Have you ever heard a color, or seen a piece of music? Maybe you’ve tasted a sunset, or felt a particular smell? If so, you might have synesthesia. It’s a phenomenon in which one or more sensory pathways blend in the brain to create a new experience. Researchers aren’t sure how many people have synesthesia, but estimates range from 1 in 200 to 1 in 20 people.
Elizabeth Schwartz is a freelance writer and music historian from Portland; Forest Mountain Lion is a musician from Eugene; and James Duckwell is a career and technical education teacher at Portland’s Roosevelt High School. They all join us to talk about their experiences with synesthesia, along with Mark Stewart, a professor of psychology at Willamette University who studies the phenomenon.
Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. We’re gonna do a deep dive into synesthesia right now. It’s a phenomenon where human senses, different realms of perception, cross over in the brain. So for example, when some people hear sounds, or taste flavors, or feel textures, or even think about numbers, they end up seeing different colors. But that’s just one version of this phenomenon.
I’m joined now by three people who all have different forms of synesthesia. Elizabeth Schwartz is a freelance writer and music historian from Portland. Forest Mountain Lion is a musician from Eugene, and James Duckwell is a career and technical education teacher at Portland’s Roosevelt High School. Mark Stewart joins us as well. He is not a synesthete, but he has studied this phenomenon as a professor of psychology at Willamette University. It is great to have all four of you on the show.
Elizabeth Schwartz: Happy to be here.
Forest Mountain Lion: Thank you.
Mark Stewart: Thanks.
James Duckwell: Thanks for having me.
Miller: Liz, first. What kinds of synesthesia do you have?
Schwartz: I have what I believe is the most common kind, which is, I think it’s called chromo synesthesia, where I see color when I hear chords. But I don’t see color when I hear individual notes, there has to be a harmonic underpinning for it.
Miller: Meaning, the notes have to play with each other in order to see color?
Schwartz: Yes. There has to be at least two and ideally more than two notes at a time – three, four. In jazz, it gets really interesting when you have clusters and things.
Miller: Forest is a musician and has a keyboard here. We can hear some chords as we go, so we can actually try our best to understand what you’re experiencing even though it’s such a subjective, inside your brain experience.
Schwartz: It’s very subjective.
Miller: Forest what about you? What versions of synesthesia do you have?
Mountain Lion: Sure. So this arose for me organically as a pretty young person. Basically, when I started drinking wine, it dawned on me that wine has highs and lows in the range of the flavor profile, and that they shift over time. So I found myself just drawn to the piano to express that. And over time, I’ve just gotten better and better at expressing the complexity within those highs and lows.
Miller: And it wasn’t until … you were how old? … when you had wine and felt the music, saw the music.
Mountain Lion: Probably late teens.
Miller: OK. And James, what about you? What version or versions of synesthesia do you have?
Duckwell: Yeah. So for me, it’s when I feel different textures, or specifically textures sometimes with temperature, but I’ll see different colors. So essentially, my sense of touch is linked to my sense of sight. It’ll evoke different colors and it’s usually focused on where I’m feeling things, and it kind of ripples out like a pond kind of thing.
Miller: The colors ripple out.
Duckwell: Yeah. So it’s a little bit more … if I’m touching, running my hand over something, it’ll be more intense, like at my finger pads or the tips of my fingers. And then it kind of mutes back to what I imagine is more normal as it goes out because I can’t really turn off my sense of touch necessarily.
Miller: Are the colors consistent? I mean, is any given texture – like, say, a rough texture – consistently a particular color?
Duckwell: Yeah. I’m a carpenter, primarily. I teach woodshop. And so smooth things are typically certain colors, but smooth concrete is different than smooth wood, is different than smooth plastic. I’m just speculating – I’m not like any kind of scientist along these lines – but I imagine at a deeper level, they’re probably not the same kind of smooth if you look close enough. Yeah, and rough stuff. And then water is always the same kind of colors but can change depending on temperature.
