Blogpost 5: Famous People with synesthesia

Synesthesia can be presented in so many ways. Each synesthete has their own perception of using synesthesia which lead some famous people to making inspirational music or songs. It is very obvious that most musicians from the past have great and wide imaginations to form different kinds of entertainment through singing, playing the guitar and bringing joy to the soul of every listener. 

As I was looking for different articles and blogs, I found a blog entitled "Incorrect Pleasures: Famous Synesthetes or possible synesthetes by Lili Marlene(not her real name). I find the blog very interesting because some of these famous people are celebrities, musicians and artists that I see on live show and hear their music on the radio.

I see guys like Jimmi Hendrix, a very influencial American rock legend, singer and songwriter. Hendrix claimed that he played colours rather than chords or notes. Hendrix had a reputation for taking LSD (known as the Street name "acid") and other mind-altering drugs, and LSD causes an artificial type of synaesthesia that I believe is consistent with Hendrix’s described experiences, but I also believe this description might not be inconsistent with naturally-occurring synaesthesia. Hendrix had an extraordinary musical memory and he could even learn a band’s entire repertoire in one sitting. Hendrix died from an overdose of sleeping pills. He had a sibling who was born blind and two other siblings born with other problems. One biographer claimed that Hendrix falsely claimed to be homosexual in order to be discharged from the army. Hendrix is reported to have been a left-hander and gifted with perfect pitch. 

Another famous person with synesthesia is Patrick Stump, an American singer-songwriter, record producer, music critic and a former member of the Fall out Boys band. He is grapheme to color synesthesia.

This a blog entry of Patrick Stump: "In the case of graphame to color synthetics it basically means that one interprets written information as 'Colored.' For instance the letter 'F' for me is green. When I see it written in black I obviously still notice that it is black but it 'Feels' green. Or 'S' is red. Most of the alphabet and numbers from 1-10 have some sort of associated color to me." 

Marilyn Monroe, Actress, singer and model (June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962).

She has that displacement of the senses which others take drugs to find. So she is like a lover of rock who sees vibrations when he hears sounds. — Norman Mailer Marilyn: A Biography

In the point of view of a synesthete, synesthesia is not a burden, and according to Thomas Pychon's statement, "The Situation must necessarily appear to a single observer much like a diagram in four dimensions to an eye conditioned to seeing the world in only three." 

This must be the reason why famous people with synesthesia tend to be creative in the lines of entertainment. In a way, they can get great ideas with it and put it into action. But most of this famous people did not have a pure synesthesia syndrome. 

They only acquired synesthesia is because of the use of illegal drugs. Famous people like Hendrix and Monroe are the ones who used drugs in order to acquire the talent of being a synesthete.

Blogpost 4: Different ways that synesthesia can occur.

Synesthesia can occur in many different ways, one of it is through the use of some illegal drugs like ecstasy, cocaine and etc. It can also cause brain damage that gives a person an hallucination or an instant synesthesia. In this image we can see a person in pain being observed by a pain synesthete, he's imagination begins to widen as he see's a particular subject to be conquered by his synethesia. 
As I was searching the internet for answers, finding out that synesthesia can also occur due to drug use. It can create different kinds of hallucinations, and that depends on the situation of the person or what is going on through his/her mind, at the moment before taking the drug. These types of synesthesia is referred to as "acquired synesthesia". 

According to the book of Critien Van Campen entitled "Hidden Sense", that the use of drugs is often associated with the consciousness-expanding experiences and heightened sensibility. As I read more, I saw a story that caught my attention. I saw that some great poets that was induced with drugs through thier work, giving them the power to imagine and the power to expand and create great poems by using drugs.

Here are some names and info of the poets:

  1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1722–1834), for one, proclaimed that his poem “KublaKhan” was composed in a flush of opium-induced inspiration; when he wokeup, all he had to do was write it down.

   2.  Francis Thompson (1859–1907)noted on one occasion that he saw the sun rise “with a clash of cymbals”; onanother occasion, he described how “tunes rose in twirls of gold” when “lightthrough the petals of a buttercup clanged like a beaten gong.” He also heard“the enameled tone of shallow flute, and the furry richness of clarinet.”

       3.     Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) distinguished himself by studyingthe effects of his opium intake, which he drank in the form of laudanum,a tincture of opium.

Opium 
- dried, condensed juice of a poppy, Papaver somniferum,  that has a narcotic, soporific, analgesic, and astringent effect and contains morphine, codeine, papaverine, and other alkaloids used in medicine in their isolated or derived forms: a narcotic substance, poisonous in large doses. It even causes dullness or inaction or that soothes the mind or emotions.
 
