Your Blue can be my Green
Your Blue can be my Green
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. Anaïs Nin
No one sees the world exactly as it is – we only see it through our own
experiences. What we see is just parts of the story; the rest lies in the
emotions it evokes in us.
The word Synesthesia comes from the Greek, where syn means “together”
and aesthesis means ”sensation.” It describes a connection between the
senses, where the brain experiences multiple sensory impressions simultaneously.
It is the name of a condition that has been known in medicine
for about 300 years. People with synesthesia can, for example, taste words,
see shapes in sounds, or experience letters as having specific colours.
A few years ago, I was told that my images triggered synesthesia in
someone. I found out that between two and six percent of the population has synesthesia,
but that many don’t know that their way of experiencing the world is different.
Synesthesia is overrepresented among artists, with well-known examples
such as Vincent van Gogh and David Hockney.
Synesthesia is a liminal phenomenon; it exists in the thresholds between
senses, between subjective and objective reality, and between normative
and altered states of perception.
We can ask: ”Do you see what I see?” – but how can we ever know the answer?
Your ”blue” may be my ”green.”
Whether synesthesia is a neurodivergence or an ability we are all born with,
might not be the most important thing. We spend a lot of time discussing
what is ”real,” as if agreement brings us closer to the truth. But maybe the
truth lies in the differences.