An Orange Song about a Milkmaid

             (Sorry for the above-seen image's awkward alignment!)

          I was six years old when I first suspected that something was up. I was a piano student. My teacher was my neighbor who lived a few streets down from me and I loved her. One day after a lesson, she sent me home to practice some right-hand-only kiddie ditty whose accompanying lyrics had something to do with a happy little milkmaid.

This was a full quarter of a century ago, yet I remember with perfect precision how it was to sit down on my home’s dark and polished rosewood piano bench, reach out to touch the ivories, and play that milkmaid song for the first time. Why is this fact of any particular consequence? In my lifetime of a piano career, I’ve played thousands of songs at least once through, and no first time has ever been as memorable as the little milkmaid song.

In and of itself, it was never that exciting to listen to. The melody was rather ordinary. In fact, it was extremely familiar; the first two identical-twin stanzas of “Good King Wenceslas” were written all over it, in the key of F major: F, F, F, G, F, E, D, C, D, C, D, E, F, F (repeated twice).

Lots of Fs in there. Here’s where I’m getting to the real point behind the milkmaid song’s impact on me. Because of the frequent recurrence of the “F” (and possibly partially because of the natural way any six-year-old piano student meticulously pounds on a keyboard in order to convince herself she’s properly not missing any of the notes) a certain color had the fighting chance to form – in not just my abstract mind, but also seemingly in my very literal body and soul. There was orange. Everywhere.

I recall initially feeling slightly weirded out by the bizarre coloration sensation. Mind you, I couldn’t physically see it with my anatomical eyes. But it was almost as though it were a tangible sheet of bright, cheddar-toned gift-wrapping crepe paper, deposited somewhere between the cornea and the intricate behind-the-scenes retinal zone where an otherwise naked eye could not reach.

Whatever minor wariness I might have held to, regarding the strange connection between the music and the inexorable colors, faded away when I realized whatever was happening did not hurt. However, as I grew older—and especially as I progressed through the successive grade levels in school—certain academic subjects had gradually become tougher and tougher for me to grasp. Perhaps I can pin a selection of those personal learning difficulties onto the theory (or, in some cases, the fact) that I should have studied better. But now, as I’m conducting my reflections, I cannot help but wonder if a decently-sized culprit propelling the problems was this kaleidoscopic neurological phenomenon that had been going on since maybe birth.

Numbers and letters. My ABCs and 123s. No, they were not hard to memorize. From what I think I can remember from my childhood is that they were easy as cake for years. Everything seemed more colorful in elementary school, and I think it helped. I think it’s intended to help. But once it was time to move on to junior high and thenceforward, the more black and white and gray it all got. And naturally so; after all, the more mature you became, the less the visible vibrancy – am I right? Muted and neutral attire in the adult professional workplace, for the win. (Unless you’re me, and your colleagues look at you each day and exclaim, “You look like springtime!” Even in the dead of gloomy winter.) Anyway, I don’t know how heavily upon the color thing I should place the blame, but my inclination to be a bit curious is strong.

I invite you to delve with me into what even the simplest aspects of literacy and mathematics have always been like for me. Just a smidgen. Just to give you a taste. As a preamble to our exploration, I shall tell you, at last, the name of the beast we are dealing with (who’s actually a pretty pleasant beast; I’ve grown quite fond of him): synesthesia. Drop that word into your Google search box, hit “Enter,” and behold the highly conspicuous definition that will appear before you: “…the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body.”

Purportedly there is an array of rarer and, dare I say, funkier types of synesthesia in people out there somewhere. One example would be when this guy over here watches that guy over there get pinched on the arm, and defenselessly feels his arm get pinched, too (mirror-touch). Or, when so-and-so hears the name “Jessica” and automatically tastes tuna fish (lexical-gustatory).

So even though I really dig tuna, if I had to taste it every time I heard one of the most common girl names in the book, I’d probably leave a trail of tears everywhere I went. Sad life. The varieties of synesthesia I have, however, are oftentimes very enjoyable. “Oftentimes” instead of “all the time” because occasionally they can pose challenges. Which is where the reading, writing, and arithmetic come into play.

First of all, the alphabet. When I was a kindergartener, around the same time I began piano, my teacher introduced each of the 26 English letters on its own cute and crafty poster. Whatever the letter, it was printed humongous on the page, was typically sans-serif, and was assigned its own unique color. All the posters were pinned and arranged into a perfectly horizontal line way up high where the wall met the ceiling. My classmates and I progressively memorized each vowel and consonant, in order, as the year went on. Again, age six was eons ago, but I still recollect my premier internalization of the alphabet-in-full as one of the brightest, greatest events of my life.

