Synesthesia
Unfortunately, I don’t actually have synesthesia (the neurological condition where two or more senses are coupled). Although that would be really cool. No, I just have some seemingly unrelated memories that are permanently inter-twined due solely to the random factor of simultaneous chronology. Everyone experiences this phenomenon. It can be as simple as associating the smell of a certain food cooking in the oven with being at grandmother’s house, and then years later, long after she is dead, smelling the same thing and recalling your grandmother’s house.
I do have an example of this phenomenon that I’d like to share. To this day, the reason that I don’t drink coffee is because I associate its taste with rocket fuel. This probably needs an explanation …
When I was much younger, my father would take me to a science program on Saturdays called Adventures in Science. It was held on the campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (where I later ended up working). Either at the beginning or the end of every two-month session (I don’t remember which) the activity would be to build model rockets from scratch using materials such as toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, and cardboard. And then we’d go out to a big field on the NIST campus and launch them.
Needless to say, this was one of the most exciting things I’d ever experienced up to that point. What young boy doesn’t love launching rockets?! I would anticipate launch day for weeks in advance. I have to give lots of respect to whoever thought of this idea. It’s the most effective way to get kids interested in science that I’ve ever seen, and it certainly worked on me. It was one of those uniquely awesome experiences, the kind that you can’t even duplicate on your own. There’s just something special about launching rockets with dozens of kids and parents and five launchpads. I wonder if you could even get away with it today (due to liability reasons). It was so much fun seeing all of the rocket designs that other people had come up with, and even more fun when those designs went spectacularly wrong, either blowing up on the launch pad (or in air), or canting over horizontally in mid-flight and slamming high speed into a group of people. It wasn’t the safest activity, but it sure as hell was fun.
As part of the preparation for launching a rocket, you have to insert a one-use, expendable rocket engine into it. I guess I touched the bottom of one of them and got rocket fuel on my hands. Later, for whatever reason (or none at all, if you’re a kid), I put my fingers inside my mouth and experienced the worst taste in my life to this day. It’s really indescribable how bad rocket fuel tastes.
So I run over to my dad, looking desperately for water, but all he had with him was a large thermos of coffee he had brought along (it was a cold winter morning). I figured I didn’t have anything to lose, and that I might as well drink the coffee, because surely it couldn’t taste as bad as the rocket fuel, right? (I hadn’t really tasted coffee prior to that point, having considered it a “grown-up drink” like alcohol.)
So, big mistake. The coffee itself was rather disgusting to me, but that compounded with the flavoring of rocket fuel resulted in a sinister taste synergy the likes of which the average person will not experience in a lifetime. I couldn’t stop spitting for at least ten minutes straight. Eventually we got home (two hours and many rockets later) and I finally got access to orange juice to rid the foul taste from my mouth. As you can see, even the taste of rocket fuel wasn’t enough to dissuade me from launching more rockets.
So that is why, to this day, every time I drink coffee I can’t help but taste rocket fuel, and thus, why I am not a coffee drinker. It is an acquired taste, but most people overcome that and end up liking it. Not I. The additional disgust factor of the memory of the taste of rocket fuel creates a seemingly insurmountable barrier to me ever being able to enjoy coffee.
February 16th, 2007 at 01:10
Even though we’re not synesthetes, I still think there is some cross-association with senses and impressions and such. For instance, different notes (on the piano) have a different “essence” for me—it’s hard to explain, but they just feel different. I mean, E♭ doesn’t make me taste apple pie or anything, but there is a difference beyond just their sounds…does that make sense?
P.S. The singular of “phenomena” is phenomenon.
February 16th, 2007 at 01:14
I don’t know, what kind of feeling are you talking about? Deeper notes feel different to me, but I think that’s actually because they really do feel different. Low notes are heard by different parts of your body (and at the extreme bass end at high volume, they’re heard by all of your body). Thump thump thump.
Firefox spellcheck is making me lazy - I tend to ignore words without red underlines under them. Of course, it could be a valid word that I’m just using incorrectly.
February 19th, 2007 at 01:05
I can’t really explain it any further; I don’t have the adjectives to describe the difference. Perhaps I have some sort of extremely mild synesthesia. Or perhaps it is just the way we all hear the difference between notes and I am misinterpreting it. Or perhaps even I am somehow confusing associations with chord patterns and songs I know with inherent note differences. Who knows?
February 19th, 2007 at 01:11
Indeed, who knows. Words seem like a higher-order way to describe thought processes, and utterly fail to describe simpler thought processes, such as musical perception which you’ve pointed out.
I don’t necessarily think it’s synesthesia though - I think all people perceive music in this fashion. That’s probably why it’s so powerful, and why it transcends all cultures and is enjoyed by all peoples.
February 20th, 2007 at 01:22
I also think people most people experience music in this way. Each key has a unique sound to it, although in principle, only relative frequencies should matter, so they should all be interchangeable. All people, not just ones with “perfect pitch”, definitely have some ability to gauge absolute frequency of sound that they hear. Of course, on the piano, there is a quite mundane explanation: the different keys are held at different tensions, which subtly changes their harmonic response.
February 20th, 2007 at 02:23
Makes sense to me!
April 14th, 2008 at 23:09
I understand that people with perfect pitch often teach themselves to see a color with each sound, so I imagine music is much more entertaining for such people.