Sounds, Shapes, Ussers, and Auralia
First, a shameless self-promo: the short story "Silkod of the Drenn" has been published in Journ-E: The Journal of Imaginative Writing. A stand-alone “Tond” story, it is also a (possibly unsolved) call to adventure. Scroll down to find Volume 1, Number 2. Also, nobody's reviewed Grendul Rising yet, though here's an interview about it. Also, check out this blog's sister, The SoundScroll. It's about music. Okay, now that that's out of the way, here's the actual blog post.
Discussion Part One
So this time I’m going to look at a psychological/sensory phenomenon that occurs in one (possibly two?) of my own novels, even though I have never actually experienced it. Or have I? As usual, this blog will review a couple of books, and the point of one of them is that maybe I actually have experienced the phenomenon in question.
Auralia’s Colors
by Jeffrey Overstreet
It’s refreshing to read a novel of high fantasy that does not draw its concepts of good and evil directly from the Lord of the Rings (I say that despite enjoying Tolkien very much). Here, those ideas are more nuanced; what is clearly a repressive totalitarian state, for example, appears to have begun with good intentions (as is often the case in reality). Of course, the truth will out, in this case in the form of Auralia – who brings with her an explosion of colors, mystery, creativity, as well as phraseology that is so poetic that I occasionally had to re-read a paragraph because I’d been paying more attention to the sound of the words than what they meant. This beautiful writing reaches a pinnacle of rapture as the secret is revealed. (But I won’t go farther into that, to avoid spoilers.) The Expanse is a self-contained, self-referential world, adding authenticity to the novel. Worth a read, not only for the sheer beauty of the language, but also for its message of creativity and building up rather than tearing down.
Discussion Part Two
Though beautifully written and with a great moral, that book is somewhat peripheral in my discussion today. The explosion of colors, though only a metaphor for creativity in Overstreet’s work, is the main point for what follows in this blog post.
Wednesday Is Indigo Blue:
Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia
by Richard E. Cytowic and David Eagleman
A fascinating account of a sensory phenomenon experienced by a minority of people, and the elucidation of a controversial theory concerning it. Before continuing, however, I should mention that there are a couple of passages that make me wonder about the veracity of this “scholarly” work: there is an illustration that seems to be mislabeled (though proofreading could fix that), a comment about the “bad attitude” of schizophrenics (!), and a related statement that schizophrenics tend to take metaphors literally (which is common in autism, not schizophrenia). However, neither author is a psychiatrist and the book is about synesthesia, not schizophrenia, so I suppose these errors (bizarre though they may be) can be overlooked at least until another edition comes out.
After describing quite a number of extremely varied cases, the authors present their theory: all of us are latent synesthetes, though the crossing of the senses occurs below the conscious level. There are several chapters on experiments, genetics, results of brain scans, and the like, explaining how this is so. My initial reaction, though, was, “Nonsense! If the perception occurs below consciousness, then it is not really perception!” But my hasty dismissal was in itself nonsense – as the authors explain, most mental activity (including perception) is subconscious first, before being admitted into awareness. Also, while reading, I couldn’t help but remember certain traits of my own mind that may indicate traces of synesthesia. For one, I tend to picture large-scale musical compositions as textured shapes, with the louder (not faster or slower) parts as a rougher texture. The shapes are vague (I can’t really say whether they are angular or round, 2-d or 3-d), and imagining them is a deliberate act (not automatic like “true” synesthesia) but this visualization is at least a related phenomenon. Many of these imagined shapes are beautiful, but at least one – the first symphony of Mahler – seems ungainly and awkward. It is my least favorite of Mahler’s pieces for that reason! (I might add that I have always thought the textures are the result of childhood familiarity with how vinyl records look – and the authors mention synesthetic imprinting, which would “work” in this case.)
A digression: In another music-related incident, I remember once being taken aback that the label of a CD of Messiaen’s “Turangalila Symphony” was pastel green – the piece is loud and delightfully clattery, and as I commented in a blog, “I’m no synesthete but I know the Turanganlila Symphony isn’t pastel green – it’s day-glow orange and red-pink with flashes of ultraviolet!” End of digression.
In yet another example, not musical this time, I (and apparently a lot of people) tend to visualize numbers in a line proceeding in the direction of the language that I read (the so-called “SNARC effect”). So am I really a closet synesthete? Are you? Are we all? The answer is up in the air, and the authors comment that metaphors such as “up in the air” also indicate a mixing of senses (in fact they trace metaphors and language itself to older, no longer extant, forms of synesthesia). The question is worth pondering, and the book is worth a read. If one ignores those aforementioned mistakes.