Through out all of this, it is amazing finding out that some great people did great things through the use of drugs. Using it into creative and artistic poems, and not for self desire or just for pleasure. But the bad part of it is, when it becomes to much of use and addiction, the worse may come. Because some of these poets does not only use drugs to acquired synesthesia, some of them drink alcoholic beverages.




I have an experience of observing people who use drugs, and it was a surprising experience. I was 4th year high school student when a friend of mine called me and told me that they we're looking for a drummer, and I accepted the invitation. The battle of the bands was one week away when they got me to join them, so we had a really short time to practice. 

To make the story short we got into the battle, we played our song, and what a strange thing caught my eye. The last band that was playing was on fire, not literary, but they we're super energized to play. So I began to asked my friends at the area, and knew that they we're on drugs. They took marijuana, a drug that could get you highly energized to do anything.

So in conclusion to this blog, many people specially teenagers like me use drugs to experience the good stuff that they think its good, while they are doing that they are experiencing an  acquired synesthesia which is common most artist in the U.S.

Blogpost3: Musically inclined

    

How does synesthesia help me with my musical abilities? This question came to my mind when I started to do research on this topic. I wanted to find out how and when does it occur while I was listening to a particular song, and while playing with my band. When I listen to songs, I always look at the instrumental first and then at the lyrics. Later that I realized, there are more interesting things written in the lyrics than looking at the instruments. I'm not that good in doing vocals, but I tend to look at the lyrics of a particular song that caught my ears to listening to it. 

Music is very broad, you will never get to do it without the feeling of the beat of your heart with. What I learned in being a drummer for almost six years is that, you'll never learn how to play the drumset unless you feel it with the beat of your heart. Synesthesia comes in when your alone playing the instrument, or while in a band gig.

The part of synesthesia in here however, gives a vision and creativeness for the whole band. Synesthesia helps everyone in the band, especially the vocalist, because he is the one who will sing the composed song, and most of it is his original.

According to the article written by Maria Popova, entitled "Synesthesia Spotlight: 3 Visualizations of Music", Synesthesia is a rare neurological condition that leads stimulation in one sensory pathway to trigger an experience in another. Basically, a short-circuiting in the brain that enables such strange phenomena like perceiving letters and numbers as inherently colored (color-graphemic synesthesia) or hearing sounds in response to visual motion. 
While reading this, I asked my mom, "How do we visualize this? Does it just come into our minds, or do we see it literally through our eyes?". She said, we can use both, in our minds, or through our eyes, its just the same.

A person with music synesthesia is technically a Sound-to-Color synesthesia. When sound triggers the visualization of colored, generic shapes, sound-to-color synesthesia is at play. For  certain people, the stimuli are limited, and only a few types of sounds will trigger a different kind of perception. However, there are cases wherein many different sounds trigger color visualizations. Usually, the perceived colors appear in generic shapes – squares, circles, images, or perhaps an imagination of a building.

“Architecture is crystallized music.” –Goethe

I agree with this statement, because in music there is passion, imagination and creativity for new and different things to come. According to Michal Levy, this is the picture that came to his mind while listening to jazz music. The picture being shown are colored bricks and lines constructing a colorful and beautiful building. The title of that is the "Giant Step", a video of it was played at the site of the article at brainpickings.org. 

To this blog, all I can say is that, to having a music synesthesia is a privilege for me, because I could use it to gain more imagination on composing songs and the creativity of expressing it to a lot of people. The music synesthesia is one of the positive outcome of being synesthetic, although there are negative sides of, its up to you to find your way of controlling it, and train in it. 

Disadvantages of Synesthesia

Disadvantages???

       In my own experience, I've encountered some moments that, when I here a particular song in my head, my hand and feet starts moving like I was literary playing drums. While doing that, a friend of mine reacted and asks me, "Ok ka lang ba James?" and I said "this is what happens when I here music in my head". In this case, I felt a little mock, but I knew she was just concerned that's why it was just ok. Synesthesia, it could not get any worse. According to the article 10 Disadvantages to Synesthesia written by Mr. Synesthi and Nic Swaner, Synesthesia is generally thought of as a perceptual condition that enhances the experiences of day to day life. For the most part this is true, and many, if not all synesthetes, wouldn’t part with their synthetic experiences to begin with. That does not mean that there aren’t downsides to the condition. 
 Synesthesia has its advantages, but here, I found some interesting disadvantages about what a synesthete person experiences. Here are the ten disadvantages in the article:

1. Support - lack of support from family and friends, and feeling alienated
2. Ridicule - experiencing mockery 
3. Stereotypes - perpetuated by the internet and media due to their synthetic gifts

