“When I was about six, my mind did something wondrous. Whenever I encountered the name of a day of the week, it arrived already coloured or patterned, always the same, as if the word itself embodied the shade. Sunday was dark maroon; Wednesday, a sunlit golden yellow; Friday, a deep green. Saturday was different. It appeared as a shifting pattern of overlapping circles in silver and grey, like bubbles rising in a glass of sparkling water … synaesthesia makes ordinary life marvellous.”

– Sydney Perkowitz, Nautilus: The Beauty of Crossed Brain Wires, August 2021

It is extraordinary to experience synaesthesia. I have sound-to-colour synaesthesia: when I hear music in flow, I see colours and patterns and feel profound emotion.

Why do we use the word synaesthesia to describe so many kinds of linked senses? The term is actually the opposite of anaesthesia …instead of an absence of sensation, there is an abundance …

During three years of touring the Musica Viva in Schools improvised show Colours of Home through Australian primary schools, I realised how much more common synaesthesia is than most people realise.

Children would quietly self-identify; some showed me their artwork. Often it was the quiet ones—the wallflowers—whose experience of the world was so vivid and personal that it was hard to explain, share, or sometimes even cope with. I recognised myself in them. It can be stressful.

People should know about this. It would save a lot of people from being depressed.

Neurodivergence is as integral to humanity as biodiversity is to nature. It is far more prevalent than we acknowledge, and it has driven countless discoveries, artworks, and successful enterprises.

The linked sensations of colour and harmony can be indescribable—so compelling that many synesthetes feel driven to express their experience through art:

• Poetry: Rimbaud, Baudelaire
• Music: Rimsky-Korsakov, Sibelius, Quincy Jones, Miriam Hyde, Leonard Bernstein
• Pop music: Lady Gaga, Pharrell Williams, Billie Eilish, Lorde, Jimi Hendrix
• Art: Kandinsky, Van Gogh, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington (yes—both painted)
• Literature: Zamyatin, Virginia Woolf, Keats

Consider these familiar titles: Purple Rain, Mood Indigo, Rhapsody in Blue … people with synesthesia are eight times more likely to be artists, because there is an incredible response or reaction to art, and a unique vision to be shared. Every synesthete is different, more unique than fingerprints apparently.

One friend of mine, at the age of three, asked her mother, “Why is Monday blue?” Her mother laughed, and she never mentioned it again—until her sixties. She still experiences it. This is a remarkably common story.

The flow state of synaesthesia can enable unique visions, intense emotion, and extraordinary focus. It can fuel creativity and skill—but it can also overwhelm. That is why I feel so strongly about supporting the children I met, their teachers, and anyone who finds life intense, through the shared power of music.

My mission is to share music’s transformational power and high-performance techniques, using the proven cognitive benefits of creativity, and to advocate for greater public awareness of synaesthesia and neurodiversity.