a little story when I was 16 years old I
got myself this brand-new at navy blue
slider phone and the first thing that
you do in 2007 when you get a new phone
as you customize your ringtone or at
least that was the first thing that I
always did so one night I was sitting
with a friend and we were scrolling
through my iTunes whenever I came across
a song that I had heard before and that
was cheater by Michael Jackson and as I
was listening to it I thought yes this
song is perfect so I turned to my friend
and I said yes this song is perfect it’s
orange it matches my blue phone
perfectly I’m confused
he said wait what do you mean it matches
and I honestly thought that he didn’t
understand complementary colors so I
began explaining to him that blue was on
the opposite side of the color wheel to
orange meaning that they were
complementary and that meant that they
looked nice together and he instantly
corrected me saying yeah no I get that
but what do you mean the song is orange
and in the moment I knew that something
was off but I honestly had no idea it
had anything to do with me
how could someone not be seeing music as
color so I turned to my friends and
family saying hey you guys see music is
color too right and literally no one
else did everyone was confused I was
super confused and I honestly felt very
very alone
but fortunately around that time I was
getting interested in neuroscience and
psychology and I happened to stumble
into what was an explanation for what I
was experiencing and that was a
neurological condition called
synesthesia
so in synesthesia your brain is
essentially cross-wired where one
sensory or cognitive pathway leads to
the automatic and involuntary response
another sensory cognitive pathway and
this can manifest itself in many forms
from may be tasting words to assigning
personalities to different letters and
soon I found out that I actually had
three variations so the first is
one of the most common varieties and
that is called grapheme-color
synesthesia and in this form every
letter and every number that I
experience essentially has a color code
so for example my M is always magenta
which is great because my name is
Melissa McCracken and I love magenta my
a is always light blue and my 3 is
always lime green and this happens every
time I read a book every time I look at
a sign and every time I calculate a math
formula which is pretty much never any
more my second form is called spatial
sequence synesthesia and through this
anything that is presented in a
sequential format such as your numbers
or your days of the week or your months
of the year exist in a particular point
in space around my body so if I were to
count from 1 to 100
I might start right here with 1 and
it’ll trail its way up to a hundred over
here or if I were to meet you on a
Tuesday I might imagine that meeting
happening about here because I always
experience Tuesday here and lastly I
have chroma Stasia
or music 2 color synesthesia and this is
the form that presented itself as I was
trying to choose my ringtone and through
this I experienced music as this flow of
color and texture kind of shifting
around as the song progresses or it
might change completely as a new
instrument is produced introduced or as
a chord is produced and all of these
variations are very clear and concise
and automatic and completely involuntary
and to be clear they are not
hallucinations I can drive and listen to
music which is a question that I’m asked
fairly frequently it in no way inhibits
my actual visual field and the best
comparison I have for that is the way in
which you might recall a memory so for
example if you have a memory happening
and you are envisioning it as you’re
driving your car you’re not going to
freak out thinking oh my gosh I can’t
think of this anymore I can’t see the
road I’m going to crash my car
it might just exist in this
filter that is sort of floating above
your head or wherever you may normally
visualize a memory so after learning how
I how differently I was I also learned
how frequently I had just had to
describe these differences to everyone
else and honestly it didn’t really make
sense for me to describe them after all
I was visualizing I was verbalizing a
visual so being an artist at heart I
thought okay I’m going to paint this I’m
gonna show these depictions to people so
I’m going to show you these and we have
one up here right now but before I get
into it I need to explain to you how I
actually show music in a tangible form
and I do this by taking the three to
four minutes that I see flowing along
and bringing it into a concise
two-dimensional image by incorporating
the elements that I feel are most
imperative and most important in
representing the song as a whole so the
first one here that I have up is called
little winged by Jimi Hendrix and you
guys might be familiar with this one and
this one’s very very near and dear to me
because it’s honestly one of my first
memories of synesthesia and also one of
my first paintings of synesthesia so
when I was little my brother used to
