Synesthesia

In Wikipedia it says that Synesthesia is a “neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensoryor cognitive pathway.”
Basically as I understand it, this means that people are able to see sound as colour and also as wiki says, see letters and numbers as colour as well. This usually found in people that are on psychedelic drugs, or after a stroke, people who have suffered with the conseqeunce of becoming blind and deaf.
The synethesia is also refered to as a “neurological condition”. To me this makes it sound terrible but as I’m lead to beleive it does not interfere with normal daily function but thats where I dissagree, because all though it does not effect people in a bad way it can be an advantage.
It cant help but make me think that it would give them problems at school as they would have conversations with people but experience it in a totally different way but be to young to know why.
Teachers at my primary school thought that I was difficult to handle because I had a short attention span to other pupils. Really it all boiled down to me imagining something out the window or drawing a picture on my maths book.
Maybe if I had the problem of wanting to think things up all the time then maybe they had that problem too if not worse. They imagine colours without even trying, it just comes naturally. But the system of school and education does not understand this way thinking.
Some of the known composers and musicians have been said to have this condition. Which is why their sound is so different and unconventional to that of your everyday composer and musician.
I cant imagine how that would feel to be able to see music in your mind. The music would not be composed in a conventional way but as colour and then translated into sound. That to me is, life making people creative. This unusual ability to experience music on a visual level should be an embraced form. But the way in which the world is today it is hard for such a person to excel in life. Other than through base subjects such Maths, English and Science.
I wonder if a person could learn that ability?
People have created images of pulsing lines and swirls that are to show the flow of colour like that of the screen on Windows Media Player but to actually put a colour to a specific note takes this to a different level.
Pink Floyd have attempted on many occasion to portray sound through moving colour. In their concerts you lay on the ground as flying images of colour and light fly over you. Another example of this use of combining sound and colour comes from a composer called Duke Ellington who was able to turn Timbre into colour.
An interesting use of music and art was David Hockney who used music to paint stage scenes but strangely never used the method in any of his other works.
I also like to paint while listening to music and in my Art Foundation I tryed to paint music and the emotion I percieved from it. It was an interesting experiment and I ended up with some fantastic use of line and colour. It was a series of 10 paintings ranging from music such as R’n’B to Heavy Metal Rock.
From this I think I will check to see if my cousin has it when I get home at christmas. Hey if he does he could be the next amazing musician of our time lol.
Till next time cya!