Miller: Because the temperature evokes the same sensation. In what way?
Duckwell: So it’ll kind of change the color … I studied art when I was in college and it’s very similar to color theory. The colder something is, the more blue, purple or green it is. And the warmer something is, the more yellow, orange or red it is. And so if I’m touching a mug that’s got hot water in it, as it cools down, it kind of changes color over time.
Miller: Mark, you are not a synesthete. I’m right about that, I think, right?
Stewart: That is correct. Yes.
Miller: How did you get interested in synesthesia as a professor of psychology?
Stewart: Well, I teach courses in sensation and perception, neuroscience, biopsychology. So the sort of foundational interest was there. But I, like many others back in around 2000 or more than 20 years ago now, started to revisit something that has been known to science for more than 100 years. And in many ways, it was tied to the introduction of an awful lot of behavioral paradigms that we could use to test for synesthesia, as well as some of the, today, what we consider more commonplace scanning technologies that help us to understand synesthesia from a neuroscientific perspective.
Miller: Do we know how many people experience some version of synesthesia?
Stewart: Well, interestingly, the early estimates were 1 in 2,000, to 1 in 200, to as low as or high, as it were, as 1 in 20. And one thing that can be said for certain is there’s something special about the number “two” there, pun intended. But yes, it is far more prevalent than I think I initially assumed. But if we go back to some of the initial writings of late-1800s, Sir Francis Galton first documented synesthesia in working with individuals at the time, what he described as patients. And so it is storied in rich history and one that I’m sure as we’ll talk about today, quite common among creative individuals.
Miller: I’m curious about the causality there, but we can circle back to that.
We asked folks on social media and for voicemails, for their experiences as synesthetes. We got this message from Amy Solomonson in Beaverton. She said she first remembers seeing colors appear with noises when she was about seven years old.
Amy Solomonson [voicemail]: When it first started happening and I was young, I just assumed everybody had it. So I didn’t talk about it much. And then the few times I started to talk about it, I started getting the weirdest looks. People were wondering what was going on with me. Did I have a problem? So I learned to just be quiet about it, but I always enjoyed it. It just really brought me great joy. Even though I think outwardly I was anxious.
Miller: Liz, was there a moment when you first remember experiencing what you now know is synesthesia or was it just with you from the beginning?
Schwartz: No, there’s definitely a moment. My primary instrument is my voice. I’m a singer. And singing, unless you’re one of those Tuvan monks from Tibet that can do overtones, most singers can only produce one note at a time. So since my synesthesia is triggered by multiple notes played simultaneously, it didn’t occur to me. I didn’t realize that I had this experience.
When I was nine, I started taking guitar lessons. And I remember the day that I successfully played my first G chord. A “G” for anybody who plays guitar is kind of a stretch, and especially for a nine year old hand. So it was harder to play than some of the other chords I’d already learned. I managed to get my hand around it and I strummed. I heard each note individually and then I heard how they all kind of came together. The most amazing forest green color kind of enveloped me at that moment. And ever since then, the key of G major has been forest green for me.
Miller: I’m curious what that moment felt like. Out of nowhere, there was an aura of green?
Schwartz: Well, I think at the time I was less focused on the green than I was on the fact that I was getting the chord from it, because it took some time for my hand to master the stretch and get it right. Plus, I was learning to play on a nylon string guitar which has a fatter neck. So it’s more of a stretch than learning on a steel string guitar. So at the time I didn’t really think about it. It wasn’t front and center of my consciousness. And of course, at nine, I’d never heard the word synesthesia. I didn’t know it was a phenomenon. Like Amy, I just assumed everybody experienced this kind of thing. You hear a chord, you see a color, hey, presto. But it wasn’t until I got to be a bit older, and learned that it was a documented phenomenon, that I realized that what I experienced hearing chords was not what other people experience.
Miller: How did people react when you told them that?
