Lydia Ruffles's Reading List

"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."

"This is a novella written by Richard Skinner. It’s one of two novellas in the collection called The Mirror. It imagines that the composer, Eric Satie, has died. So far, so true. He finds himself in limbo and he’s faced with the decision of choosing one memory to take with him into the afterlife. That premise allows us to take a trip down memory lane—this particular lane being early 20th century Paris. You get this cast of people from Debussy to Picasso. It’s a really playful story in itself–and interesting as a meditation on creative devotion and the meaning of life. There are many big and important questions handled with wit. “He talks about green Fridays as being the colour of envy, envy and lies. Monday as being grey ” Also, Eric Satie is painted as a synaesthete. He experiences his synaesthesia (I believe it’s called “ordinal linguistic personification”) as days of the week being attributed with specific colours and personalities. The book is set over the course of a week. We travel through the days of the week which have different attributes. He talks about green Fridays as being the colour of envy, envy and lies. Monday as being grey, I think he says “as doves and Jesus’s eyes”—which is an incredibly specific reference point. The reason I chose this is because it is a wonderfully realistic portrayal of how synaesthesia would affect or influence someone on a day-to-day basis. It is a really well executed portrayal of a specific kind of synesthesia. It is also interesting within the context of the story of Eric Satie and 20th century Paris."

"I’d like to talk about The Book Thief . I’ll start with a tiny bit of background to the story. It follows a girl called Liesel, the eponymous book thief of the title, and her life in Nazi Germany. It starts when she’s about nine and follows her for the next six years. It’s a story about mortality, love and language. The thing that makes it unique, and obviously relevant to this conversation, is that it’s narrated by Death , who appears to have synaesthesia. We’re told in the prologue that when he comes to claim people, the sky is a particular colour depending on the person and that Death can taste the sky. We know that from the very start because he describes this chocolate-coloured sky. I think he says something like, “I do, however, try to enjoy every colour I see – the whole spectrum, a billion or so flavours, none of them quite the same, and the sky to slowly suck on.” It’s been a while since I read this book, but I remember that line very clearly. “It’s so evocative and a really effective way of using synaesthesia as a literary device in this case, of providing a different way of describing things” My reading of it is that this idea, that colours reflect the emotion of the human, say something about their character. There’s a lot of food imagery throughout – from the chocolate that we hear about in the beginning to the recurring image of a sky that’s red as soup and has crumbs and pepper in it, and, later the horizon being the colour of milk and cold and fresh and poured amongst the bodies. Other emotions take on other things. He talks about fear being shiny and silver. It’s so unusual and so evocative and a really effective way of using synaesthesia as a literary device in this case, of providing a different way of describing things."

"Although this one is not specifically about synaesthesia, Kandinsky, in some of his writings, did indicate that he was a synaesthete. There has been some debate about that. He, famously, is supposed to have heard a hiss coming from his paintbox which I guess was referring to the sound of the colours. There are two parts to this pamphlet. The second part is probably the most relevant. This is the part that’s called “About Painting.” It really gets into the psychology of colour. He claims that each colour, in terms of the painter’s palette, has two ‘meanings’. The first is the effects on the eye and the second the inner resonance. He was trying to reach a universal translation of colour. He does admit in the pamphlet that it’s not based on science, but on feeling and mysticism. I see it as an attempt to intellectualise synaesthesia. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter There are a good few pages of analysis in terms of specific colours and how they resonate on the soul. I think he calls it their “psychic effect.” Either by themselves or when acting with other colours, they create these visual chords. I know it sounds fanciful or flowery to some people, but I found that really interesting. Not least because I disagree with the meanings of some of the colours that he talks about. You see this a lot with synaesthetes. He talks about different kinds of colours – for example, sour tasting lemon and shrill singing canary. He sees yellow corresponding in humans to “violent, raving lunacy”, which I just find fascinating. To me, yellow, especially pale yellow, is the colour of curiosity. To go back to what we were saying earlier about the point of art, in the first part of the pamphlet there is this call to arms for artists to express themselves, their inner selves and not just rely on the material world around them. This obviously led to his commitment to abstract painting."

"I don’t want to invoke the wrath of scholars everywhere by suggesting that Sappho was a synaesthete, but certainly I find that her work, or what remains of her work, expresses something very akin to synaesthesia. Obviously, there’s the issue of reading things in translation. I don’t speak the original Greek so have only read translations. We just have to trust that the translation is faithful to the original. It is so ancient that all that remains are a collection of fragments of lyric poetry which were composed to be sung to the lyre. I think there’s actually only one complete poem in there, Ode to Aphrodite, but the fragments in themselves are just beautiful – reflections on everything from marriage to old age, bees and chickpeas. It covers a lot of ground. “It is poetry and imagery and appeals to our senses by clustering smells, sights and sounds. I can taste and smell it when I read it” I find it an absolute feast. It appeals to our senses and is so evocative. Even when you’ve got a fragment – some are barely even fragments, they’re tiny shards, just a word or two – they are full of bare feet and tongues and desire and gold and all these things which just make your senses go crazy. They make mine go crazy. You’ve got all this sun and salt and sweat in the Aegean Sea and brides and bridegrooms and blossom of nectar and flowers and colours. I just think it’s extraordinary. That in itself isn’t synaesthesia. It is poetry and imagery and appeals to our senses by clustering smells, sights and sounds. I can taste and smell it when I read it. It’s fascinating that you picked that fragment. That is the one that I have the most powerful response to as well. In this translation it refers to sweet speaking and lovely laughter. I’ve read another translation, which says something like ‘Close enough to sip your voice’s sweetness, your laughter glittering,’ or something close to that. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything else like it. There’s something in the way that it is laid out on the page and just these brackets or dashes where words are missing. There is one which I think just has the word ‘youth’ in it. There are nine or ten lines that are indicated as missing. It’s something that we still obviously think about today, however many hundreds of years later. It’s beautiful."