The Man Who Tasted Shapes

Do you dream in colour? Ok, I've heard that one before. How about this: Do you hear music in colour? Can you taste shapes in your food? Weird? Perhaps to some. This is known as synaethesia; basically as "crossing of the senses". Nora Young talked about this on Spark today and it really struck a chord, so I decided to learn more.

Synaethesia is as common as 1 in 23 people. Apparently the most common form of synaethesia is colour associations with numbers or letters. I have to say that I have done this, but more so when I was younger. In my mind certain letters should be a certain colour. I didn't decide to colour a "P" in dark green. That is the way it should be. "M"s are pink, "K"s are purple, "A"s are yellow. That is just the way they are supposed to be. I noticed that some of the colours of letters could be traced to something. When we were little, all the kids in my family had a colour. I was pink, Ainsley (then called Kirsten) was purple, Scott was blue, etc. I see where I got the colours for M and K...

Upon analyzing other parts of synaethesia, I found that I could identify with a few of the types. But just in minor forms and I remember it being more common when I was a kid. It was a way to help me organize things. But anyone who tried to understand the logic, would surely fail. It only made sense in my own head.

I am interested in hearing more stories like this. Can anyone taste shapes? Do the days of the week take on different personalities? What about genders? Maybe this is where languages like French and Spanish got this gender idea... Perhaps!

I really encourage you to read more on Synaethesia - the Wikipedia article has a lot on it and it is so very interesting! The part that talks about the sounds of shapes made a lot of sense to me since I had thought about it before. There is also a book called The Man Who Tasted Shapes by Richard Cytowic who rediscovered synaethesia three decades ago. (If you listen to the episode of Spark, he is the man being interviewed). I now have some new books to add to my summer reading list!