Schwartz: Well, as we were talking about before we started the show, synesthesia isn’t a natural topic of conversation that just comes up casually. Like, “Hi, I’m Liz. I have synesthesia. How are you doing?” It doesn’t really work that way. So it’s not like I’ve talked about it a lot with lots of people. Because of the nature of my work, I’ve interviewed a number of composers. Composers tend to have synesthesia, I think, in probably higher numbers than the general population. And we compare notes that way and that’s sort of interesting. But, for people who don’t have synesthesia, when I would describe it, their eyes would get really big and they’d look really fascinated. They’d say, “whoa.” I think there was mostly a sense of wonder and “Wow, that’s really interesting. I wish I could experience that.”
Miller: James, what about you? Was there a moment when you first remember experiencing this or has it just always been a part of your consciousness?
Duckwell: Yeah. I feel it’s always kind of been a part … I grew up in the middle of the Mojave Desert in California and there were open lots around our house. I would just go out and play in the sand. I would just stare at it, sifting [it] through my fingers and I think my parents started to think I was a little bit of a space cadet at the time. I remember that, but it was kind of like that same thing. I was like, oh, look, like sand running through my fingers, [it] looks orange.
But it wasn’t until, I think it was third grade when we were doing texture etchings, rubbings with crayons and stuff. I told the teacher, “well, that’s the wrong color for that texture.” And the teacher said, “there’s no wrong color for this.” I was like, “no, that tree bark should be more purple.” And the teacher was just very condescending to me at that point, and just kind of patted me on the head and was just very dismissive about it. And once again, I didn’t know anything about synesthesia. I just thought this was kind of the thing and I was always just kind of like a quiet kid to begin with.
So it’s like Liz was saying, I didn’t talk about it much. I talked about it less after that. But it wasn’t until I went to college, and started studying art and started studying painting, where I learned about Kandinsky, who was a synesthete, a famous synesthete painter. [Kandinsky] had the same … would hear sounds and see colors, and would do all these abstract paintings. And then I realized, maybe it isn’t just related to that. And I kind of started looking more and talking to a few people. But I still don’t talk about it much.
Miller: Let’s listen to another voicemail. This is Diane Cooper in Beaverton, explaining what she sees when she hears particular noises.
Diane Cooper [voicemail]: It’s really interesting when it happens. There’s like a flash of pattern – usually off-white on a dark background – if I’m sleeping. Or it’ll be off-white on whatever the background is that I’m looking at, like a computer screen. And it’ll be a geometric pattern, but it’s never two patterns the same. Some are zigzag, some are hashmark, some are dashes, some are looped. It’s always really very beautiful. I see it for about a second and then it goes away.
Miller: Mark, how much do researchers now know about what’s going on inside the brains of people with synesthesia that makes these sensory pathways cross each other?
Stewart: Well, that’s a great question. And while we certainly know a lot more than we did when investigations began in earnest back in the early-2000s, there’s much yet to be determined. But it can be said that there’s a neurological basis to the phenomenon. There are specific brain regions that are active in synesthetes while being imaged and engaged in various cognitive and perceptual tasks that are different than non-synesthetes. So it would certainly be accurate to say that much of the phenomenon is revealing itself more and more to neuroscience.
Miller: What are the most common types of synesthesia? Liz said that hearing colors is maybe near the top of the list. What are some of the other ones that we haven’t talked about yet?
Stewart: Well, arguably the most common goes under the formal heading of graphene color, which is this idea that you see a letter or a number, a digit, and you experience a color. Now, that’s somewhat counterintuitive because that sounds within the sense of vision and in that way. It very much is, but what your callers describe, and what Liz and others are describing, more of a cross modality, that’s something that we’re seeing to be far more prevalent than previously thought.
