Re: VMs: Further investigatio of folio f1r

[ajb <ajb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In message <4074544B.8000601@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, William Edmondson
<w.h.edmondson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>    Hi Anthony
>
>    Re synaesthesia
>
>    It's not clear how one could divine from an artefact that someone 
>    is a synaesthete.

Hello William

Your comments are very interesting; thank you.

However I _did_ say it was merely a hunch...

It's just that with my own synaesthesia things like writing, scripts and
texts are perceived, at the same time, as sounds; they literally speak
to me. The VMS sounds very strange indeed; in part it has a sort of
background dry rustling sound, but it also seems to include strange
half-heard sounds and distant voices that I cannot at all understand. It
is a rather specific, peculiar and somewhat disturbingly 'alien' thing
and I have never encountered it to quite the same extent with any other
kind of writing; when I saw the VMS I had never heard anything quite
like it before. [1] It therefore seemed to me at least possible that
something similar might be going on in the mind of the author - given
that he was probably a very strange person indeed, might he perhaps also
be hearing the abstruse meaning in what he was writing? It seems to me
that there might be more to it than meets the eye, or the ear....

The phenomenon is, as you rightly say, 
>inaccessible to another
But I do rather wonder if 'it takes one to know one'?

As I said, 'just a hunch'...

Regards

Anthony

[1] Not strictly accurate. I first encountered the VMS in the 1960s and
at the time thought little of it. But my synaesthesia was from the
beginning only a vague sort of thing, until (after this first encounter)
I had what I believed at the time to be a minor and inconsequential head
injury - except that it led to the somewhat dramatic enhancement and
complication of sensory perceptions I describe.

P.S. Apologies to Knox and Jan for the wrong attribution in my original
observation. AJB

P.P.S. Just out of interest, would you very kindly refer me (on or off
list) to your sister's novels, please?   AJB


>  <w.h.edmondson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>
>    As a synaesthete myself I know of no way that such person, 
>    regardless of the sensory modalities involved in the synaesthesia, 
>    could imbue an artefact with reliable indications of synaesthesia. 
>     Synaesthesia can be talked about, and reflected upon, and can 
>    indeed play a role in an artist's creations.  But, that this has 
>    happened in the creation of an artefact is inscrutible, just as the 
>    synaesthesia itself is inaccessible to another.  Even two people 
>    with synaesthesia who talk about it.... cannot really be sure that 
>    they 'know' or 'understand' another person's sensory world.  My 
>    sister has the same form of synaesthesia I do (coloured perception 
>    of black alphanumeric characters - and yes, the script in the VMs 
>    looks coloured to me), but she has different colours.  But I have 
>    no way of knowing that her textual world has the same detailed 
>    characteristics that mine has.  And her novels don't flag up 
>    synaesthesia to a reader.
>
>    And, of course, synaesthesia can lead to odd things like coloured 
>    flavours, coloured sounds, textured sounds, and so forth.  All 
>    idioscyncratic (for the most part - there is some slight evidence 
>    that 1 is black and 0 is white, more commonly than not).
>
>    So, I'd be interested to know how somone looking at the VMs can see 
>    the work of a synaesthete.
>
>    Cheers
>
>    William
>
>
>
>    ajb wrote:
>>       In message <407329E7.8672.31A406E@localhost>, 
>>       knoxmix@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>       writes
>>         --- Now let's get into the mind of the author, who - one thing 
>>>          we are 
>>>          all almost positive about - wanted to conceal the text, that 
>>>          is the 
>>>          content of the text 
>>>              
>>       Hello Knox
>
>>       Well, not quite all...
>
>>       The author was very likely highly intelligent, and seems to have 
>>       had a
>>       very unusual mind indeed. (I have a hunch that he may also have 
>>       been a
>>       synaesthete.) Suppose that he was engaged in a remarkably 
>>       abstruse line
>>       of thought or even had invented or discovered some avenue 
>>       entirely new,
>>       for which there would have been no existing suitable vocabulary. 
>>       He
>>       might have found his contemporary languages inadequate and 
>>       limiting and
>>       have therefore made one suitable to his purpose. In which case 
>>       the fact
>>       that the manuscript is unintelligible to us and to others could 
>>       be a
>>       circumstance entirely irrelevant to him.
>
>>       (Not entirely unprecedented - at least, there is a convincing 
>>       example in
>>       fiction, which we all know truth is stranger than...)
>
>>       The waters may well have been still further muddied; if some 
>>       persons
>>       unknown had access to the manuscript and, believing it to be 
>>       immensely
>>       valuable made their own clandestine and not necessarily entirely
>>       accurate copy whilst being unable to understand the original - 
>>       well, if
>>       'our' version is this copy, no wonder it drives us mad.
>
>>       I think I have now also answered Eric's request for a 
>>       contribution to a
>>       poll of personal theories.
>
>>       Regards
>
>>       Anthony
>
>>         


-- 

     ajb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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