This image offers a good way to show you what synesthesia feels like because to appreciate both the reflection and the fish, your focus must be in two places at the same time which is not possible. Yet how can you say the reflection is any less real than the fish? That which is perceived in peripheral vision is no less real than that which is the focus of the eye. My synesthesia similarly operates in peripheral vision.

The Way I See Time

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"Weekends Are Taller than Weekdays" is the title of the image above and refers to the way I see time. I have always had distinct images in my mind for what units of time look like. For instance, the shape of a week is so paradigmatic that I can discern it underneath other forms which is how I recognized it in this cityscape. With two towering buildings on either side, the image replicates the shape of a week. The tall building on the left is Sunday, the tall building on the right is Saturday, while the squat white section in the middle is Monday through Friday (and happens to sound like organ music).

Days of the week are rectangular blocks like elongated squares on a sidewalk but thinner; they are upright in a row like dominoes angled about 25 degrees which is how I can see that they are in three dimensions. I see them to my right in peripheral inner vision.

A Decade is a three-dimensional rectangle in a bluish-gray color like the uniforms worn in the Civil War. It is shallow (like a gun box – don’t ask me why) suspended in space in front of me (inside my head) slightly to my left in a horizontal position. I can see it as I am writing this and notice now that it is situated right in front of Chicago. I know that sounds funny, but this is how it works. The spatial plane on which a decade is suspended is a transparent plane, which is why I am able to see geography behind it.

Perhaps this is a good place to mention that the reason synesthetic images are never intrusive or confusing is that each has its own naturally designated place in my universe and the universe is infinite, with a multiplicity of planes and so, no need for any synesthetic image or symbol to overlap or compete. I see everything I experience and there is room for everything I see.

In addition, they only appear when they are beckoned by whatever stimulus elicited their creation in the first place. When more than one is elicited, each has its specific place suspended in space. While other people fix their coordinates in space, mine are anchored in time, which is topographical and alive as opposed to geography, which is synchronic with no life in it at all. Geography, like any measurement of time, is just a symbol that is manmade, that has nothing to do with the experience of time.

Months of the year are in the shape of an oval though the months themselves do not move. Starting with January in the center, at the bottom, they are arranged in a counterclockwise direction so that February (light green) is to the immediate right of January (pinkish white) while December (royal blue) is on the left of January. At the top of the oval are August, July and June and so forth. Each month has a unique shape and size. (Click to see a drawing of months of the year).

Historical time is in the shape of a loaf of bread in my left peripheral vision; the plane on which it appears is much closer to me than the decade which is in front of me. Also, when I see it, I don't see anything else on another screen, behind or nearby (like Chicago which I see behind the decade though their relationship has no meaning I am aware of; their spatial proximity works the same as longitude to latitude).

Each century is a thick slab within the loaf. I can only see the face of the 19th century, which is brown but I "know" the others are there, arranged in descending chronological order reaching back beyond where I can see. After around the 14th century, they become so small they are hard to decipher and further back than that, they disappear from view, but I can always tell where I am in time by the lighting. When the shapes are too distant to make out, the lighting looks like it was produced by Caravaggio.

Present time I cannot see at all. What I see instead is this: that the past is in front of me, while the future is behind me, only that difference doesn’t have much meaning, since they don’t stay there, fixed; rather, they are both in constant motion and wash over me in opposite directions, meeting and mixing above me. I am bathed in their commingling. The past washes over me from front to back, the future washes over me from back to front, and somewhere above my head, the arcs of each intermingle (picture merging rivers).

The sensation of being bathed in their commingling is what present time feels like while inside of their commingling, each particle, each atom, each individually distinctive piece that says this is past or that is future, dissolves; all identifying features are lost and become indistinguishable from each other, losing their discrete boundaries. Within this experience, I have no self, I become what I am experiencing just as I become what I am looking at when I take my pictures.

I suspect there is a loss of self because a self, like a concept of time, is synchronic, flat and meaningless in time. Everything that is not the experience itself (as it is felt) is a mere mask or icon designed to represent that which is unamenable to explanation or mathematical translation. When those icons, masks or symbols are used well (by Dostoevsky, e.g. who thought about this too), at their best, they can evoke the experience for another person.

I'm reminded of parable called Zeno’s arrow in which the ancient philosopher asks his students this question: “When you shoot an arrow, you can measure the distance it travels, but how do you measure the quality of its flight?” Defining the quality of the flight is like defining synesthesia.

