Wednesday is Indigo Blue

"I first picked this book up because it’s endorsed by the late Dr. Oliver Sacks, the brilliant neurologist, natural historian and historian of science. Wednesday is Indigo Blue is primarily about perception and people’s different experiences of it. I am by no means a scientist but I did like it for the fact that it’s a comprehensive survey of different kinds of synesthesia alongside research that’s been done into it so far. I found it interesting and quite comforting to see that there is some sort of commonality between experiences. They speak in the book about people’s attempts to rationalise their experiences and that’s something that I can really relate to. For me, words have tastes. Sometimes those tastes will just be what the word is: pizza would taste like pizza. Sometimes it’s something that on first sight, doesn’t seem to have an obvious link. Some words are much more plausible than others. For example, Sweden has a kind of zingy, citrusy taste. I’ve managed to rationalise that in my mind as, ‘it’s because there’s yellow in the Swedish flag.’ It’s just the way your mind reaches for explanations for things. That’s something that is touched on in Wednesday is Indigo Blue . There is also a discussion about the fundamental characteristics of someone who is creative. In the book they suggest that people who are creative tend to have good powers of synthesis and they exhibit more flexibility, independence and self-acceptance. They have a higher tolerance for inconsistency. These are attributes that lend themselves to artistic professions. I think it’s a really wide-ranging book in that way. In addition to being a scientific text it has these philosophical, thought-provoking elements."