    For me, being musician is a difficult thing, I experience a lot of sound-synesthesia, and because I don't have an mp3 player with me, I use my mind as a DJ set. When my mind is silent, a song always just pops up in my head, and then I start sing it, play it, remember it for almost two days. Seeing colors, pictures, hearing voices in your head are all symptoms of synesthesia. But the question for us now is, how do we control it? Being a drummer in a band has its benefits, because when you are a professional drummer hearing beats and copying it is easy, but how about if you try to imagine it, that is where synesthesia comes in, it gives you a great and infinite of imagining want you want to imagine. Synesthesia is not always negative, you can make it positive if you want to. It has disadvantages, but its up to you to find how to control your own synesthesia in yourself. According to the article, a lot of comments in there are positive, just like what Havengirl2001 said "I have synesthesia and its like a power. I love it. There are ups and downs but it is my friend and mine new friend!!!". See how positive this girl is, to her its a power, and that's a good thing, because when you embrace something positively, it becomes more easy to be with it. Think of it as a supernatural power, a good power, you can do anything with it, as long as you do good with it without hurting people.

     While reading the article, most of the things that came to my mind are the times I've experience synesthesia. I think my synesthesia only comes up in times that I play music, or think of it. There has been no negative effects of it, it just helps me imagine and think of positive things during spare time at school. According to the author Nic Swaner, he quoted, "Synesthesia is unusual in that it manifests the individual and will oftentimes show no effect on the outside world, unlike other psychological conditions where the effects are obvious to others around the individual". 

       Well to this, there is a downside to my synesthesia, sometimes I think too much and different thoughts and visions come up and ruin it. So to this I simply suggest that when you experience a negative synesthesia, be sure that you have your family around you or your friends among your side to comfort you. But at times when you're alone, be sure that you can control it, or find inner peace in yourself, meditate a while, relax and clear your mind, then focus on one thing only, to gain peace in your mind. You should never be alone, be with your love ones, your friends and most important be with the Almighty God, because through Him, you can find that everlasting peace.

Synesthesia

 

In my own experience, as a student with musical talents, I had a lot of encounters with being synthetic, I see different colors in different genres of music. For example: metal rock is black, RnB is blue. Observing my older brother Kevin, I find that at most times that he he listens to our dad's iPad about Ted talks, he gets a pen, a small piece of paper, writes down notes and draws what was being explain on the video. I didn't  knew why he does that a lot, until I saw this research topic.

According to the article Lekshmi Santhosh wrote, which entitled Hearing Colors and Tasting Shapes, "there are two types of synesthesia: acquired and idiopathic. Acquired synesthesia is usually associated with epilepsy, occurring in four percent of temporal lobe seizures. Idiopathic synesthesia is the rarer, more interesting form. Found in around one in every 25,000 individuals, it is highly variable because each synesthete has different fusions of the senses. In some cases, temporary synesthesia may also be induced by head trauma, hallucinogens, and lesions to the medial temporal lobe of the brain."

In this statement, I think both of these two types of synesthesia are negative effects, they both present dangerous symptoms that may occur while experiencing synesthesia. Here are some more explanation from the article:

 Although synesthetes’ experiences vary greatly, “there is a certain constellation of behaviors,” according to Lawrence Marks, Yale professor and director of the John B. Pierce Laboratory, an interdisciplinary research institute studying effects of the environment on health. He explained that synesthetes display similar behaviors both in their childhoods and their adulthoods. As children, many are “closet synesthetes” because of the looks of disbelief or even punishment they might have received for trying to explain their condition. However, as they grow into adulthood and discover that the disorder has a name, many cease to consider themselves abnormal.

All synesthetes report “generic” experiences: They do not taste cinnamon or see gorgeous, detailed scenery — they experience pleasant or bitter tastes, see colors and patterns, and feel rough or smooth surfaces. Also, synesthetes report consistency in their experiences; for example, the C note always means red.

Several factors are linked with synesthesia, even though there is no particular “type” of person who is predisposed to it. 

Females are much more likely than males to be afflicted, and non-right-handed people are more likely than right-handed. 

Synethetes seem to have superior memories and diminished mathematical and spatial abilities, indicating that synesthesia is predominantly a “left-brained” function. Furthermore, neuroimaging studies have shown that the limbic cortex and the hippocampus are often over-activated in synesthetes.

    Having synesthesia is not a burden, I prefer it to be a good thing, because it gives us creativity, imagination and infinity of the mind. There are times that you may encounter bad moods, stressful days or nights, and even remember bad memories, don't let it control you, find inner peace in yourself and look for a quiet place to bring it all out. Prevent yourself from getting moody or emotionally depressed, because when that happens, you are going to have a bad day.