Discussion Part Three
Synesthesia, with its associated floods of color, becomes a topic in my next novel, “Sea and Sunset Lands” (Book Two of the MadStones Tetralogy). The character S’Enrik is a synesthete. Hints of this already occurred in “Grendul Rising” (MadStones, Book One), though S’Enrik is, up to this point, a somewhat distant Gandalf-like character. Book Two will delve deeper into his mind. His synesthesia will be, at first, merely a side note to his personality; but as the series progresses it will be more important. I’m being vague here on purpous — I want to avoid spoilers — but I can say that it has something to do with the mysterious Moon-Horse on the cover of Book One. (Thanks to Cassander Garduna for that illustration, by the way — he doesn’t know the its portent either…!)
S’Enrik’s synesthesia, though, is completely fictional, and I had to make a chart of what sounds are associated with what colors in order to write it. That may not be the case with “ussers”. Ussers (with two S’s, not “users”) are, for anyone who’s followed my writing, those enigmatic domed rectangles that appear in the story of Tony Bradner. Geometrical, dreamlike, vaguely ominous, somehow alive; they show up (seemingly from nowhere) as a signal that things are about to get weird in this “magical realist” novel. But I didn’t make them up for the novel. They’ve been with me for a very long time. I could call them one of my private symbols, though I don’t really know what they symbolize. I first made them up before I could say complete sentences; I wasn’t more than two years old. Only recently (and after I wrote the novel), I’ve pieced together their possible origin. (They don’t really seem like what a two-year-old would imagine, and unlike the other denizens of my early childhood paracosm, they aren’t clearly animals.) There’s the possibility that the dome could be the vestige of a vague preconscious recollection of a mother’s breast, but what about the rectangle? I suspect, after reading Cytowic and Eagleman’s book, another origin. The book claims that all children are synesthetes up to a certain age; I have always associated ussers with a coughing noise (and also with a haunting, puzzling treble hoot). They could be a synesthetic response to either someone coughing or to the owls hooting in the trees in my back yard when I was under the age of two; that would be, in this case, a synesthesia that manifests as shapes, not colors.
So I’ll leave it at that. Tony Bradner’s story, is, of course, a strange book (probably a lot of my readers didn’t want to follow me down that particular rabbit hole) and the possibility of half-remembered mixing of senses does little to “unweird” it. However, there was a hint in Book One of MadStones that Tond may be involved somehow, and I plan to flesh that out as the series progresses. The synesthesia will be a part of the larger Tond milieu.
Postscript
This blog is about words as well as books, so here's a word: Culfong. Don't look it up; you won't find it anywhere. It means "synesthesia" (particularly the types where sounds and/or written characters are perceived as having colors), in the made-up Emb language. The actual Emb word is kalfã; the final A is nasalized, hence the NG at the end in the English spelling. It appears to be related to the English words “color + find” (i.e. to find colors in things); Emb is a long-lost cousin of English that migrated to Tondish shores. It is also the last of the Tondish languages I’ve developed. But that, of course, is the world in my books.
Discussion Part One
So this time I’m going to look at a psychological/sensory phenomenon that occurs in one (possibly two?) of my own novels, even though I have never actually experienced it. Or have I? As usual, this blog will review a couple of books, and the point of one of them is that maybe I actually have experienced the phenomenon in question.
Auralia’s Colors
by Jeffrey Overstreet
It’s refreshing to read a novel of high fantasy that does not draw its concepts of good and evil directly from the Lord of the Rings (I say that despite enjoying Tolkien very much). Here, those ideas are more nuanced; what is clearly a repressive totalitarian state, for example, appears to have begun with good intentions (as is often the case in reality). Of course, the truth will out, in this case in the form of Auralia – who brings with her an explosion of colors, mystery, creativity, as well as phraseology that is so poetic that I occasionally had to re-read a paragraph because I’d been paying more attention to the sound of the words than what they meant. This beautiful writing reaches a pinnacle of rapture as the secret is revealed. (But I won’t go farther into that, to avoid spoilers.) The Expanse is a self-contained, self-referential world, adding authenticity to the novel. Worth a read, not only for the sheer beauty of the language, but also for its message of creativity and building up rather than tearing down.
Discussion Part Two
Though beautifully written and with a great moral, that book is somewhat peripheral in my discussion today. The explosion of colors, though only a metaphor for creativity in Overstreet’s work, is the main point for what follows in this blog post.
Wednesday Is Indigo Blue:
Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia
by Richard E. Cytowic and David Eagleman
A fascinating account of a sensory phenomenon experienced by a minority of people, and the elucidation of a controversial theory concerning it. Before continuing, however, I should mention that there are a couple of passages that make me wonder about the veracity of this “scholarly” work: there is an illustration that seems to be mislabeled (though proofreading could fix that), a comment about the “bad attitude” of schizophrenics (!), and a related statement that schizophrenics tend to take metaphors literally (which is common in autism, not schizophrenia). However, neither author is a psychiatrist and the book is about synesthesia, not schizophrenia, so I suppose these errors (bizarre though they may be) can be overlooked at least until another edition comes out.
