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I'm sure there are times when this is awful/inconvenient, but as someone who does not have synesthesia, it really sounds fun.

I learned about this in high school-- a kid in my class turned to me very quietly and said, "All my letters are colored. I thought everybody's were." Turned out he had synesthesia! All of his E's were yellow and his calendars were striped vertically (every day of the week was a different color).

This also happens from overuse of Acid/LSD....a friend of mine has had it for 10 years and will have it for the rest of his life.


My house on the other hand would probably sound like Portishead and Miley Cyrus simultaneously....Another reason why I desperately need to redecorate ! ! !

ACK. The colors for the months are ALL WRONG.

I'm mildly synesthetic -- it was stronger when I was younger, and now really only manifests itself when something is really... wrong... with the pairing. When I was little, I used to get angry at "Fantasia" because the colors didn't match the notes. Mine is visual (usually color) something else -- Months have colors (more specifically, color ranges), words can have color, and colors have feelings. (I hate my current living room b/c the former tenant painted it this depressed maroon/red color. It feels oppressively sad. And my current roommate is 'sensitive to paint fumes' so I'm stuck with it for now.)

This is one of the reasons I like Kandinsky's art -- his paintings are musical.

My little sister is synesthetic -- she associates sounds with colors, and has ever since she was a baby. She started learning piano at three or four by sitting in on my lessons and she learned by scribbling down the colors of a piece so she could "read notes" before actually knowing how to read sheet music. Now she is a pianist! I can only imagine that music is extra-beautiful to her.

I am anothe mild synesthetic. I really find it funny when my friends constantly ask me questions like by the way, what color is this word an stuff. For me the color wheel above is all wrong!!!

Jan-red/orange
Feb-green
March-white
April-dark forest green
May-light almost white pink
June-light orange
July-bright orange
Aug-dark green but more bluer than April
Sept-Dark burgundy red
Oct-White/orange
Nov-dark green but again a different shade to April/Aug
Dec-black

I use to enjoy listening to music as a child an watching the colors. I also used to think it was normal and everyone 'thought' like me. It was only when I tried to find out if my friends 'used' the exact same colors as I did for different words or sounds.. and they looked at me like I was mental. =)

Nowadays my house is colorful but it does not bother me, I like color and although for me it is mild version, I do simply enjoy synesthesia. I am drawn to overcolor though.. a bit like these..http://cheripann.com/

My great Aunt, a concert pianist, heard in colour.

@apf, Amanda: "Kandinsky's art -- his paintings are musical" Your personal stories are fascinating. Thank you for sharing. I wonder if there are any synesthetic artists, that "paint sounds" or "paint smells". I'm going to go see what the ol' Google says. I'd like to see what a person hears or tastes...

Google gave me this:

http://www.tblayden.com/Default.aspx?tabid=132

Cool, eh?

To the synesthestes above, though the colors look wrong to you . . . there is no actual WRONG color joining.

Music is often heard by color (notes and chords will have specific colors . . there's even a musical term "tone color", to describe the tone of an instrument), and I've often done exercises with my students - I'll play an excerpt from a specific instrument and ask them to hold up colored pieces of paper to match the sound. It's amazing, eye opening and just fantastic to see these kids pick colors to match not only the instruments, but also the notes that are being played. There's a general trend to it, but no one child is ever exactly the same. Music is an amazing thing!

I've also run into a synestheste who was rather unusual. She was a high school english teacher of mine, and she explained that she got HORRIBLE grades in school, because she saw math as color combinations. Numbers were color, and she wouldn't do the math problems with step by step work the way it was asked . . . she would mix the colors in her mind to come up with the answer. Her teacher would take points off because she didn't show her work.

The mind is an AMAZING thing!!

apf and mjr, many classical composers experience(d) the same as your sister/aunt. Bizet for instance thought that G major sounded like yellow. It must be great to have such sensitive ears.

Did a recent episode of Heroes bring this up? Because a new character has this "power," but she can manipulate it to be quite destructive.

Also, my boyfriend is a recording artist, and as a side project he wants to put out an EP for each color of the rainbow. He wants the music to evoke the feelings the colors represent. I don't think he has synesthesia though, he would tell me that.

I may be a mild synesthetic, I don't mix senses, but rather associate genders and personalities to letters, numbers, and colors. When my dad found out, about 5 years ago, he wrote down all their respective genders on a piece of paper and put it in his wallet. He quizzes me on it every now and then.

My coworker, however, has a strong spacial synesthesia. Days of the week and months orbit in space for her. I'm sure she associates color to them as well.

We're both designers, by the way.

Pretty sure Kandinsky experienced synesthesia with sound and colour.

I remember learning about this in a university art class and all of us thought it was a bunch of bull. Though once we realized it wasn't made up, I always wished I could experience it (without overuse of acid/LSD as RachelOM pointed out is possible).

