I see colors and vibrations in my mind which represent musical textures. It was not always this way. 35 years ago, I began singing in a band. Untrained, I torched my vocal chords in order to hear myself over the loud teenagers I was playing with. A stupid high school rock band who’s biggest achievement was a fairly decent rendering of Ballroom Blitz. I strained and strained to keep up with the electrified instruments, and in that straining I began to see two things.
The first, is identical to the little squiggly worms that most people have seen before whilst driving really tired. I think most people have at one time or another been hypnotized by the road enough to see those little squiggly worms in the side of our vision. Well, I started seeing them while singing too.
The second, is when I saw red. Yes, you know the old saying “I saw red”… usually attributed to when someone is so angry that a filter of red comes over their vision, well I began seeing that shade of red come over my vision when I strained too hard singing.
Since then, I’ve been able to envision all forms of music into shapes and vibrating textures. A flute becomes a dancing white ribbon. A base is a large dark liquid pool rippling across its surface in conjunction with the notes being played. A soloist guitar becomes waves of smokey color wafting through my mind.
It’s not unlike some of the best music visualizer programs that are available for computers. But it’s not the same either. The visions in my head are much better defined with depth in their textures. It’s like I’m swimming in it and able to move around in the most inner spongy core. I don’t find it hard to explain at all. But I can understand that it may be difficult to understand. I’ve heard that some people have this same relationship to mathematics, seeing all math as colors and shapes. I can’t do that… yet.