on 10/10/02 8:27 pm the person going by the name Jason Stickel at
j_stickel_otfp@hotmail.com spake :
quoted 8 lines Anyway, this is somewhat related, but a bit off topic from the initial> Anyway, this is somewhat related, but a bit off topic from the initial
> post...BUT, I recently read an article pertaining to a small percentage of
> people who are able to describe tastes as geometric shapes. They
> interviewed this guy who was talking about how a certain taste, say, "sour",
> for example, tasted like triangles. Really strange, but I suppose it ties
> into that whole aesthetic of relating emotion to sound on some
> scatterbrained, mescaline trip type of level. Good stuff, this is what the
> list SHOULD be all about...my humble opinion of course...
Search for 'synaesthesia' [american spelling is 'synesthesia'] ... The
Oxfored English Dictionary describes this as 'the production of a sense
impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of
another sense or part of the body'.
I've met a few musicians who are affected by this psychological[1]
condition, most commonly the 'see sound'. Each one describes it differently,
some see tone and timbre as colour and shape, other's see melody as shape
and colour and form, some even have sound hint at smells. I've experience
music give me goose-bumps. One has to consider how the mind interprets
sound. Whilst we may be able to identify the individual components of a
piece of music to say 'Drums', 'Guitar', 'Voice' [ok not IDM] does the
synaesthesic affect happen at a higher or lower brain level [IE before we
understand the sound or after we understand the sound]. Similar crossing
happen with numbers and colours or shapes and colours. Some people smell
words. Some people have colours for the alphabet, and hues for words.
Many many people recount that music will help them remember things the other
way around, such as a song reminding you of a person, or a time or a place,
or even use it to trigger memories for revision of school subjects. Why
shouldn't these memories of shapes and colours be triggered by music? Like
hallucinogenic drugs will bring these shapes and colours into your mind by
power of association and letting you look at your mind to a deeper level.
Have you ever been reminded of your childhood by the smell of freshly cut
grass on a spring morning, or looked at something and had a memory brought
back that seems unrelated.
In many ways this all seems logical to me. We don't understand how the human
mind works, and how we remember things. We have a good idea that our
memories are vast, much vaster than what can be stored in a computer memory
of equivalent size. But how we store memories, in what form, and whether
they stay intact is another matter. Of course this also leads into the
philosophy of interpretation, in that as soon as we experience something we
memorise it, but that is a memory with our own subjective point of view,
however so is our memory, and the associations with that memory will always
be tainted by the subjectivity.
It's why music is not just something we hear, but something we feel, because
it is part of a whole experience that is there at the time of the event.
Close your eyes and you hear the music, and feel the music and the
temperature of the air, the slight glances of a draught round your neck and
your bodies wellbeing and the state of the chemical balance in your mind
[natural or unnatural] are all remembered in one way or another along with
the music.
My favourite quote on music is Leibniz : "Music is nothing but unconscious
arithmetic" ... I'd argue with this heavily, but I still like it :)
d.
[1] possibly neuroglogical : see 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat' by
Oliver Sacks
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