associative number synesthesia
Ever since I can remember, I’ve associated specific colors and personalities with numbers. It’s so natural to me that I don’t think I ever mentioned it to anyone until recently. (My mom will probably read this and be all WTF?) Looking back, I wonder if this particular quirk might be partly responsible for my general failures in mathematics. I would sit at my desk trying to work problems, but there were all these dialogues going on between the numbers and their personalities. Some of them didn’t like each other much, and some were afraid of each other, and some were comfortable. I didn’t like to make the ones who didn’t want to be next to each other move closer together.
These days I don’t imagine those narratives and stories when I work with numbers, but their colors and personalities have remained the same over the years. I mapped them out for Ms. Frizzy a few weeks ago for a project we might work on. (I made this in PhotoShop while working on a small screen, so please overlook the formatting issues and typos.) My favorites, by the way, are 1, 2, 7, and 8. 8 is a problem, but you just sort of end up loving her.
Comments
that's just wild! have you seen this: http://www.auracolors.com/ ? i happened upon it at borders one day and looked at it for a moment. i love your numbers though.
Posted by: idgie | November 29, 2007 12:05 AM
It's funny you should mention this. I have this too (and also with letters) and I just mentioned it to my mom for the first time ever in 42 years! And she did, indeed, look at me like I was crazy and say, "You WHAT??" I don't know how it never came up before, since we talk about art, color, and editing all the time. I guess I assumed that since we have so much in common in all other aspects of our personalities and tastes, she had synesthesia too. Guess not! (Btw, my color map is completely different from yours.)
Posted by: Thoroughly Educated | November 29, 2007 5:50 AM
Fascinating.
If you're not familiar with it already, you absolutely need to check out the beginning of Chapter 4 of John Crowley's wonderful novel The Solitudes (formerly AEgypt): "For Pierce Moffett, as far back as he could remember, numbers--the ten digits--had each a distinct color; and while he could perceive those colors in, say, telephone numbers or equations, they were most vivid to him when arranged in dates. Thus, the colors of his numbers became the colors of events--the colors of rooms where treaties were signed and swords surrendered, the color of courts and coats and carriages, of mobs and massed armies... Two was a deep green, somehow silken. Three was heraldic red, and four battle grey..."
Posted by: Mike | November 30, 2007 6:27 PM
My daughter tells me has similar associations with numbers. She also has letters that she likes and dislikes, as well as sounds. I discovered this by accident a few weeks ago, and I'm going to ask her to write about it!
I have a strong visual image of numbers in sequence. Zero and negative numbers go left and then descend into darkness. 1-8 are in the light, going right. From 10-12 they go up, then start to climb at a 45 degree angle through the teens. It gets darker. At 20 they begin to ascend, but veering slightly right on the climb up to 100. Then they take a right and move off horizontally into the dark. I always see numbers in this relation, although when I think of individual numbers, it's as if I am looking at them in close-up or from a slightly different angle, but they are always in this shape.
Posted by: Joanna | December 1, 2007 9:40 AM
Idgie - I'm not so much of an aura person, but my best friend is. I should look into that when I get a second.
T.E. - Isn't it odd that it never occurred to us to mention it to anyone? It just seemed like mentioning breathing to me, though. Why would you talk about it unless something is wrong?
Mike - FASCINATING. I'll order it from the library postehaste. Thanks for going to the trouble of transcribing.
Joanna -- That's really interesting. I've never run across someone who experiences such spatial and light sequencing. Now that you mention it, I agree about the negative sequence; after about -5 or so, they fade and I can't really see them anymore.
Posted by: Krista | December 1, 2007 11:32 AM
YouTube has some great synesthesia videos:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oQLm11A08uQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZDN07_z_cTE
The numbers in these videos, like yours, not only have colors but personalities.
Posted by: Clancy | December 3, 2007 6:49 AM