I don’t think I’ve focused any of my writing on my synesthesia, and that’s going to be resolved right here. My mom and I shared this quality, and we would always revel in it. She’d call me with a song she’d just heard and ask me to listen to it, requesting that I tell her what I saw when I heard certain notes of the melody play. One time it was autumn leaves changing. One time it was ticking clocks. And both times, she had pictured the EXACT same thing. The lyrics had nothing to do with either of these things. It was kind of insane.
It’s not like we were always spot on– we’d visualize different things a fair amount of the time, but we’d let each other in on them nonetheless. And it wasn’t always about music; the synesthesia we shared presented itself in a number of ways that I love thinking about. I know that her favorite pairing of words was “inky black sky” because it made her feel something– and that’s a phenomenon that resonates very closely with me. She knew this. (Why wouldn’t she?!) There’s another sensation that’s much more common than the latter, and something I think everyone relates to in some form or another– the memories or feelings that wash over you when you see, taste, hear, smell, or feel something. I have too many to count, but the most resonant are the following: A warm breeze on a cool day. I close my eyes and I’m back in Italy, and not one soul can tell me otherwise. Put a glass of wine in my hand and honey, we’re in business. Though, full disclosure, the glass of wine is probably already there. The phrase, “See you around the ranch.” It’s not all that common, I know– but my boss’s boss used to say it at the end of every single Teams staff meeting during the pandemic, and I instantly feel as though I’m under duress when I hear it. I’m begging you not to use this against me. SZA’s “Ctrl” album. I was living in Prague for the semester when it reached its height. When I hear the song “Drew Barrymore,” I’m instantly transported to the apartment on Jungmannova where I’d eat grapes and cheese while drinking boxed wine as I wrote my weekly opinion columns for Anglo American University’s student magazine. It was an online forum, but they’d issue a print version at the end of each semester, and the magazines would litter the halls of the campus and the tables at its cafe. I distributed one to all of my friends, and brought a copy home for each member of my family. Mezcal. When I taste it, I want to simultaneously throw up, laugh, and cry. When I worked as a freelance writer after I graduated college, I would go to Bruhäus on Wilshire Blvd in Santa Monica and clack away at my projects there. My favorite bartender, whom I had an immense crush on, would bring me my G&Ts for free even though I was the only patron at 2pm on a Wednesday– but the spot popped off in the evenings, thankfully. With my attendance record, if not for their other faithful regulars, that bar might never have made it into the black in 2019. The bartenders grew tired of my regular order, and began handing me mezcal drinks instead. I hated them. I loved them. I drank them. The smell of angel food cake. In retrospect, I don’t even think my mom baked it all that often. But when she did, the kitchen was enveloped in the aroma of what a sweet-tooth with no patience would imagine as heaven. (If it wasn’t clear, I am the sweet-tooth in question.) When I smell it, I immediately return to that deep red kitchen in our first house, where my parents would sit on the counter and the island opposite each other with their feet propped up on either side, talking about their days. The sunrise. I don’t see this often anymore, as I’ve fallen into a deep and passionate love affair with a full night’s sleep– but when I do get to witness it, I think of my days on the rowing team in college. 4am alarms, and dead silent car rides on our way to Newport harbor, violently juxtaposed by full-on chatter and top-of-our-lungs concerts on the 7am ride back to Chapman after our endorphins had set in. Five days a week, we’d begin our row on the channel in pitch black, only to be welcomed throughout practice with finger paintings on the horizon in real time, all from a bright orange, pink, and purple palette. These occurrences only scratch the surface, as I’m sure would be true for most with only six examples. But the idea of them, the gut feeling of them, cuts deeper than is often discussed. Each of these feelings attached to the senses produce the emotions, the desires, and the chaos of the original events– and inherently, a longing. It’s one of my favorite aspects of life. I treasure the memories and the feelings that are evoked in these circumstances. We are all growing and changing, but something has to root us to the way we once felt and the people we once were. And thankfully, that something can be thousands of things, all around us, all the time.
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