Ever heard of synaesthesia? In case you haven't, it's when you experience one sense in terms of another. For instance, different musical scales might 'sound' like red or blue, people's names could 'taste' of anything from beeswax to earwax and days or months would mean various types of personality. The phenomenon has even entered our everyday language. We know what a 'loud pink' T-shirt is, but pink isn't a sound. Similarly, a 'bitter cold' wind doesn't taste of anything.
As you may have noticed, synaesthesia makes connections between seemingly unrelated senses, just as metaphors link apparently unassociated concepts. In fact, according to The Five-Minute Writer, research shows that synaesthesia, creativity and use of metaphor may share the same neural basis, so not surprisingly, it's more common among composers, artists and writers. It crops up in books: Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby talks of 'yellow cocktail music', while the teenage protagonist of Mondays are Red, a synaesthete, describes sadness as having 'an empty blue smell.'
You can use it too. The next time you listen to someone speaking, try to think of what their voice is like in terms of food. I think Barack Obama sounds like runny caramel, but John McCain's speech comes across as soft cheese. This might seem weird when you first have a go as you don't normally do it but it's a lot of fun, as well as inspiring! Who knows, you might find something that can go straight into your next novel...
Gender:
Points: 1564
Reviews: 181