And I did want to circle back. I believe Amy was the first caller. And then Liz said this, as well as James. I’m sure Forest has the same experience. It really can’t be overstated just how surprising it is to synesthetes to learn that “not everybody has this experience,” or I think as Liz was quick to say, “I just assumed everybody else did.” And that’s something that I’ve seen in working with synesthetes for the past 20 years, whether they’re much older and more often learned to keep it to themselves, whether in school or among friends, or when they’re quite young and they would have no concept whatsoever as to the relevance of the 1950s, 1960s, being associated with various hues.
Miller: Well James, along those lines, I’m curious what message you took when you were in that classroom and the teacher was like, no, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re wrong about this experience with the textures of the trunk. What was the message you took from that?
Duckwell: Yeah. I think first and foremost I was just embarrassed. And at that point, it kind of started opening up to me that maybe not everybody sees what I do the same way or maybe not at all. I was in third grade and I think I was just very confused by it. So I didn’t talk about it because I was so confused about it and I didn’t know … I didn’t have the vocabulary or to know how to ask further questions. I was a very quiet kid. So I wasn’t the type of kid to push back on those kinds of things at all. Because it was so embarrassing, I kind of learned to keep it to myself. And it took a while before I even … I don’t think I told anybody about it until I was probably in college after that.
Miller: Let’s listen to another voicemail. This is from Lev Liberman in Portland who was a professional saxophone player for many years.
Lev Liberman [voicemail]: When I improvise, which I do a lot of the time, I usually close my eyes. And I navigate my way through the ensemble improvisation by seeing the music as a kind of a landscape that I’m navigating my way through. It’s got some combination of terrain and architecture. It’s not exactly literal and visual. But feeling my way through the music, figuring out what kind of a melodic line to create or how to slot into the harmonies feels like making my way through unfamiliar terrain.
Miller: Mark, on some level … I would just put a caveat with this question that I’m not sure that categorizing personal experiences is the most important thing to do here. But from people, from your perspective, is there a line between, say, an intense, beautiful visual imagination and what we’re calling synesthesia?
Stewart: Well, there is. And it’s becoming more and more clear. Obviously what you’re doing here is trying to reconcile what is arguably extremely subjective, through a more objective lens. And that’s what makes scientific inquiry into the phenomenon that much more challenging. We typically have to resort to what we call N-of-1 research designs. You’re working with people on an individual basis and then trying to make broader generalizations about the phenomenon itself.
I know from personal experience in interviewing literally hundreds of synesthetes, there is a point where I have to listen – no pun intended – with a fairly discerning ear, so as to be able to kind of extract the question of interest. That’s not me being disinterested in any way, but there is an awful lot of layering, it would seem, that is in part arguably acquired through these lived experiences over time, with the basic mechanism of hear, see, taste, see – these kinds of combinations.
Miller: Is there a way to test for synesthesia in a sensory lab?
Stewart: There is actually. And as was mentioned before, in its simplest form, the graphene color, there’s a simple adaptation of what we call the Stroop Color Word phenomenon where we can present a letter or number in either what we call congruent – that is that matches the synesthetic experience, or the digit, or the letter – or incongruent color combinations. And the Stroop paradigm is one that perhaps many of your listeners will be familiar with. You see the orange truck driving down the highway and it’s written in the word yellow, the shipping company. So in the congruent or incongruent color, for the synesthete, versus those of us that are non-synesthete, there is no difference in reacting or responding to that in a behavioral paradigm test.
Miller: Forest, to go back to you – you’ve done, for some number of years now, something you call Vinisthesia. What is it?
Mountain Lion: That’s right. So, my experience with synesthesia started when I began drinking wine. It was an intuitive sense that the character of the wine through time could somehow lend itself to the piano. So it started as basically a party trick for friends. I’d sit down at the piano with a glass of wine and give my interpretation of it. And it started sort of very rough.
