Learning from the Synesthetic

Today my husband and I went to the Tate Modern to explore the Paul Klee exhibition there. It was an exhibition I had previously been around with a friend, but it was my husbands first visit to this particular exhibition. As I went around I observed an interesting thing taking place, my husband became unusually absorbed with the art. I knew the look that spread across his face from almost as soon as we entered the first room what was going on....he was having a particularly strong synesthetic reaction to the art.

To explain to those not familiar with what synaesthesia is it can take different forms. There is a cross wiring of senses which occurs which can take various forms. For one synesthetic I know it takes the form of shapes being seen in response to stimuli, for another there is a feeling similar to electricity and for my husband it involves sounds having colours and colours having sounds, and sometimes textures, shapes also influence the tones of sound.

Klee's work, which was part of the Bauhaus movement, is full of shape and colour and so was something which induced a lot of response in terms of sound as well as visually for my husband. Thus, he was able to experience the exhibition on a level which most of us would not be able to. As we went round I asked him at various points to describe what was going on....something he was only partially able to do. As he said, "I would really need the right equipment to be able to demonstrate it" and even then I suspected that as somebody who is not a skilled musician it would be difficult if not impossible for him to reproduce what he was actually hearing.

The experience my husband had may have been nearer to the artists own understanding of his work than most of us can appreciate. Klee was a trained musician and Amy Ione has produced an interesting paper looking at how both he and Kandinsky were influenced by the interplay between sound and vision. Kandinsky as a synesthetic was using what he experienced according to Ione, whilst Klee she argues was conducting a range of experiments to help his art.

I was struck walking around how this deeper understanding and experience which could not fully be expressed in words is a similar experience of spirituality which some seem to have. There are individuals, often associated with varying monastic traditions, who appear to have access to an understanding or experience which goes beyond that which most of us have. Then, there are also those who have had visions or experiences of the divine which go beyond that most of us can or will experience.

One of the people who would come into this category who has influenced me is Julian of Norwich. Julian of Norwich was a visionary who became an Anchoress in the fourteenth century. She had a range of visions which helped her develop a deep and rooted spirituality which has sustained others through the centuries.

I believe we have much to learn from both the synesthetic experience and from those with an unusually deep spirituality but in order to do this we need to find ways to help them express that which on one level cannot be expressed.