synaesthesia | synesthesia (noun)

…in psychology, the evocation of one kind of sense impression when another sense is stimulated, for example, the sensation of colour when a sound is heard…

     Space is essentially silent and without air as a medium, sound cannot travel. If her mind resonated a sound, it would never shut itself. Every motion, every notion of the world around her translates it’s meaning in her head. Every word emits a colour with each utterance. Burgundy. Sienna. Fuchsia. Lilac. With the wind around her, fluttering her hair under the sun, she traces scents of nature, of different personalities. And space is essentially dark, illuminated only by the faint pinpricks of distant stars. There is life in each substance, each atom combines into a molecule of a certain matter. To her, each of these atoms contains a distinct trait and sees more in them than most people. The star she sees sparks brighter in the darkness of her mind. She could even make depths out of a voice she hears. There is always something more emitting and her eyes produces such extensive sensations.

“It appears that your daughter is diagnosed with a perceptual condition. It’s not a serious one, just something that people will have to adapt to. Let’s say like a lisp. Something as mild as that.”

    Hwang Stephanie stared blankly at the towering man over her and tried it out on her tongue. Synaesthesia. Her doctor laughed at the girl’s pronunciation and instead conversed with her parents. She only ever heard the word when she was a child, whom had been too young to understand. It was a condition that always followed her whenever it comes to interpreting. Whenever the music teacher told her to play the cymbals, she refused and said that it was too ‘bright’ for her to handle. Each individual alphabet has a distinct colour, like S, which is an orange hue and T is pastel pink. She understood the meaning of a Monday blues, literally. Sometimes she really hate math because some numbers just don’t add up; like the number 9 and 4, and they just don’t work well with one another. It was something special that she has the ability to associate sounds and colour to grapheme.

Synaesthesia was also the cause of her amenability. As a daughter of the gentry, she followed everything by the rules. Moreover, being an only child Stephanie was given full exposure to the arts and was taught to pursue the business aspect of it. Gradually, she adapts to the conformed society and learned the ‘right’ way to see the world. She studied well but in return, preferred performance.

She finds a charm especially in dance. Their lightweight selves appears nimble to the eyes of an audience but despite the soles of endless years in training, her passion towards it almost brings her into a state of hypnosis. As her eyes close and body moves in elegance, in some ways she is able to feel herself even clearer and thorough. It was only through dance that she finds comfort in her surroundings, to be able to grasp it all at once. If she could say it, dancing makes her at ease - perhaps a meditative medium. Like her, she’ll often ask you: Can you hear the colours?