Thursday, November 29, 2007

So I figured out what's wrong with me

For as long as I can remember, I have always been preoccupied with what I believe is, the insignificant minutiae of language. To be precise, I'm talking about letters: singularly, or in combination, either spoken or written. For instance, I have always ascribed gender to each letter in the alphabet. A is a lady, kind of young, very pretty and extremely friendly and helpful. R, on the other hand, is a real ice queen; she castrates men, especially S, who I always regarded as her loyal yet hen-pecked boyfriend.

Then, there's the combination on letters, which spurs a bit more emotion in me. I'm incredibly sensitive to the sounds of certain syllables. Like, the song "Ay Bay Bay" by Hurricane Chris really really rubs me the wrong way. I can't stand the cadence of that combination of syllables as he raps them. It conjures up an emotion in me that's kinda akin to being caught masturbating, or something equally as mortifying.

I always thought that there was something seriously wrong with me. Like, some sort of cognitive disorder that was probably harming my ability to understand language like other people. But, I was intrigued by the theory of it, and wanted to get to the root of this behavior. I totally just read that I'm a Synesthete, and my particular brand of synesthesia is called "Ordinal linguistic personification". According to the Great Wiki, I have the tendency to associate ordered sequences with personallities. Apparently, 1 out of 23 people constantly and involuntarily is prone to synesthetic associations, and its prevalent in a lot of history's most prolific artists.

I haven't felt this special in a very long while (!) and I can feel some new project on the horizon that will explore this in greater depth. What's interesting about this tendency, I feel, is the many ways synesthesia can manifest itself in any individual, and how deeply your associations are steeped in your own personal mythology.

More on this to come! I'm going to do some reading!

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