After describing quite a number of extremely varied cases, the authors present their theory: all of us are latent synesthetes, though the crossing of the senses occurs below the conscious level. There are several chapters on experiments, genetics, results of brain scans, and the like, explaining how this is so. My initial reaction, though, was, “Nonsense! If the perception occurs below consciousness, then it is not really perception!” But my hasty dismissal was in itself nonsense – as the authors explain, most mental activity (including perception) is subconscious first, before being admitted into awareness. Also, while reading, I couldn’t help but remember certain traits of my own mind that may indicate traces of synesthesia. For one, I tend to picture large-scale musical compositions as textured shapes, with the louder (not faster or slower) parts as a rougher texture. The shapes are vague (I can’t really say whether they are angular or round, 2-d or 3-d), and imagining them is a deliberate act (not automatic like “true” synesthesia) but this visualization is at least a related phenomenon. Many of these imagined shapes are beautiful, but at least one – the first symphony of Mahler – seems ungainly and awkward. It is my least favorite of Mahler’s pieces for that reason! (I might add that I have always thought the textures are the result of childhood familiarity with how vinyl records look – and the authors mention synesthetic imprinting, which would “work” in this case.)
A digression: In another music-related incident, I remember once being taken aback that the label of a CD of Messiaen’s “Turangalila Symphony” was pastel green – the piece is loud and delightfully clattery, and as I commented in a blog, “I’m no synesthete but I know the Turanganlila Symphony isn’t pastel green – it’s day-glow orange and red-pink with flashes of ultraviolet!” End of digression.
In yet another example, not musical this time, I (and apparently a lot of people) tend to visualize numbers in a line proceeding in the direction of the language that I read (the so-called “SNARC effect”). So am I really a closet synesthete? Are you? Are we all? The answer is up in the air, and the authors comment that metaphors such as “up in the air” also indicate a mixing of senses (in fact they trace metaphors and language itself to older, no longer extant, forms of synesthesia). The question is worth pondering, and the book is worth a read. If one ignores those aforementioned mistakes.
Discussion Part Three
Synesthesia, with its associated floods of color, becomes a topic in my next novel, “Sea and Sunset Lands” (Book Two of the MadStones Tetralogy). The character S’Enrik is a synesthete. Hints of this already occurred in “Grendul Rising” (MadStones, Book One), though S’Enrik is, up to this point, a somewhat distant Gandalf-like character. Book Two will delve deeper into his mind. His synesthesia will be, at first, merely a side note to his personality; but as the series progresses it will be more important. I’m being vague here on purpous — I want to avoid spoilers — but I can say that it has something to do with the mysterious Moon-Horse on the cover of Book One. (Thanks to Cassander Garduna for that illustration, by the way — he doesn’t know the its portent either…!)
S’Enrik’s synesthesia, though, is completely fictional, and I had to make a chart of what sounds are associated with what colors in order to write it. That may not be the case with “ussers”. Ussers (with two S’s, not “users”) are, for anyone who’s followed my writing, those enigmatic domed rectangles that appear in the story of Tony Bradner. Geometrical, dreamlike, vaguely ominous, somehow alive; they show up (seemingly from nowhere) as a signal that things are about to get weird in this “magical realist” novel. But I didn’t make them up for the novel. They’ve been with me for a very long time. I could call them one of my private symbols, though I don’t really know what they symbolize. I first made them up before I could say complete sentences; I wasn’t more than two years old. Only recently (and after I wrote the novel), I’ve pieced together their possible origin. (They don’t really seem like what a two-year-old would imagine, and unlike the other denizens of my early childhood paracosm, they aren’t clearly animals.) There’s the possibility that the dome could be the vestige of a vague preconscious recollection of a mother’s breast, but what about the rectangle? I suspect, after reading Cytowic and Eagleman’s book, another origin. The book claims that all children are synesthetes up to a certain age; I have always associated ussers with a coughing noise (and also with a haunting, puzzling treble hoot). They could be a synesthetic response to either someone coughing or to the owls hooting in the trees in my back yard when I was under the age of two; that would be, in this case, a synesthesia that manifests as shapes, not colors.
So I’ll leave it at that. Tony Bradner’s story, is, of course, a strange book (probably a lot of my readers didn’t want to follow me down that particular rabbit hole) and the possibility of half-remembered mixing of senses does little to “unweird” it. However, there was a hint in Book One of MadStones that Tond may be involved somehow, and I plan to flesh that out as the series progresses. The synesthesia will be a part of the larger Tond milieu.
Postscript
This blog is about words as well as books, so here's a word: Culfong. Don't look it up; you won't find it anywhere. It means "synesthesia" (particularly the types where sounds and/or written characters are perceived as having colors), in the made-up Emb language. The actual Emb word is kalfã; the final A is nasalized, hence the NG at the end in the English spelling. It appears to be related to the English words “color + find” (i.e. to find colors in things); Emb is a long-lost cousin of English that migrated to Tondish shores. It is also the last of the Tondish languages I’ve developed. But that, of course, is the world in my books.
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