I was driving one of the girls on my team to practice one day during the week where I had begun reading my 10 articles on synesthesia. She pulled out her ipod and plugged it into my music system, playing a new song she had just gotten the night before. The song was "Red" by Taylor Swift and I had never heard it before, so I paid special attention to the lyrics as I always do when I'm trying to figure out if I like a song or not. It was riddled with similie and metaphor (which confused me at first because Tswift songs usually just lay it all out for you so you don't even have to think), but then came the chorus: Losing him was blue like I’d never known
Missing him was dark grey all alone
Forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you've never met
But loving him was red. With my mind in synesthesia mode, I began to wonder if maybe the use of color to describe emotion was not a coincidence. What if Taylor Swift is a secret synesthete? Synesthesia is, after all, very common among artists, so it seemed more than plausible. Could this be a specific manifestation of synesthesia where the synesthete experiences color with emotion?
Upon further reflection, I came to realize that the answer was, probably not. People do experience synesthesia to different degrees but I don't belive she has it. Saying losing him was blue, could literally mean that she felt blue as in sad or melancholy. Describing missing him as being being dark grey, it could just relate to her being gloomy- maybe it's a refrence to how cloudy days (dark grey) make people feel more somber. Lastly mentioning to how loving him was red, could just be referring to the association of red being the color of love. These color-emotion relationships are mostly cultural refrences and are, therefore, most likely not a product of synesthesia. If the song had maybe been something like losing him was baby chick yellow, missing him was lime green and loving him was apricot orange, then we would have had more to talk about, but for now I'll say Tswift does not have synesthesia.
I think you're probably right about TS, but it might be interesting to try to discover artists who DO, actually, have synesthesia. Check out this crazy list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesia). I don't know how it was compiled, but it's kind of interesting to consider. I like the ideas you were mentioning in class about how the experience is created by crossed neurons in the brain. It might be pretty confusing when you first discover it, but also pretty great once you figure out what it is.
ReplyDeleteThis is a fun topic. You might expand your thinking to consider (for lack of a better term) abnormal brains. I bet there's some interesting stuff out there. Have you ever read Oliver Sack's book, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat? You'd enjoy it.
Assignment complete = 10/10