Personally, I think having synesthesia would be really cool. In a way, I think it would be similar to what I think the effects of psychedelic drugs would be, but without any of the horrible health aftereffects. The mixing of the senses like that can almost provide somebody with a “sixth sense” of perception that nobody else can duplicate. Artists and musicians can use their synesthesic abilities to pioneer new forms of their art or to enhance previous methods.
Reading how each person affected with synesthesia experiences things differently fascinates me, also. On this MIT website (http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/), various firsthand accounts of synesthetic perception are given, and it is so cool to hear that someone naturally associates pain with the color orange, or that to another, the word linguistics appears “grayish-purple-blue”. This website also has several simulated synesthesia demos, where you can try to approximate the effects of the disorder. The coolest part is the Music Animation Machine, where we can attempt to get a glimpse at what synesthetes would see when they listen to different classical composers. Although we can’t really know if this is what synesthetes actually perceive when they listen to music or not, its still fun to imagine that it is in fact what they perceive, and that this mix-up of the senses can be completely biologically healthy and not harmful at all.
