Hello. I’m Lauren, and I live in the UK.
I like having synaesthesia despite it sounding like a contagious disease.
My main interests are anything that involves escapism; mainly photography, reading and film.
COLOURFULanguage – synaesthesia
The diary of someone with synaesthesia
- This blog explores what it's like to experience words, emotions, names and numbers as colours. This will also be a place to consolidate research and articles on the subject, including other peoples' experiences and information on other types of synesthesia.
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Love the design of your website and the info is very interesting, Well done!
hi lauren! i live in the U.S and i belive i have a musical form of synesthesia. i play the clarinet and to me it is a shiny, mahogant color like polished furniture legs. im only 13 but i also have colors for names and letters. your name is lilac purple. it’s lovley!
Hello Lauren
I work for the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and am currently producing a series of films about the composer Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen also had Synaesthesia and I want to give some perspective on this in my films.
I’m looking for someone who would interested in being interviewed about how Synaesthesia affects their life and particularly their perceptions of art and music. If you’d be interested in helping me then please let me know.
Thanks
Guy
hi lauren , My Name is Inge Adendorff .Im a fashion design student from south-africa – Cape Town ..and Im using sound wave colour as my inspiration to design clothes …I find your ability to see colour with music absolutly fantastic and would like to know much more about it ….I would like to actully send you a few questions and ask you which particular colour you see when you hear certain things ….and what colours you see when you year minor coards and what do you see when you see majour and shaprs …does the colour actully move with the rythm of the music ..is it very bright and are the the sounds that are louder in the composition brighter or more powerfull than the other colours ….does the colours of each note mix with the other ones to make new colour and how big is this colour that you see…..Im so sorry for asking you all of these questions …but i just think it is super intresting ……my english might no be to good because im actully afrikaans so sorry for that …anyway hope to year from you
take care inge
Hi lauren, my name is melissa I’m 13 and I’m doing a research project in my english class. I resd the book “A Mango Shaped Space” and its about a girl with synesthesia, anyway i just wanted to know what it feels like. I mean do you get really bad headaches in loud places?
write back
melissa!!!!
Hi, Lauren, thanks for writing up so much information on your take on synesthesia. It’s always nice to find others ‘synnies’ out there.
By the way- the name Lauren is a lovely shade of lilac, dropping down into a shiny apple read and then trailing off into magenta towards the end.
If you can see sound, what color is your voice?
hi Lauren,
I was looking into synesthesia on the internet and found your blog. My name is Xavier and I’m studying graphic design in London. The theme of one of the projects I’m doing right now is about transformations and I was researching into how to transform poems, alliterations and tongue-twisters into some sort of colour coding or patterns. I don’t know whether reading or hearing tongue twisters would make you see more colours than a normal text, or whether you would see a single colour throughout the text or nothing at all. As for me, tongue-twisters give me headache. Anyhow, I’m quite interested and curious about it and I was wondering if you’d like to share your experiences or thoughts with me, if you have some spare time.
Thanks and carry on posting!
Xavi
I am researching synesthaesia re. visual arts: the painter who “sees” colors when listening to music and paints them. Would appreciate contact with any research or contacts with information regarding this 1 person in 2000 phenomenon. Thanks
I am researching synesthaesia re. visual arts: the painter who “sees” colors when listening to music and paints accordingly. Would appreciate contact info. regarding this 1 in 2000 phenomenom. Thanks
Thank you to everyone who posted a message on here over the last couple of years – this blog had been left untouched but your messages still arrived at my inbox and I read them all.
I will begin to reply to them on the blog over the next few days, even comments from two years ago.
Thanks for reading.
Hi, I am Vivian Lau ,a producer of London College of Communication student documentary. My team would like to do a documentary based on Synesthesia . I would like to ask if you are happy to speak to us about your experience.If possible , we would like to have an interview with you and we are based in London.I am not sure whether you will be able to help us but when I look at your post , there are lots of things that other people would like to know about your life.
We have a small crew size of six people, our documentary is short film of 6 minutues. Our production shooting is from 26 th OCT to 2 nd NOV .
We are very interested in this topic and wish to introduce Synesthesia through an exciting and causual documentary to audiences.
Thank you and I would like to hear from you soon,
Kindly Regards,
Vivian Lau
luv_vivian@hotmail.com
0773326169
Hi there,
Well I’m probably a 3 on a scale to 10 re.-seeing music. I used to feel squeamish about bringing it up but these days synethesia is so much more in the forefront.
