This article was originally published in
Proxart Magazine, Spring 2012. Get your copy here.
When I was 19 years old, I found myself sitting in front of the store manager and district manager of a Starbucks, interviewing to be promoted to the role of supervisor. I’m not sure how they handle things these days, but back then, they were pretty serious about actual coffee. Being knowledgeable in bean regions, roasting, brewing, and tasting were at the top of the list. When we had arrived to the tasting portion of the interview, I brewed a French press of my favorite East African beans. As I sipped the drink (brewed perfectly, of course) and looked back to my superiors, they asked me to describe the coffee to them in my own words.
Now, I’d like to pause for a moment and ask you to remember a time where you were speaking to someone in perfect English and of sound mind, but their response was a look of utter confusion. Got it? Okay, great. Now, back to my story.
“When I sip this drink,” I began, “I see bursts of yellows and orange gradients radiating up and outward, like a sun just before it begins to set.” The district manager paused mid-sip. “And scattered throughout these warm waves, there are tiny purple and blue triangles that sparkle as they float around.” My store manager set her mug down. “Yeah … I think that’s what I usually see.” They were speechless for a moment before telling me they had never come across a barista who described coffee visually. And all I could respond with was, “Wait. That’s not normal?”
The use of metaphor in our daily lives has proven to be an extremely effective tool for communicating ideas. It bridges the gap between the obvious and the abstract in a way that seems so frequently to feel serendipitous. How are we able to relate two things that, at face value, appear to be a million miles away from each other? Where does one find the nerve to compare a beautiful young woman to the gigantic mass of hydrogen and helium radiating at the center of our solar system? We cut out the dozen steps between the two because we understand both entities so well and just skip to the comparative punchline. This is middle-school curriculum, with which I won’t waste anyone’s time.
But how does one make the connection between emotions like anger, jealousy, and happiness with the colors purple, green, and turquoise? Where are the universal and obvious comparisons between the two? These links were articulated by the late Jimi Hendrix, whom many believe experienced a phenomenon called synesthesia. This neurological condition manifests itself by way of cross-wiring unrelated sensory information in the brain. Words have flavor, numbers don colors or rest on a spatial plane, and emotions invoke sound.
Although these experiences may sound bizarre and potentially tormenting, a surprisingly large group of people live with one or more of the dozens of synesthetic manifestations that have been documented to this day. What’s even more peculiar is that, because these sensations exist from their earliest memories, many synesthetes are completely oblivious to the novelty of their own perceptions until they are directly referenced and sought out by others.
But synesthetes have been “outing” themselves throughout much of history without even knowing it. Paintings, sculptures, music, and poetry are all external results of internal emotions. Because we cannot transplant a feeling from one mind directly into another, we find ways to best translate it for others to understand (some ways more daring than others). As one searches for the most effective tool for sharing their thoughts, he seeks out the connections from that thought to other things. This search has led Hendrix, Vincent van Gogh, Beethoven, and even Lady Gaga to discover their own sound-color synesthesia, where musical notes invoke specific colors, and vice versa.
So the next time you feel strangely compelled to compare your favorite song to a candy bar, you resent the number nine’s snarky disposition, or you visualize the next week of your life as a physical terrain with peaks and valleys, stop and examine those connections a bit further. It might be the inspiration you need to make your next endeavor a more creative and unique experience.