Re: Musical Offering / synesthesia

[Elmer Elevator <bobmer@javanet.com>]

Max Kuenkel wrote:

>  That thing is unbelievable, that 6-part ricercar. I wonder if Gould would
> have called it "gray", like he called the last fugue from the art of.

Long-timers (longer-timers than I) know how grumpy I get at our psychiatric
autopsies of Glenn Gould, but Max brings up a psychological phenomenon I don't
think we've mentioned or discussed much -- synesthesia. Synesthesia doesn't at
all make me grumpy because nobody (I hope, yet, so far) considers it a disease
or a pathology, so nobody tries to cure it. A synesthetic has a natural
spillover among his/her senses: touch has odor and fragrance, vision and color
have sound, sounds have colors, temperatures are associated with colors, etc.

The swellest account of synesthesia is contained in a real hidden treasure of a
book, "The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory," by the
Soviet psychologist A.R. Luria. Around 1930, a Moscow newspaper editor chided
one of his reporters for not taking notes during the morning assignments
meeting. The reporter promptly recited, with perfect precision, all the editor's
assignments for himself and the dozen other reporters for that morning, and was
willing to continue with yesterday's meeting, the day before, etc. The editor
thought this unusual enough to send the reporter to Luria. Luria spent the next
several decades studying this remarkable fellow. Though the unnamed mnemonist
had drifted somewhat unsuccessfully from job to job, he was the son of
professional musicians; synesthesia and music seem to have a common and close
nexus.

I can't recommend the book highly enough. To me, the most startling thing about
it is the realization that the amazing mnemonist had precisely the same mental
equipment every one of us has. In all my education, I recall perhaps no more
than four required readings that made me want to go to the professor and say
"Thanks!" This is one of them, fascinating from beginning to end, and I think
seminal for all of us here who wonder what unique and mysterious things were
going on in the mind of GG, and why the world appeared as it did to him.

Elmer / Bob