Over the years, I’ve honed it to the point where I’m not only capturing the objective contour of the flavor profile of the wine through time … I mean, every time you take a sip of wine, the flavor lasts a particular amount of time and everybody experiences that pretty much the same. But most wines also grow from low to high. We even describe wines as having particular notes, right? Some wines have kind of earthy lows and some have shimmering highs, and usually they sort of blossom and bloom from low to high and then cascade back down. So I can capture all that really easily.
Then what’s come more recently is an understanding that kind of ties it all together, which is that every wine has an emotion and it’s sort of an emotion you can’t express with words. But we’re all having this reaction that I think is best described as an emotional reaction. So some wines are serious, like a Cabernet can be so big and almost brash, whereas, like a Rosé or something can be so light, or a Riesling or something can be so sweet and joyful.
Miller: Can we hear an example of pieces you’ve composed in the past based on any particular wine?
Mountain Lion: Sure. Absolutely. So I’ve started a project, as you mentioned, called Vinisthesia, where I’m partnering with wineries to offer their wines interpreted as music specifically. And one of the wineries I’m partnering with is Iris down in Eugene. This is their 2021 Pinot Noir.
[Piano music Playing]
Miller: Liz, when you heard that, did you see any colors?
Schwartz: Yes.
Miller: Which ones?
Schwartz: You’re in A flat, right?
Mountain Lion: That’s actually G.
Schwartz: No, it isn’t.
Mountain Lion: It should be. Unless … yeah, it should be.
Schwartz: It sounded like A flat. My perfect pitch is going. It sounded kind of like the way the sun shining on a meadow looks, kind of a golden ripply, because he’s playing arpeggiated notes, where instead of playing block chords where all the notes are sounded together, he’s playing one note at a time. And it kind of ripples the way the wind ripples through a field of wheat, for example.
Miller: I was watching Forest, not you. But your eyes were opened?
Schwartz: Uh-huh.
Miller: What were you looking at?
Schwartz: I wasn’t really looking at anything in particular. I was just experiencing the music and seeing the visual. One of the things that my synesthesia triggers in me is that when I see colors, they’re not static colors. It’s not like looking at a blob of paint on a piece of paper. It’s moving. It’s as if I was standing under a waterfall and the waterfall is a color. So it’s sort of flowing all around me and it changes.
Miller: Does it obscure the world in front of you?
Schwartz: No, no.
Miller: So you see both – you experience or see the rippling colors and the studio in front of us at this moment?
Schwartz: Yes.
Miller: Both.
Schwartz: Yes.
Miller: Forest, you’ve been a good enough sport to let us try this experiment because normally you try wines. As I understand it, the music comes to you, you compose it and then you perform it for other folks. Here, I brought one wine that I just found in my cabinet that somebody at some point brought to a party. I have no idea if it’s any good, but let me give it to you.
So do you mind sampling it …
Mountain Lion: Absolutely.
Miller: … and then seeing what it evokes for you. And then if we can hear what you taste.
Mountain Lion: Absolutely. Let’s do it.
Miller: Do you want me to tell you what it is?
Mountain Lion: Yeah, that would be great.
Miller: OK, and thanks whoever brought this to my house - The Butterfly Effect. It’s a 2020 red wine from Australia. It said … do you want to know the percentages of varietals?
Mountain Lion: Hm. Yeah.
Miller: OK. Here we go. 73% Petit Verdot, 18% Carminer, 6% Chardonnay and 3% Merlot.
Mountain Lion: OK. Mm, OK. So, gosh, this is an interesting one. I think that this is probably in A minor. It has such strong tart notes and it’s not very sweet. And it exists higher in the range, mostly it’s kind of clustered around here [Piano music]. And there’s definitely, I’m going to bring out the nine [Piano music] like this, which is really kind of, I think, captures exactly the type of tart that this has and how pointed it is.
So, let me take another sip and get the profile through time. All right, it’s very linear. It approaches, over the course of about six seconds and then it subsides over about six seconds. So I’m gonna make it sort of blossom upward [Piano music], and then it kind of lingers as it subsides away and it may grow even a little bit more tart.
