Anberlin Drawing

Before I move on to another famous synesthete, I decided to post another drawing. This one is of what is probably my favorite song in the world. 'Paperthin Hymn' by Anberlin.

This song means so much to me lyric wise and the colors I see when I listen to it. I love the combination of the purple, blues and black and the design they make.

The heavy guitars make the solid lines and hard edges. Surprisingly there isn't any red in this song since that's usually what I see when I hear guitars. My theory is that I also hear colors based on the key the song is in and sometimes it overpowers the colors of the instruments. This would be why the guitars have more blue in them than red.

There are softer parts of the song, which is why there are some curves in the design.

The lead vocalist, Stephen Christian, has an amazing and rich purple voice. I could not do the color justice no matter how hard I tried. This guy's voice is one of my favorites to listen/see.

The black can be attributed to the percussion, most basic drums are black to me. They are are sometimes overpowered by the rest of the song, but that is not the case here.

Overall, I love this drawing and the song it comes from.

I'm Back

So after a very long hiatus, I have returned to my blog. I will be trying to post every week or every couple of weeks. The class this blog was started for has since ended but I'm still doing some research on synesthesia and am still wanting to share that research.

For this post I want to concentrate on Vladimir Nabokov who is most famously known for his novel 'Lolita'

Nabokov had what is know as grapheme-color synesthesia. This is where letters and numbers are perceived as have their own distinct color. Basically when Nabokov looked at words, he saw them in color. This type of synesthesia is one of the most common forms of synesthesia.

 He embraced his synesthesia, often giving his characters synesthestic characteristics. In his memoir 'Speak, Memory', Nabokov wrote about his synesthesia and how it affected him during his life.
         "The long ‘a’of the English alphabet . . . has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French a evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hard ‘g’ (vulcanized rubber) and ‘r’ (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal ‘n’, noodle-limp ‘l’, and the ivory-backed hand-mirror of ‘o’ take care of the white. . . . Passing on to the blue group, there is steely ‘x’, thundercloud ‘z’ and huckleberry ‘h’. Since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, I see ‘q’ as browner than ‘k’, while ‘s’ is not the light blue of ‘c’, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl." -Speak, Memory

Along with using his synesthesia in his work, Nabokov is also one of the best examples of the theory that synesthesia is genetic. Nabokov's mother not only had grapheme-color synesthesia, she also had colored hearing and Nabokov's son Dmitri also inherited synesthesia. Scientists have not been able to pinpoint which genes might be responsible for synesthesia.