Monday Is Brown, Tuesday Is Violet...
Here's something odd. Yeah, I know, the name of the game is "synaesthesia," but still, it's odd. You see, I've always known which color each day of the week is.
All my life, I've always known that:
- Monday is light brown
- Tuesday is violet
- Wednesday is red
- Thursday is moss green
- Friday is yellow
- Saturday is luminous red
- Sunday is white
You notice, under this reckoning, Monday is the first day of the week. "Moss green" is a variegated mix of greens. And "luminous red" is red lit up with light from within.
There's also a certain burnt smell, sort of like burnt toast, which I've always experienced as a green smell.
Any other synaesthetes out there who can testify to stuff like this, first-hand?
Labels: doors_of_perception
posted by paul @ 6:21 AM
6 Comments:
Cuckoo !!
BIG Dipper:
Ah, the clock strikes one! :-)
Dean:
No, it's not an outward perception, in some hard-to-articulate way it's inward, but it's far stronger, far more overpowering than the term "association" would suggest. To me, Friday is yellow, just as strongly as a yellow car is yellow. You wouldn't say that yellow is "associated" with the car— the car simply is yellow. Likewise with Friday: to me, Friday simply is yellow. It's not just an association, it's a direct experience.
As the Wikipedia article puts it, "These experiences are involuntary, are not metaphorical, are not merely associations, and are consistent throughout life..."
I suspect something must be known nowadays of the underlying neurology. And perhaps you would know more than I would of theories regarding the evolutionary role of synaesthesia?
My interests in synaesthesia have also ranged in the philosophical direction— from the claim, in Plato's Cratylus, that each individual phoneme is meaningful, on up to current philosophical discussion regarding the epistemic potential of metaphor, as in Max Black's seminal article on metaphor, etc. Synaesthesia is not metaphorical, but I think that, considered on a philosophical level, it may have light to shed on the logical structure of metaphor, and related issues such as catachresis, creative metaphor, and metaphoric tension.
I can relate to what you're thinking/feeling/experiencing. Names and Days have colours, and rarely, textures to me.
Monday is orange (and I hate both), Tuesday is azure, Wednesday is cadmium/green, Thursday is purple, Friday is brown/black (depends on the number of the date), Saturday is neon green and Sunday is maroon.
Odd numbers feel coarse and 'crass' to me, so I abhor most except 5 and 7. Even numbers feel rounded and whole, content and satisfied. But I hate double digits of any kind, like 22 or 66. 0 (zero) holds a special place in my heart, and so does 2.
Is it really weird? My friends think it's almost obsessive. And picky. =.="
Odd numbers feel sharp like they should have a point while even numbers are smooth. Odd numbers seem forceful like they're on the verge of doing something. They're crafty and energetic. Think and wirey. Even numbers seem dull,lazy and midless. They feel like the eyes of fish look. They feel like rocks. They're all yellow and round.
* Monday is red
* Tuesday is light blue
* Wednesday is black
* Thursday is dark grey
* Friday is yellow
* Saturday is golden yellowish
* Sunday is bordeaux red
I've for some reason always assigned numbers a gender, even since childhood. Not exactly a color synesthesia thing, but similar enough, I guess.
1 is very male, 2 is tom-boy female, 3 is male, 4 is slightly female, 5 is male, 6 is male, 7 is a dominant female, 8 is male, 9 is female, 10 is male, and that sequence more or less repeats with the last digit dominating in the teens, and the first digit dominating past that (20's are all female), as if each group of ten is under the domain of the first digit, except poor little 1. (Zero is gender-neutral/male leaning)
You'll note that intensities vary, and interestingly, larger numbers identity seems to be based on the its factors. So, 21 is extremely female as it is a multiple of 7, while 25 is nearly gender neutral -leaning male- because of 5's overwhelming influence.
As we approach infinity, the intensity petters off and numbers become gender-neutral.
I have no explanation of this besides unknown early-childhood influences, perhaps.
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