Synesthesia, California discussed on Broken Record

Broken Record
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Yeah, it's an interesting question because it comes back to that thing that we touched on in the last episode having to do with that period of time where I was seeing music very clearly in my head with synesthesia or some form of synesthesia. And even though I don't have that the way I did when I was in my early 20s, I do see things and I can see, for instance, if I'm playing live, the beginning of a guitar, so I'm not humming it. I just see it. Wow. When you say you see it, you don't see it like written music. No. Would you describe it as shape? How would you describe it? That's the funny thing about it is it's not visual, at least I don't think it is, but it's in an instant. I might see two bars of a guitar solo of the way I'm going to start the solo. I might see the first two bars in my head as a single picture. How would you describe a single instant? I see those two bars. But when you say see the two bars, tell me what you're like describe what you're seeing. What are the bars look like? I don't know how. It's for me because it's interesting. It's one of those things that because I could do this kind of thing so good when I was when I was like 20 and I was literally seeing everything as a movie that like you'd ask me like you'd have the idea like we would be working on so to squeeze and I remember you saying, you should write a guitar intro just a guitar only intro for this song. And I would just see a picture in my head like a visual picture like a movie of the song and I would think, okay, what would be the right movie for the intro? And then I would just see the movie and then play the feeling of that. Almost like the school, like you're scoring an image. But it's not an image that you could necessarily describe. Not necessarily, but it very well could have been in those days. There were things that were very clear, but they always, there was this interaction between the music and the visuals in my head to where if I was hearing music, I saw a visual that perfectly represented that music and it could be abstract shapes in black and white or it could be color just like a movie or it was. And so as time went by and I went California time, I started making music again, but without that clear visual Ness, I still had the same ability to see the feeling of music in my head, yet there was no picture to it, but I could see it. I can only describe it as seen because it's there in my head and it's clear and I see the connection between that and what I would play to do that feeling. But sometimes there's a visual thing, but it's more like spaces than it is like objects. Okay. And when you say spaces, do you mean spaces between things or a visual space, like a location? I'm not really saying that it's anything that I could expect anybody to be able to draw or something. Yeah. It's just the absence of objects. I see. As opposed to objects, it's something like you've seen what's missing. You don't have time. I'm curious. You're asking me these questions. You must have something like that. No, I don't know. I'm trying to I'm trying to visualize what you're experiencing. And I'm just looking for any clues to, I want to see it. I want to see it. Yeah. Pretty mysterious. I think I told you, I think I told you when I was gassed at the dentist's office, I told you. A long time ago, needle phobic. I got gas to have a blood test. And I was listening to music. Can they gas me? And I could see the music. I could see 3D images and I remember thinking, oh, now I know how to do this, because now that I've been exposed to it, I don't need laughing gas to do this. I see what this is. Right. And then I've never been able to do it again. Even not on laughing gas I have never been able to do it again. But in that first time, I was able to clearly see, and it was so cool. It was so cool to be able to see it. Yeah, that's how it was for me real consistently from 1990, 91, 92. It's mysterious to me that I was able to make music just as colorful and emotional and shapely and all these things without it. I can only say that even though I don't see the visuals, like I did, they must be there just below the level of consciousness because the effect of what that did remained with me. When you could see it, maybe it was almost like training wheels. Like it had to be that clear for whatever it was that was showing it to you for you to be able to see it and then once you built the ability to see it, you could still see it without the visual there. Right. Yeah, it seems to me that that is that that is what happened. And I'm sure there are people who just go on seeing at their whole lives, but it didn't work that way for me. But yeah, there are a lot of ideas. Don't you get it, say, for instance, you're looking through movies. You're thinking of watching a movie and you look through your DVD collection and there's nothing nothing's leaping out at you. All of a sudden, one DVD, that's the one you want to watch. What happens in your head at that moment? I would say it's a feeling of the energy in my body raises. It's similar to when we're playing in the studio and it goes from a okay take to a great take. There's this feeling of just like, I feel this lift of energy in my body that makes me want to sometimes makes me want to laugh, sometimes it makes me want to lean forward and listen closer. I would say it's interest. It's like you could be sitting around in like mindlessly not thinking and then something grabs my attention. Right. Nothing changed volumes are not any louder. You know, it's like it's not like the music came on. Music's been playing for hours, but all of a sudden, like my attention gets drawn to this thing. And it's this wave of energy, I guess, is the

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