But the colors… The colors stayed with me. They never became severed from the letters. It’s wholly different from remembering trivial things like “that poster of the U back in kindergarten was purple,” because if the fate of the universe lay upon me, I could not tell you what color that U poster actually was. But I can tell you what color U conjures in the depths of my eyeballs now. Deep, deep, dark blue-green. And it’s always been that way. That’s the clothes it’s always wearing anytime I see it anywhere. In anything I read. The “No U-turn” sign at the intersection. The “under my umbrella-ella-ella” song when I see it listed in my iTunes library.

And the rest of the letters that dwell with the U in its home word? They each have their own eternal color, too. “Church.” When I read “church” anywhere, it’s a blast in the face of a clean-cut sequence of ROYAL BLUE!! HAZY GOLDISH-TAN!! DARK BLUE-GREEN!! NAVY BLUE!! ROYAL BLUE AGAIN!!! HAZY GOLDISH-TAN AGAIN!!!!

Yes, so this is what reading is like for me. I can’t guarantee that it’s the key reason why I’m not a fast reader (I never have been), or why I speedily develop sleepiness when I sit down on a cozy recliner to explore a novel, due to sensory overload and my brain knows not what else to do besides shut down into blissful unconsciousness. Audiobooks are currently proving to be more effective with me, because there is no distracting multicolored typography in sight. Other helpful reading methods include following along in my book as I listen to the narrator, or assuming the role of narrator myself.

Indeed, my native language in written form is a glorious rainbow, possessing far more shades than the mere basic seven. The shades and the shapes make a handsome team. Writing is a beautiful art to me, and I love the practice. But on the other hand, going back to revisit my writings is an entirely separate animal, for it draws upon the powers of an entirely separate mental muscle.

Performing mathematical exercises has always been similar to prolonged reading as far as sensory overload goes. Just as each lingual character comes with its own diverting, vivid color, so do all numerical ones. There is no difference. Here’s where I highlight the correlation between primary “See Spot Run” stories and fundamental “4+4=8” equations: since they’re so minimalistic, with as many visual complexities excluded as possible, they never were too tricky for me to wrap my mind around. My cognitive abilities and resilience increased as I grew from toddler to adolescent, from college grad to businesswoman; thus, I’ve little by little been able to handle more and more complicated issues. And so it’s not like I was doomed to be utterly inept at anything harder than basic bedrock. It just always took me a certain extra measure of effort, which remains the way I must abide sometimes.

All in all, I dub my synesthesia as a blessing and a curse. My grapheme-color synesthesia, as I mentioned before, is a beast, but it’s normally fun to navigate. And my chromesthesia (sound-to-color) is really fun to navigate. I discover new dimensions of it all the time. It helps me adore the world around me. Every timbre of every musical instrument has its own rich hue, and when you combine multiple instruments together, it’s amazing.

Every note in an octave, like that orange F from the milkmaid song, comes in a gorgeous package deal of either marigold yellow, lime green, warm soothing maroon, et cetera. Thanks to this principle, I find joy in the dazzling melodies and harmonies created by others, and the purest delight in creating and composing music of my own. (Add-in: Since I wrote and submitted this essay months ago, I've come to realize that my grapheme-color and chromesthetic realms collide when I read music to sing or play with my hands. Each note's individual appearance, when notated on the bass or treble clef, has become developed in my mind as something like a painting you'd gaze at in a museum, and over time I've memorized what each painting is supposed to look like. In piano specifically, I think this has helped my fingers to usually know exactly where to go on the keyboard, as the "paintings" pop up into view; therefore, sightreading is often a breeze... OMG have I completely lost you? Probably. Gosh, I'm sorry! My brain these days (aka all the days)...)

Miraculously, just as no two human thumbprints are the same, no two human voices I’ve ever heard in my life have been identical. Each has its own inimitable colored tone. This may not currently be fact to anyone else on earth, but it is to me, which may be all I’ll ever need – knowing it enables me to better see each of my fellow travelers on this mortal journey as someone truly special, and that’s what counts.

           Synesthesia is an interesting ride. It has its pros and cons. It’s been both handy and hindering. Most days it’s actually quite subtle. Sometimes even months will pass before I recognize again that it’s been metaphorically standing there the whole time. I’m glad I decided to document my neurological condition in such a way as this. It was beneficial to analyze, as I feel I have acquired a sturdier understanding of myself. With this account, I hope to have been able to supply the reader with an exclusive glimpse into a remarkably vibrant world that so often slips by unnoticed and invisible.