Hi Mathew,
My dad says he realized as a little kid in school. The teacher said “close your eyes and imagine a yellow dog sitting by a tree”. He couldn’t understand what she meant. For him when he closed his eyes there was nothing. I spoke to him about your article today. He said he had only had two smudges of colour in his dreams ever. Writing and drawing are the way he ‘imagines’ things.

I didn’t know I had synesthesia until I watched a ‘Nature of Things’ documentary about it in my 30’s . Until then I thought everybody experienced things that way. I did a Synesthesia test developed by Simon Baron-Cohen, as a part of some study that confirmed it.

For me a letter has a number and a colour associated with it. For example; the number three the letter ‘r’ and red all are the same thing, 4 and ‘c’ and green, 2 and ‘d’ are yellow continuing on for the rest of the alphabet. This made math hard for me as a child because I would sometines write an ‘r’ instead of the number 3.

I paint and the vividness of the colors has a powerful effect on me. Painters Kandinsky and Van Gogh were supposedly synesthetes. I have always wondered if many of the expressionist painters also were, because of the way they use colour.

I think the taste synesthesia is the strangest. If I imagine eating chocolate cake, I can taste it. I write poetry and I think these extra sense combinations help with the imagery I come up with.

Does your wife also have a photographic memory? It is so interesting to realise how differently people perceive and experience the world. I wonder how much this unknowingly effects our relationships?