music & motions
Sometimes listening to music, I can see the lyrics in feelings while physically feeling the melody in a rush like lying in an inner tube in a river. Is this a false synethsesia? It can be overwhelming the in the car, and I wake up when I get there. The bands whose music causes this most seem to be the Verve, Youth Group, Elbow, and some Ryan Adams.
It's a beautiful escape.
3 comments:
Strictly speaking, no. What's happening is that your focus on the music is causing so much neural activity that it's spilling into related areas of the brain. Synaesthesia happens at a lower, sensory level instead of the higher emotional and cognitive level you are describing.
The ability to generate that kind of attentive loop in the brain is essentially an epileptic microseizure. Most people are capable of it, but relatively few ever develop the ability. Music, dance, and sex are the most reliable triggers, which is why so many kinds of ecstatic mysticism rely on one or more of them. In its extreme form, it *is* epilepsy. Not surprisingly, there is a high correlation between epilepsy and artistic and intellectual talent.
I have long suspected that this kind of ecstatic focus is what actually distinguishes us from the lower apes. The relatively high rate of epilepsy in humans is, IMHO, a sign that the trait evolved relatively recently and has not yet stabilized.
As far as I know, the only way to produce synaesthesia in someone not otherwise prone to it is to administer a relatively high dose of a serotonin-analogue hallucinogen. Mescaline is notorious for it, though that was not my experience with that particular drug. Mushrooms and LSD are also known to produce synaesthesia, more the former than the latter. As with all hallucinogens, however, individual experience varies widely.
Posted by Eric On Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 2:17 PM
I'm a bit worried now. Perhaps I shouldn't be self-inducing epileptic seizures while driving 65 mph on the highway.
Posted by Susan On Friday, February 02, 2007 at 4:48 PM
It is, in general, better to pay attention to the road, but if your neural spillage was a problem, you'd probably know it by now. ;)
Posted by Eric On Friday, February 02, 2007 at 9:29 PM
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