My friend Alana was writing about experiencing synesthesia during choir rehearsal. The basses sounded like mud, or sand, another voice like caramel, another like aluminum foil. Friends asked questions about the condition, and about her perceptions. Her examples were unexpected. She gave me permission to use this line as a writing prompt:
“I realized my talents when I noticed that Whitney Houston sounded like tomatoes.”
While we don’t all have synesthesia, we all make odd associations. If you write nonfiction, you could examine some of yours. If you write fiction, you might use one of these strange associations to help show certain facets of a character. If you write poetry, the associations you make would be a fresh juxtaposition.
For my part, I realized that I associated perfumes with colors, in that I would coordinate my perfume with the color of the clothes I was wearing. When I wore brown, I wore Chanel Number Five. Arpege went with beige. Tea Rose Oil went with light colors, while lilac went with blue. I never questioned it until I read Alana’s post.
I didn’t realize how deeply ingrained these associations were for me until they were questioned. But recently I was at a graveside service for a friend’s mother, and the sun was hot. Everyone there was properly dressed, but under the canopy set up by the funeral home where we all were standing for the shade, there was a miasma of accumulated light fragrances — sweet citrus and flowery things that one spritzes on in the summer. For a moment, I was scandalized. This was, after all, a funeral. But, what did I expect? Incense. Damask rose. At the most, lavender. (Now, I myself was wearing essential oils, rose geranium, to be exact, but that was as a form of insect repellent, and, further, it worked. Or perhaps there were no bugs.)
That’s when it occurred to me that probably nobody else thought this way. Men and women who took the time to wear proper suits and sleek black dresses would not deliberately do anything untoward when they went to apply scent. To the best of my knowledge, no one had judged me for what I wore. It would scandalize no one if I were to have applied, even, Baby Love, Wind Song, or anything that Avon sells in a sculpted glass bottle. Why was I judging them? Where did this idea come from? That is, indeed, essay fodder.
Help yourself to my prompt. What thing occurs to you that is other than normative, that mixes senses, that conflates unusual objects, and, more importantly, why? It is a point of demarcation, both in our own lives and in the lives of those whom we invent, when we realize and then question something we have always thought of as fact.