platt practice playing the guitar and I
would sit and listen to him but as I was
listening I didn’t really pay attention
to my environment but instead I would
pay attention to the colors that I was
seeing in the room and that was these
swirls of white and pink and blue and
they would all kind of develop together
and move as a song progressed but
alongside his guitar notes that added
these strikes of gold and yellow so next
I have a song called True Love Waits and
this song is by Radiohead and if you
guys are familiar with this song it’s
kind of a sombre tranquil song which
creates these white and kind of blue
backgrounds but it has this bouncing
ball sound and I don’t know if you guys
are familiar with it I wish I could play
it for you but it creates those clumps
of blue and purple there but as they sit
through
the song they kind of dissipate out and
white next this is a little bit
different it’s more focused on the verb
of the singer and this is a Lauren Hill
song called x-factor and her voice to me
is very warm which creates these pink
and brown kind of tones that swoop up to
through to the right but she also has
this attitude and this style and that
creates that extra little flare of white
on the side next this is a song called
Lenny by Stevie Ray Vaughan and I was
really wanting to focus on the first few
notes of that song and it’s just a few
guitar notes and they play out in this
reverberating way which is very full and
dynamic which creates all the colors but
as they reverberate out they kind of
spin around in this circular motion
which creates all the movement in the
background there and last I have a song
that I’m sure a lot of you are familiar
with and that is Bach’s cello suite
number one and the cello to me can only
be represented by these deep and
saturated jewel tones this so this is
mostly made of those tones but the first
few notes of that song kind of sit in
this crested and nested kind of way and
that’s what creates the curve dynamic
dynamic in this picture so as I made
these paintings they were kind of my
babies and I was really protective over
them and I didn’t want to share them
with the world
but as I showed them to my friends and
family they gave me the confidence to
then move it to a more global scale
and it’s kind of crazy how we can do
that so easily with the internet so I
shared my work with sites like M ger and
bored panda and as they gain more
traction and circulation on those sites
they made their way to places like CNN
and MTV and O Magazine and not only did
this allow me to turn my hobby in my
condition into a full-time career but it
also allowed me to see these unfiltered
responses from people around the world
and some of these responses were people
saying oh this is exciting and this is
something that I’ve never experienced
before thank you for sharing or
sometimes people were a little skeptic
thinking that there was no way that
synesthesia could exist but my favorite
response is were the ones from people
who also had synesthesia and a few of
them would be excited because they
thought yes these are the visuals that
I’ve experienced before I finally get to
see them in a somewhat tangible way but
there were also these people who had
synesthesia and they had no idea that
this was somewhat of a normal occurrence
they thought that they were completely
alone and they almost thought that as
being a defective sort of experience to
go through that something was wrong with
them so when they saw my paintings they
thought oh my gosh I’m not alone and
nothing is wrong with me and that was my
favorite one of all so as I went through
all of this from learning how I was
different to sharing it with the world
to turning it into a full-time career I
realized a lot of things and one in
particular is that from day one we live
our lives through one perspective our
own everything we encounter is filtered
through this lens of our personal
experiences our relationships are
developed and adapted beliefs are
natural skills and shortcomings and any
other nuances that are specific to who
we are as individuals and as these
dynamics kind of embed themselves into
our lives experiences it makes it
difficult to imagine a world in ways
that we have not directly experienced
and of course this can be a huge problem
not only does it affect our ability to
empathize but it also removes us from an
accurate assessment of who we are as
unique individual individuals so I would
like for you guys to take the time to
please explore who you are and share
that with the world because you 100% are
way more unique than you imagine you
have thoughts and ideas floating through
your mind that although they seem very
very normal to you because you
experience them day in and day out they
could be absolutely remarkable to the
rest of the world and necessary for the
rest of the world to hear so share this
with the world because you have no idea
if you might turn it into a career or
use it as a tool for education or
somewhere bring solace and relief to someone that feels alone thank you