Miller: I have a whole bottle here if you need it.
Mountain Lion: OK. As it grows more tart as it subsides away, I’m gonna add in a four like this [Piano music].
Miller: Liz, what are you hearing as he plays you the wine that he experienced in his mouth? That came out wrong, but you know what I mean.
Schwartz: I know what you mean. Not to evade the question, but actually I felt more of an emotion or a mood rather than a specific color. It was contemplative and sort of ruminative. But as you were adding different notes, the ninths and the fourths and the notes that are not part of the regular triad, it’s kind of like the way thoughts work. You begin with a thought, you start thinking about it and then that thought sort of begets another thought. You go off on a tangent and then that tangent takes you somewhere else. And that’s kind of what I was hearing in your sound signature there.
Mountain Lion: Cool.
Miller: Forest, I have one more drink for you. This is not a wine. This is a tea which I know you don’t do that often. But I don’t know, I thought we could try it.
Mountain Lion: Let’s try it.
Miller: OK. Here it is. This one I thought you could just sample …
Mountain Lion: Yeah. Oh, wow, it is a really complex tea.
Miller: Yeah. OK, he’s drinking it.
Mountain Lion: Oh, interesting. I’m definitely getting a profile from it. Oh, wow. OK, so I’m thinking C major with a suspended four but also the three involved, like something like this [Piano music] and maybe a nine too [Piano music].
Miller: All right. That’s a lapsang souchong, a super smoky black tea.
Mountain Lion: Yeah, it’s delicious.
Miller: It smells like a campfire from four feet away right now, still. Liz, did anything from those chords?
Schwartz: Not so much. I think it may be because Forest is playing arpeggios rather than blocks. I tend to see harmony in blocks.
Miller: If he could play a simple chord progression, which one is reliably most evocative for you?
Schwartz: Oh, well, they’re all pretty evocative. Well, my favorite colors tend toward the violet end of the spectrum. So anything that goes from lavender to purple is a good place for me.
Miller: So, what chords should we have him play, like two chords, say?
Schwartz: E to B.
[Piano music]
Schwartz: Yep.
Miller: So you’re getting lavender to purple there.
Schwartz: Lavender to purple.
Miller: Among other things, you write the concert notes for classical music concert goers. And you have to listen to a lot of classical music, I imagine, on recordings and you also, I imagine – it’s your life – go to a bunch of concerts. Is it distracting or is it additive to have this extra layer of perception that goes along with music?
Schwartz: Well, it doesn’t feel like an extra for me because I’ve always had it or at least I’ve had it for a very long time. So it just feels like a normal part of the listening experience. So it’s not a distraction. I think, in fact, were my synesthesia to go away, I would feel really diminished. I think the whole experience of hearing music would be very diminished. It would go from being a three or four dimensional experience to being very two dimensional, very flat.
Miller: Flat, all of a sudden.
Schwartz: Yeah. Not flat, musically, but flat. Just hard to explain, without depth.
Miller: I mean, like going from binocular vision to just one eye.
Schwartz: Yeah, I would assume. Your sense of perception is suddenly diminished.
Miller: James, as a carpenter, as a shop teacher, a CTE teacher at Roosevelt High School, how does your synesthesia affect the way you do your job?
Duckwell: Especially in the carpentry classes, like teaching the finish process – how to sand, how to apply finish – sometimes I gotta remind myself, all right, they can’t see the colors. So I have to try and figure out how to take that out of the equation. Or at least, I guess I’m assuming some of them might, I don’t even know. And so I have to take that out of the equation kind of thing. And so oftentimes I won’t be, all right, you gotta get this purple to green before it’s good, right? I’m not going to say something like that. I gotta be like, OK, so this spot right here, you need to go back to this grit and try and sand it a little bit more.
Miller: So you’re regularly translating your experience to your normy students.
