A taste for words
I’ll never forget the day when I approached my Mum and sister and innocently asked them what the word Australia tasted like to them. I was met with looks of alarm and puzzlement from both.
“Nothing”, they said,
They tentatively asked
“What does it taste like to you?”
Without hesitation I replied
“Like roast potatoes and gravy”.
They exchanged bemused looks.
“Do you taste other words?”, my sister asked, looking at me like I was a lunatic.
I reeled off a list of words, including names that had strong associations—”James = bitey cheddar cheese, want = green apple, Simon = pineapple, Peter = hard boiled egg, lucky = Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate…”
Feeling like an oddball, I rarely spoke about my taste for words after that, but I continued to experience this cross wiring of the brain, which also, I discovered, translated to other languages. Often when I watch Italian, French or Chinese films, I start to feel like I am consuming a whole meal of exotic cuisines.
In my early 20s’ I started hearing about a phenomenon called synesthesia, a condition that can take many forms, affects about 4% of the population and is characterised by the interconnectedness of two parts of the brain, linked to sensory stimuli.
I discovered I have synesthesia
Initially, I only heard about the most common type—Grapheme colour synesthesia—associated with connecting letters or days of the week with colours, or the one that connects sound with colour.
Later that decade, I found my tribe after watching one of those science-themed shows on the ABC that revealed to me that I was what is known as a rarer Lexical Gustatory synesthete (such a marvellous term), a condition that affects
around 0.2% of the population. Medical studies describe Lexical–gustatory (LG) synesthesia as
“an intriguing neurological condition in which individuals experience phantom tastes when hearing, speaking, reading, or thinking about words”.
This documentary answered another question I’d always had, did other LG synesthetes taste words in the same way as me. It seems not. To another LG synesthete the word Phillip might taste of bitter oranges, but to me Phillip is definitely poached pear flavoured. Apparently everyone’s experience is unique and the sensory associations are usually formed during childhood, which explains why some words don’t hold as strong an association as others, and others have a taste that is hard for me to pinpoint.
I’ve heard one LG synesthete say “If a name doesn’t taste right [he] has a hard time liking that person”. Perhaps that explains why I was overjoyed when my now-husband said he was thinking of changing his adopted name from Howard, which to me has the bitter taste of Brussel sprouts, back to his birth name, Jeremy, which was imbued with the much nicer taste of raspberry lollies. Luckily for me he went with Jeremy.
My LG has undoubtedly led to my love of words and language (language = white bread and butter). Unfortunately I have no talent as a singer but I do have a great ability to remember song lyrics and it’s the lyrics and love of words and poetry that draw me to certain artists, including Nick Cave, Bob Dylan and Hozier. I love looking at lists of the most beautiful words in the English language. My very favourite is Incandescent, which is the name of one of my pieces and one of my collections. Other favourites include obsequious, perspicacious, quixotic, effervescent, joy, elixir, melodic and mellifluous.
What are your favourite words? I would love to hear stories from fellow synesthetes about your form of synesthesia and how this gift has influenced your life. Read more about the influence of LG synesthesia on my experience and my art in the about section.
