Synesthesia

I am a synesthete. I see colors and movement to music – to all sounds, actually but music makes everything prettier. I also see words, I can feel them. My synesthetic experience has always been beautiful but I never paid extra attention to it. The colors, the movements and the feelings have always been there.

Recently, I have been expanding my musical experience, and I am enjoying it greatly. I am paying more attention to what I see, to what I feel.

It is hard to explain. I wish I could paint it, but I can’t. So I wrote a poem.

The format, the capitalization, the punctuation, are an attempt to be true to my experience.

I am writing about other songs, about different music styles. These were chosen first because they came to me as I began exploring my synesthesia. Each stanza references a different song.

Music: Hugh Dillon and Canadian band Headstones

Warning: brief use of the f-word
 
 

Music, Colors, Movement, Feelings
 

It starts here

Sorrytown in Durham County.

Evoking loneliness

The word feels like a gentle stroke

The melody sips in and through my body

Absorbed, it lulls me

It appeases my soul

A fading orange
 
 
The voice awakens me

Gentle, potent still

Circles – fire red

Slowly forming everywhere,

Eternity
 

A mighty ball of energy

Yellow, it spins

Blue

Drops

Orange

Drops

Radiating light

Van Gogh I am not

And this is my “Starry Night”
 

I hear circling and spinning – I see red

My stimming Autistic body squees.

The frozen motion before the bliss – Bright red

I silently scream

Fuck yeah!

Silence, no more.

It’s unspoken

Yet

Liberating
 

Words quickly form in the air like a prism the spectrum of colors

Slowly they vanish

One by one

New words emerge

Notes… and….tunes …. glide… on… a … rainbow

“Pinned down” to the polychromatic air
 

My body exhilarates

Surrounded by a cyclone of yellow and orange

I am the center

A towering cyclone of yellow and orange

Harmonious harmonica

Riveting

Ecstasy. I embrace it
 

I SEE a sound of sorrow

Gradually giving in to hope

I’m in a bubble

I feel empathy

In this midnight

I breathe yellow
 

THE LOUD NOTES come with

Previously unexpected blue

THE NOTES SOAR from behind

The cotton-like textured wall

They reveal themselves to me

Until they hide again

Allowing for words to form in the air
 

Music and colors and movement
 

In my nearly motionless body

I revel in them

I celebrate

I discover

Colors

Sounds

Feelings

Joy
 
 

Amy Sequenzia, 2015
 

Image description black and white photograph of woman with short dark brown hair. She is smiling. Dark grey text reads:Amy Sequenzia Passionate Autistic activist, writer, and poet . Read more from Amy on Ollibean and visit nonspeakingautisticspeaking.blogspot.com .