Duckwell: Yeah. And also realizing, because I’m hypersensitive to it, having done this for decades at this point, at what point do I need to make sure the students are doing it at an introductory carpentry class. I have to rein myself in sometimes too and say, oh no, this is like they did really well for the first time, finishing things or something like that. Because I also get a lot of groaning sometimes like, no, you gotta keep sanding or you gotta take this back kind of thing. But it’s also really interesting and kind of fun to see when the students get that really glossy, smooth finish sand and they [are] like, oh this is what you’re talking about. Yeah, but trying to figure out ways in which it’s going to be a more universal way to talk about it.
Miller: Mark, I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, that artists seem to be more likely than the general population to experience the world in this way. I’m wondering if the thinking is that that’s causal, that being a synesthete makes you more likely to take in the world in an artistic way, or want to put art out into the world, or if it’s the other way around?And how do you sort that out? How do you think about that?
Stewart: Yeah, it’s a great question and one that continues to vex researchers in this area, as well as individual synesthetes. It’s important to note, at least when we were talking beforehand, very much part of one’s identity … and so much caution needs to be used when describing what sometimes becomes kind of a chicken and egg type question. Am I creative because I’m synesthetic or am I synesthetic because I’m creative? And at risk of hedging, the important point here is that because synesthesia is part and parcel of who the individual is, there’s not much benefit to trying to disentangle whether or not the prevalence or greater prevalence among sometimes what are called creative types is necessarily driven one direction or the other.
This goes all the way back to something Elizabeth said a moment ago. I’m trying to simply highlight this idea of part and parcel of one’s identity, when non-synesthetes like myself and presumably yourself, Dave, when we’re asked to conjure what red looks like for a number, or what a color associated with a particular letter looks like, synesthetes often describe this as seeing something in their mind’s eye, automatically, consistently. And so when you hear Elizabeth say, well, when this note is played, I see, the closest we can get to that is if I were to ask you, OK, so a stop sign - ah, well red. Well, how did you come to that? Did you see red in your mind’s eye or do you just know from pairing, from association, from learned response is that in fact, the redness of a stop sign is in fact for a synesthete, the potentially redness of a number or a letter?
Miller: Let’s listen to one more voicemail. This is Calista in Portland. She says that she hears music based on visual stimuli and has a different physical reaction based on whether the sounds are pleasant or grating.
Calista [voicemail]: It can be a really overwhelming thing because it can’t be turned off. It’s always there. So for me, relief is essentially a sensory deprivation chamber kind of experience. It can be really challenging to sleep, to drive, to do things in downtown Portland with the traffic. It can get very overwhelming, very, very quickly.
Miller: None of you so far - Forest, Liz, and James - have talked about your experience of the world anywhere close to that way. But I’m curious if you two ever feel overwhelmed by your senses?
Schwartz: Sometimes. One of the perks of my work is that I get free tickets to the performances of the ensembles that I write for. Oftentimes, I will only go to the first half and leave in intermission because I’ve just reached sort of sensory saturation. I don’t wanna take in anymore because it would just muddle what I’ve already experienced. So quantity is not always the best thing. If you’ve had a really intense listening experience with concomitant color, sometimes that’s enough, and you don’t need to stay and hear the Beethoven Symphony that comes after an intermission because you’ve had a complete experience.
Miller: Elizabeth Schwartz, Forest Mountain Lion, James Duckwell and Mark Stewart, thank you so much. It was great to have all of you on the show.
Schwartz: Thank you so much. It was great to be here.
Mountain Lion: Thanks for having me.
Duckwell: Thank you.
Stewart: Yes, thanks for having me.
Miller: Elizabeth Schwartz is a freelance writer, a music historian and a musician. James Duckwell is a CTE teacher at Portland’s Roosevelt High School. Forest Mountain Lion is a Eugene-based musician. And Mark Stewart is a professor of psychology at Willamette University.
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