Oh sure I have always ascribed dullish colours to single digits, weekdays and months but it’s the viewing music in 3D with a wide array of shapes both forground and receding into the distance that’s really a gift. Generally I view music as sounds overlapping, complimenting. If there is movement, then it’s very subtle. Colours and shapes depend on the type of music and the frequency of the voices or instruments.
Lastly and sadly, I seem to experience visual music less as I age. I have always needed to be in a sommulent almost meditative mode to see musical sounds. Half asleep, a long jog, a long rollerblade, a long car ride-all can lead to a panoramic painting of shades, colours and shape in my mind before me almost as a hologram though not interfering with reality just as thought can be subtle.
To end, I have always taken this gift for granted until about 15 years ago when I became convinced that not all people have it. Perhaps very few. At times I believe that I can understand a composer’s thought process when viewing the balance and arrangement of symphonic music.
Thank you.
Lauren–
I feel a bit wierd even posting. I’m fifteen years old, and live in RI, USA. I’ve been synthetic for as long as I can remember. I know that a LOT of people have it, but most people I’ve ever tried to talk to about it, just look at me like I’m crazy. I guess it’s just good to know there really are more people out there like this. Any noise I hear, words or just noise in general, I see as a blast of color across my vision. Numbers have colors, and calenders and timelines have a specific spacial zone. Also, when I speak, every word has a specific taste, for example, ‘Lauren’ tastes like chocolate milk.
This is kind of pointless, I have nothing really specific to say… I just wanted to reach out and say hello to “someone like me”.
Thank you.
I am doing project on synesthesia and I was wondering if you only see letters or words in colors when they are black. If a word is written in yellow and you see the letter t as red will that letter be orange, or still yellow? Basically can only black letter be seen as the colors you interpret from letters, or can you change an orange word into the colors you see for each letter?
hi! im kendall, and im synesthetic as well:)
it doesnt matter what color letters, words, or numbers are written in- though it does give me a headache when they’re the wrong color. if i saw the letter T in red, it would take a second to register, but I would still see it as dark green.
and an orange word (like fast for example) is MOSTLY orange (because the letter F is orange for me) but it does have a literal smudge of green at the end because of the T. now, if i broke down the words into actual letters, i would see orange, light blue, yellow, dark green. you see?
also, just because the first letter is say, blue, doesnt mean the word will be blue. like adam. its broken-down colors are light blue, dark green, light blue, red. but when i think of ‘adam’ i see dark green with a smudge of red at the end.
hope this helped:)
I once had lunch with David Sengstack, owner of Birch Tree Group (music publishers, and on the Board (then) of Julliard, and at that time he owned the rights to “Happy Birthday.” I told him I went to hear Judy Collins the night before and that she had more pastel blue in her songs than in previous years. He thought I was nuts or teasing at first. I told him I saw colors when I heard music — until then I assumed EVERYBODY did. Fascinated, he arranged for a student at Julliard to research the subject. The student produced a paper concluding that about 5% of the population see music, and another 5% taste it. (John Lenon told his band to play “more roast beef”, or horseradish. The article was published back in the seventies. Until then, the only published papers about this were in Japanese or some slavic language, so it didn’t even have a name in English.
Did anybody notice in the movie the “Soloist” that there was a scene when a bass fiddle performance was “translated” into colors? My guess — a person with synthesia was at work during the production!
lauren hi,my name is sid, a 50yr old colour therapist, who is quite dix lex ic,i am off to norway in the spring to wrk with ,children and adults, with severe learning difficulties.i am trying to bring togeather,a music, with colour,and letters workshop. this is all volentry.any information you can give me regarding your colour sound and letters,and are thay always constant?? do thay change? what do you see when you hear the note c or letter a.any info would be of such a help i have been working with colour for 20yrs in many differant ways ,and all round the world thank you for your time.if this information can start to help those who feel locked within there body or mind.it will be so helpful. god bless sidx
the letter A to me is light blue like the number 2- but its not shy like him. the letter A never really changes color, but when its in a word it wont always make the word the same color. for example, the name ‘adam’ is mostly green because the D is so dominant, but it also has a smudge of red at the end because of the M. i dont even see the blues of the A’s.
