Music and Synæsthesia

It is interesting, how one thinks, or perhaps wishes, so much that one has understood, only to discover the delusion. It is very nearly devastating. It happened this past year, it happens every week now, every day of every week. It is almost all I want, to understand. To feel it, to touch it, if only ever so briefly; I am grasping. With each breath, I hope I am the slightest bit closer, I long to be one second closer to the day I can wrap my arms about it, feel it close and tangible, the day I might hope to hold it for my own, that flighty songbird. He will land once more, touch me just so gently, but in that moment I can fly for pure joy. I will not show it on my face, but I glow within.

I have always seen things in colour, every syllable on every page, every sound, every thought, every person I dare to know. Words spoken are shaded by inflections and tones, by the person who speaks them, by the language they are spoken in. I have always seen music in colour. Music is shaded by the timbre of the instrument, of course by perceived affection. Music, if nothing else, speaks that tender, careful language of subtle changes, of overpowering emotion that is so basic and primal, that comes so naturally to the human mind that there is scarcely anything to break it down into more abstract than serotonin or dopamine. But there is colour. There is the gentle interplay of light and shade, there is the chiaroscuro, there is the jagged edge or soft blend. I cannot imagine a piece that does not have its corresponding colour sequence, it has always been this way. Then the playing of music was necessarily stronger, barer, raw and open to whatever searing light dared shine. The first screech of my childhood violin was as grass-green as the spring around. I remember it still, although I have long forgotten the sound, that colour branded as if into my eyelids. I can see it now. I grew a small amount in skill and the brightness, the ear-splitting quality of my first, unrefined sawing of bow against string faded to something warmer, softer, something more alive with the true, mahogany (the colour, not the wood) ring of the violin. But it was flat, two-dimensional. It was my fault—I did not cultivate my relationship with my violin. I practiced half-reluctantly, and the colours never bloomed, never quite, only budding. It was worse with the piano, an instrument with which I still have only a fair-weather relationship (although I should always hope that my respect for it, and its players, is profound). The sounds I caused to rise from the bowels of the grand were coolly impersonal, flatly unfeeling, not notes or colours that made me ring. Again, it was my own fault—I could not learn to connect with an instrument so external. I loved it, but I did not feel it. Eventually, that fell away too, with the shed skins of other attempts. It is strange that the love that came most naturally to me should be one so nearby, so close and even within that I took it for granted for far too long. Voice, my great fear, my dear love, that twists and rises, that rings so freely from a freedom born of control and concentration, that sweet, faraway thing that I shall not, cannot master but can dream of in a light so pure, in shades so warm and languid that I must wish it something solid that I could lean into it and fall, that far-off beauty.

I do not call myself a musician in any right. As I write, I have no aspirations, I long not for the stage lights and the crowds. I was never very good with those to start with. For now, as it has been for long enough, the music alone is consolation enough, the learning and fiddling and bending to understand is beauty enough. It is pure light, something ethereal when you find you are but a step closer, a step wiser, and the colours grow brighter each day.