What Sound Looks Like

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The night I walked by the water and heard cello I had not intended to photograph a reflection but I couldn’t resist the sound so I gave in and aimed my camera at what had elicited it. As soon as I let go of my thoughts, the texture of the water washed over me in synch with the sound and turned to satin on my skin. When I felt myself climb into the shadows between the folds, I snapped the shutter. I hear cello every time I look at it today, though I discovered that if I turn it upside down, it becomes violin.

Sensory Substitution: Texture & Sound

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My initial synesthetic response to this image is one of texture, though I also hear the sound of chimes. It depends on where I focus my eyes. For example, if I focus my eyes on the filament-like edges of the shapes in the top row, I instantly feel texture against my skin. But if I shift my attention to their color and arrangement, texture disappears and sound surfaces, as if texture and sound have traded places in respective layers of consciousness.

The sound occurs in this order: first, I hear the fifth shape (yellow) in the top row. Next, I hear the yellow shape next to it, on its right (sixth in row), slightly diminished. Then, the sound begins to travel right to left, as the four white shapes -- along with the less defined ones in the rows below -- pick up and repeat the original yellow sound until the shapes, and so the sound, are gone. It is a sequence typical of what I hear when a rectangular metal chime is hit with a hammer.

Color of Music

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The first note I played on the piano was green. I never told anybody and also I never forgot it. I was twenty-five years old when I found out there was a name for that experience and also that everyone does not perceive as I do. I experience many forms of synesthesia one of which is sound to color. I get a visual picture for everything I hear which includes voices and appliances.

When I started looking at reflections on water, I noticed that the process happened in reverse: i.e. when I look at colors and patterns in certain light, I hear sound. I trusted that response as a reliable signal for when to take a photograph which is how I taught myself photography. For more examples of this form of synesthesia, please visit my Colors of Music Gallery.

Arches and Backbends

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My strongest synesthetic responses in Florence, Italy were to the shapes in the architecture. E.g., when I looked at the arches in this image, I felt I was doing a backbend. The arches also sang to me on a regular basis. I often thought I should have brought a tape recorder, not a camera, for it was the sounds of Italy, not the sights, that affected me most strongly. As a Synesthete, of course, my camera IS a kind of tape recorder. This is how I took this picture:

I had just crossed the Ponte Vecchio Bridge from the south side when I realized something had startled me on my right. It happened so fast that it took me a few seconds to realize it, and by then, I'd walked past the source of my distraction. I scanned the crowd to see who else had noticed; surely, something so unignorable to me must be noticed by other people, I thought, yet no one else appeared to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

I decided to retrace my steps. Looking straight ahead, I walked until it happened a second time. I noticed that if I stood slightly to the right or left, the feeling went away; also, if I came back at a different time of day, I didn't have the same reaction though the beauty of the symmetry remained. So what was it about this lighting, these shapes, this visage that elicited the startle effect in me? And what exactly did I feel?

I remember the sensation of selfless abandonment, a suspension in perfect balance outside the confines of time; the experience of ever-so-briefly being free of all notions of quantity or measurement; indeed of being beyond all notions of any kind. It is the feeling I strive for in my art though ironically I can only get there if I give up striving all together.

When I look at the image today, I want to run my finger through the arches as if it would fit, as though I could wear the the rings of the Uffizi as jewelry on my hand.

Shape of Sound

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I hear with my eyes. I always have. I receive a visual image for every sound I hear -- voices, ambient sound, appliances, music -- anything and everything I hear I also see in the form of imagery inside my mind. I find it difficult to talk about the color of sound without talking about the shape. The color and shape are extremely well-integrated but on occasion shape dominates as with this image.

In "Vibrato Bridge" above, it is the shape of the bridge that elicits the vibrato; indeed, the bridge IS a vibrato. The colors I hear with this image are not specific to a particular instrument but the sound is definitely in the lower range or register that is typical of brown. When I look at this image now I feel myself draped in light brown silk lingerie trimmed in black lace. For more on how I see this image, visit my Blog. For more images in the category of the shape of sound, browse the Color of Music Gallery.

Motion & Balance

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For more examples of motion-inspired images,
please visit my Motion & Emotion Gallery

Geometry & Consciousness

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I took this picture at a time of day when the tide was at exactly the right place to create this image: when the surface of the water reflected the underside of the bridge. Combined, they produced what I named "The Golden Rectangle" as a nod to Pythagoras (my hero). The sensation I experienced at the time (and when I look at it today) was one of balancing consciousness and feeilng.