Synaesthesia of the Sky

Every morning as I drive to work, the sky puts on a different show for me. Often I feel really compelled of a moment to record the words that present themselves to my brain. It is quite a persistent demand, and I know I cant rest until I articulate it. it is tricky when I am driving, but I grab anything I can find to write on. I have endless receipts, and scraps of paper that I had found, and scribbled on the back of, in glorious desperation to make some tangible vestige, of a 'buzzing mind drifting to peace' moment. Once I couldnt find any paper so I wrote a poem on my leg.

I think the sky puts on such a calm and quiet show, most people dont notice it. But how could it be quiet? How could such an audacious display be calm? Maybe it rages with delight, but we just cant hear it with our ears. Maybe we are using the wrong body part for the wrong function. I wish I could hear with my eyes.

I wonder about ... the sound of sights.

I heard something about synaesthesia. How famous composers who saw different chords as certain colours. One composer thought, when he was young, that they dimmed the lights in orchestra theatres so that the audience could see the colour show in front of their eyes more clearly when the music was playing. he didnt realise it was only him who could see it.

When I spend time in the south with my grandparents, I run along the river every night at 5 pm as the sun started to set. The Eaton River is one of my favourite places. It is a rich and golden wealth of so many positive and beautiful memories. but even without that, it is pure and base aesthetic pleasure. The whole riverside comes alive at 5 pm, and in a different way every evening. Each day there is a different kind of sunset, a different kind of sky laced with different kind of light, and different colours, shades, dimensions. I felt like one evening the trees had a whole new shape and dimension to them, because of the way the sun was flickering through the sporadic gaps of sky. bark-sky-bark-sky-river-sky-light-light-light. 

Another evening, a few years ago, I remember feeling, with the full force of my mind and body, that the riverside was on fire around me. there is a row of rich red trees with bleeding glistening sap, that have that burnt black bark, that blisters and crumbles, and the rich red flecks through the charcoal black. the sun had reached a certain point of its trajectory and it flickered through the trees so fast, like the turning of an old movie reel, and, for me, the riverside was in flames.

One evening, as I was running in one direction the sky was gold, yellow gold like straw. Liquid buttery gold. And it reflected onto the river so the river was golden too. And then I turned around to run in the other direction and the sky on this side was pink. What a show, I thought. It was like the sky had two different sunsets for just one riverside. It was so audacious. Maybe it was quietly raging with delight but I just couldn't hear it.

As the sunset dissipated, the sky turned grey blue. Darkness was creeping in around me, and there was that element... there was that purple, to the air around me, that was the gathering dark. Is darkness just the absence of light? how can it be when I can see a physical purple all around me? I can almost touch it.

Earlier that evening, the sky had been reflected so perfectly onto the river, and I could see clouds in the water. I almost couldnt tell the difference between water and sky. was the river in the sky or the sky in the river? was I just standing on my head? I couldnt figure it out. It was beautiful confusion that I felt in my whole body. It was like the elements were sharing with eachother, air and water. up and down. It was like it was all around me. and it was.

I wrote this based on conversations with my friends Gemma and Maevana