I also have synesthesia. Every letter, word, book, song, number, shape feels like a different color to me. Each book I read feels like a different color. For instance, The Tempest always sounds gray to me, and Richard III is brown.

I'm a writer, and I can always tell when I'm done with a story, because it will eventually shift into all one color. Sometimes I even set out writing a story that I intend to sound like a particular color. Like LauraJane's friend, I had always thought that everyone associated things with colors.

Synesthestes can be awful bores. Not always, but every once in a while you'll meet someone who says, "No, it's THIS color, you are seeing it incorrectly," and seems to think they are extremely special. (There's one in every crowd, I guess.)

@appledeco,
i don't think what you are talking about counts under the term synesthesia. but i also have that same comprehension about numbers and letters. i also experience words as having gender. like most ppl who don't fit the 'normal' forms i always assumed that this was a universal understanding. luckily i was a very shy kid so didn't bring it up with anyone. only as a teenager did i realize that this was some odd little corner of the universe that my brain occupied. it's nice to know someone else has the same kind of brain quirk.

This is a really cool discussion - I've been "coloring" objects for years and had no idea there was a name for it.

I dont have this, but has always associated colors to certain words.

Sunday is always an ugly yellow, October is a deep purple, November brown and green. I don't see the colors, but when asked to describe the items, they all have colors and genders for me.

bb99,
I believe Ordinal Linguistic Personification is considered a variant of synesthisia (yes, I googled).

For me, tastes have shapes. The shapes have nothing to do with the texture of the food - they are independent of that. I realized that it doesn't work that way for eveyone when I told my mom that I didn't like something because it tasted "round."

I have a little bit of this going on. I'm mostly visual about it, though. For example, I see percentages (10%, 40%, 94%, etc.) as being specific tones on a grayscale, but not in the usual order (light to dark or vice versa). Same thing with days of the week and a variety of other things.

Now that I think about it... Its odd that I see so many things as different tones of gray. As an artist whose work is so concerned with colour, you might expect that to be more present in my associations.

"r" and "f" and "4" and "2".
are red, "a" is blue, "e" is yellow, "gray" is a cool gray, and "grey" is a warm grey. "3" is green. '1" is blue.
Canadian postal codes with their mix of letters and numbers really screw me up if there are 2's, 4's, r's and f's in them.
The other letters and numbers don't have colours for me.

Numbers, letters, and the calendar I visualize in an Escher-esqe way, or like a rollercoaster hanging out in front of me.

http://www.3dluvr.com/7YhE1157457075k/marcosss/morearni/escher.jpg

Usually I'm "viewing" them from one position, but sometimes I have to "stand" among them somewhere if I'm trying to figure out a problem, or to better comprehend time or totals.

That January is spot-on for me. October tastes like chai. Yellow feels like a warm towel being pulled through my body.
I don't have synesthesia, but I am a poet so I pay attention to these things.

This is an 'aha!' moment for me. Although I'm a visual thinker (having a formal education in design) I don't find that I associate colour with certain objects. I have always however felt that numbers and letters have personalities. And today I realize that I must have the Ordinal Linguistic Personification version of synesthesia. Incredible. I've always wondered if it was a creative way of thinking or if others felt this as well. Apparently so.

I think everyone has this to a certain degree. Sounds are shapes and lines to me, but they're so to everyone to an extent. The temperature has a smell, [today: "it's cold... but it's not really cold, it just smells that way..." "you think that too? I'm not alone!"], certain colors have tastes, music has colors and temperatures and shapes [like moving along a graph, like sin(x) = y ... but more as driving along it.]. Weirdly, though I love math and reading, nothing with numbers or words.

I don't think I have synesthesia, I just think that everyone has some twists in their neurons. It's like how everyone's got strange quirks, or is a little ADHD at times... Everyone's a little bit crazy.

I have this mildly for music. All songs for me have a specific colour palette, as well as a composition of shapes that move as the song progresses. It's really strange, but totally fascinating with certain songs.

I don't have super defined colours when it comes to months, but there are definitely darker and lighter feelings when it comes to them. I see months, as well as years and days of the week more spatially.

Different pieces of furniture definitely have "moods" in my house, such as the "nervous" yellow wall. I haven't really explored what the are, but I know they're there. Not all of them have spoken their mood to me yet, though.

Shouldn't that color calendar have Jan at the 7 o'clock going round to Dec at 6pm, or it it just me that sees the year that way?

jilly37 -- everyone's different. Mine is counter clockwise with january at 11:30. My letters and numbers have very specific colors, some stronger than others.

@appledeco: Thanks for putting words to it! I've always wondered if other people thought this way! Colors, letters and numbers have gender as well as sexual orientation. For example, 1, 2, 4 and 6 are all female, but 1 is homosexual, 2 is bisexual and 4 and 6 are heterosexual. 3 is one of the few numbers I assign an age to (I see 3 as green with a white beard). The letter K is purple and female. E is red and male. Q is yellow and male. The month of September is red.