Hi im matt im fifteen. i recently found out that the colors i saw when listneing to music both the key of the piece and the emotion of the piece wasnt what everyone saw. i play the cello for about 6 years now and after playing a concerto in c major i told my friends that i liked how orange it was. everyone just looked at me and laughed. so i looked up music and colors and found out what i really see its so nice to know that theres people like me too. does everyone synthesete see the sme colors for the same notes or is it different for other people ive been to map my key colors but when you add the emotion the colors mix and change on me. c=orange d=red e=brown f=purple g=blue a=green b=yellow if anyone can respond it would be nice to know more about synesthia. thank
matt
Hi Lauren,
My name is Kendall and I recently found out that I’m synesthetic. I see colors, sometimes personalities, sometimes textures, and sometimes hear noises for letters, numbers, and words. To me, your name is grey-ish light blue and feels like wind. Which is wierd because L is yellow… but I think it might have to do with that “au” sound. I dunno. I’m still trying to figure stuff out, you know?
I really like your blog, but I have some questions and I would really like to talk to someone who knows what I’m going through. My friends just don’t understand. One friend insisted that synesthesia is a mental disease because she watches doctor shows and “knows how these things work” :/ So do you think you could email me or visit my blog? Thanks.
xoxo
Kendall
Hi Kendall..
my name’s Katie, i posted a few months ago. I recently read your post, and..i don’t know, thought it would be cool to get in touch with another girl like me.
My colors for letters and words are different than yours.. (youre name would be pink and end with a smudge of blue with the double-L, and broken down, it would be pink,yellowishbrown, black, orangey, yellow, blue, blue), but other than that, they’re the same general principal. I can’t, however, read words written in different colors, which makes whiteboard markers at school a pain D:
Do you have any other types of syntheasia? I can taste words when I’m talking.. (‘kendall’ tastes like rasberry bubblegum).
And I know what it’s like with the whole friends issue… half of my friends don’t believe me and the other half thing I’m crazy. ah well.
hope you don’t think this is too creepy, me getting in touch..
Katie
Hi Lauren,
I just recently found out I’m synesthetic, too. The way I see it, I see colors and a sort of a pattern in my head when I listen to music. The patterns are hard to explain, so I won’t bother, but it’s pretty cool. You know the song “Dancing Queen”? That song is so ice blue I can see the icicles in my head. I like being synesthetic too. Except that when I try to explain it I can hardly say Syntheasia, if I even go it right that time. I used to ask my mom “What color does this song make you think of?” and she’d say, “Abby, you’re pretty weird. It’s just a song.” But I was talking to my youth pastor and my friend, and my friend is the same way, except he sees colors with names! It’s kind of exciting knowing that I’m not just “weird” and that other people are just like me! I haven’t seen anyone on the internet or otherwise that has it like I do, but I’m still glad to know.
Abby
P.S. What does “Abby” taste like to you?
My name is John Gold, and I am a fellow synaesthete. I was wondering if you would be willing to aid me in spreading the word about my music. Honestly, I don’t know how else to ask. I would hate to waste your time.
Congratulations. Colour is my passion
Congratulations. Colour is my passion.
Hi–
I am an author in North Carolina, USA, and I’m writing a book that includes a main character who has synesthesia. While I do not have it myself, I do want to try to keep this as authentic as possible, and I am looking for information. I’d also like to be able to bring awareness to this way of seeing the world. My main question is, do you ever experience a type of sensory overload? Please drop me an e-mail. You can check out my writing on my website, listed below.
Hi Ms. Willson..I know this was a question for Lauren but it happened to pop up on my email…I hope you dont mind my input, but everyone experiences it differently and I’m too eager of a person to not want to respond..i do get sensory overload often, from colors–it gives me major headaches, especially getting a flash of color from every sound i hear–walking down the high school hallways is a pain, as is concerts. Also, there are some words I wont say, because the awful taste will stay with me for hours. Hope this helps. –Katie, age 17
Hi Lauren,
I just came across your blog and I have found it fascinating. I am a photographer currently working on a project on synaesthesia and perception and I would love to know a little more about your music – colour synaesthesia. Are there certain songs that produce a paticularly stong visual output? And do certain everyday sounds produce a similar effect? If so is there any way of articulating these colours in an artistic or visual way, such as a drawing or painting?
I realise you have been absent a while and this may not reach you, but if it does I would love to hear from you.
Thanks
Holly
Hi there! Would you mind doing an interview for a South African magazine? Need some valuable input
. Thank you