The Color of Insanity

Music, like a fruit, is capable of color.
It is often “a clockwork orange – meaning that it has the appearance of an organism lovely with color… but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.”

The task at hand was simple, uncomplicated and hardly time consuming: straighten my room and make the bed. It would take under 70 seconds, but I figured it would be more fun if I could coax out a synesthestic color. So I walk over to my radio, which is never turned off. Ever. When I tire of music or news I simple turn the volume down all the way. This came about because the on/off switch on my alarm clock/radio is in a difficult position to reach, while the volume turn wheel is quite excisable. It is set to FM88.9, NPR, my source of news, classical music, and radio entertainment. I never change the station either. I have no reason to, the only other stations I can receive are the country music and rap stations. Country is loathsome and almost always some shade of yellow or orange, besides that, even if my synesthesia is pleased, my ears refuse to listen to such horrid sounds of human vocalization. And rap, well, let’s just say it doesn’t really get a color. My synesthesia refuses to accept that as music, and frankly so do I.

I turn the sound wheel and watch as the sound appears inside of me. Wow. This color is beautiful. It’s a thin stream of light blue, almost like the sky, only more liquid, and deeper. It travels vertically across a black background, waving slightly as if by water or wind. It’s the perfect color for this chore. Not overly stimulating, but still enticing. It does not scream its existence, yet relies on its own beauty for attention instead. I turn my thoughts to this show of fantastic color while my hands busy themselves crisping the hospital corners of the sheets and quilt.

I am nearly finished when the song comes to an end. The strip of blue snakes its way to the right and makes its exit. The synesthestic auditorium is empty; the stage is dark.

But then… something unexpected happens: the color of insanity attacks.

The song wasn’t over all, in fact it was just beginning; and where I expected to hear the voice of Greg Waxberg telling me the title of heaven’s blue was something very different. All the instruments played at once and without unison in a horrid display of musical prowess. The orange color exploded in my head like an atom bomb, filling every nook of my mind within a fragment of time. It spread from the center of the synesthestic stage as if someone had piled dynamite in a bucket of paint.
I instinctively raise a protective hand to my temple. It’s not every day a color bomb goes off in your head, at least not one this intense. I stride over the other side of the room and slam the sound wheel to a safe position. The orange intruder fades within a few seconds, and my thoughts again belong to me.
“There’s on for the blog,” I laugh as I exit the room, notebook in hand, ready to record the event.

Understand that it’s not that I despise the color orange, really, I don’t mind it on men’s athletic wear, or the walls of a trendy Chinese restaurant, I just don’t want it in my head, that’s all. Think of orange as a cougar. Now I love cougars as much as the next guy, but do I want one roaming freely in my house? No, please.
It’s not unreasonable. I’m not scared of orange, it’s perfectly acceptable in its natural environment, or when it’s trapped by a canvas’s clutch, but when it uses my limbic system as a scratching post, then we have a problem.

GodSpeed,

_Nathanael