I don't assign smells unless it's an orange = oranges or yellow = lemons kind of association. Black = licorice. I blame this on those scented markers growing up, not the synesthesia.

I do feel music as color. For example, the sound of a harp has a lot of blue and purple to it and I feel it in the back of my neck as a trickling sensation.

Oh, and 8 = Dracula for some reason.

I wish I could experience things in colors like this! How beautiful :)
I'm sure this isn't synesthesia, but I've ALWAYS associated emotions with objects. Like... I always imagine how inanimate objects might feel, and I put things in places that will make them happy. And sometimes I see things that make me feel anger or love or glee. Even sad objects are beautiful. And they might not seem as though they were intended to be sad/happy/annoyed/hurt/surprised etc. to other people. At first I thought I was just overly empathetic, but I realized I have a low tolerance for a good deal of people's emotional responses to things... so it really only happens with objects!
:) I sound craazzyyy.

I think that colors perception is different for North and South hemispheres. Maybe it happen between East and West too.
The insulation affect the colors tones and their perception, mostly about not primary colors.
For me, october is orange; july is indigo; august is red; november is gray... I'm not synesthesic, but obviously people associate color-month according to climate.
Also cultural values influence the analogy color-month or color-something.
If all synesthesics agree about certain sensation, I will believe that "this color is wrong". For now, I believe that personal historic sensations define the analogies about colors for everybody: synesthesics or not.

I was just discussing the topic the other week with friends! You all may find this short film on synesthetes by Jonathan Fowler interesting: http://bit.ly/wxbnU

I didn't read all the comments because there are so many of them but...does anyone think the colors on that image are all wrong? I don't see it like that at all. I've been synesthetic for ever and although sometimes the colors slightly change or have nuances, that image seems really wrong to me. Is it only me? I don't know a lot about synesthesia. Is this possible or do all synesthetics see exactly the same colors in the same sounds, shapes, forms, letters, texts, etc, etc?

Numbers have colours for me. The round numbers are warmer tones, while the straight and cornered numbers have cooler tones. 1 is black, 0 is white.

It seems the right term is synesthete, after all...I'm sorry, I didn't know that.

Either 1 out of 25,000 is wrong or we flock to design sites.

The number 5 is a real jerk.

My best friend has very well documented synesthesia and she is both a visual artist and graphic designer. Photos of her home, rather her massive loft/studio are full of color. The unique thing is, her synesthesia is grapheme-synesthesia where colors are matched to specific letters and numbers.

I recently attended a talk she gave of what life was like as a designer with this condition and it was amazing to see how deeply in love with color she is. Here is an article on her and some cool links:

http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2009/01/06/seeing-colors-grapheme-color-synesthesia

A live active demo of how she "sees" words.:
http://mroth.info/code/dees-colors/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/badgurl/3082858665/

I really didnt know there was a name for this, but I have been doing this for names/persons since I was a child. Never really thought about whether I hear music and other things as colors as well, but in a way I think I do.

Fascinating.

This has to be the trippiest post I've seen on apartmenttherapy.com.
I don't have synethesia but I have many other "quirks" & this makes me feel I'm not so crazy - ie, everyone's crazy.
Very cool.

appledeco, lifeinthefortress, and Safire: I have the same type of synaesthesia; I remember being young and explaining to my dad why A was a girl but B was a boy, and so on. He was fascinated. He called me very late one night when I was in college, excited because there was a program on PBS about synaesthesia. I have a mild sense of color about some numbers, mostly blues and greens, but the gender is very specific for all numbers and letters.

Funny....i don't really think i have synaethesia, although perhaps it helps explain why i perceive some conversations in shapes and spatial arrangement.
A lot of my sketchbook is filled with these conversations drawn out in these arrangements/mappings, and a few have made their way into some of my favourite paintings: http://jessicamatthies.com/section/119160_scripted.html

i also see months in narrow planes, as if they are stretching out into the distance on ribbons.

this is hard to explain, but sounds have shapes to me. Imagine all sounds can start out as a perfect circle, but depending on their tone, letter make up and delivery the circle alters it's shape into various blobs. vowels change the shape of the word the most. with a's being round, e's elongate, i's make it pointy, o's make it bigger, and u's make them drippy.

not all number and letters have colors, but the strongest ones for me is 7 is a dark forest green, the letter n is bright yellow, 1 is white.

all colors have feelings for me. i really hate medium to dark browns they give off a depressed feeling, reds being frightening and hateful and exciting, blues are calming, orange is high energy, green is outdorsy,crisp, glassy, bright yellow is harsh and light yellow is peacfeul, and black being dominant and lustful.

Fascinating!