Quote:
Originally Posted by kramus
Martian - you experience sounds in a more rounded and complete way than most of the rest of us, right? I remember a thread where you described the colours of songs. That might be a bit like the way conversations and concepts swim in my mind as an ever-flowing imagery that is both important and difficult for me to express in visual art.
|
That's an interesting question. It's difficult for me to categorize my experiences in a comparative way -- the one thing that I've learned as I discovered more about this is that perception is an entirely subjective thing. Perhaps that sounds self-evident, and yet we all go through life assuming the people around us perceive things exactly how we do. Is my experience of sound more rounded and complete? Or is it simply different?
A sound has a colour and a shape. I accept this as a fact of life. It was relatively recent that I learned that not everyone experiences it.
I can attempt to document and explain, but I doubt that there's any way I can provide a full sense of what I experience. The flip side, is that I don't know what it's like to
not have these associations. They've been there as far back as I can remember. An anecdote that I may or may not have related is in regards to the sort of visualization plug-ins that are common on modern media players. I dislike them, because they disagree with what I 'see' when I listen to music. In my early days, before I knew that not everyone was able to 'see' what I could, I thought it was a limitation of the technology. It never occurred to me that it was my own bias.
A more recent anecdote: I recall discussing a Beatles song (Get Back, I think) with Secretmethod70, and suggesting that a cover could improve upon it by imparting a different energy. I could think of no better way to convey this, however, than to suggest that the song ought to be more 'red.'
It's an odd phenomenon. It wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be far more prevalent than anyone had guessed. How many are there out there who, like I did, simply assume that their experiences are
de rigeur? It's normal and mundane for them, and they might very naturally assume that it's normal and mundane for the rest of the world as well.
I also like 'seas of sensory overlap.'