Synaesthesia For Ten Minutes

“Synaesthesia, in its simplest form, is best described as a “union of the senses” whereby two or more of the five senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily and automatically joined together.”- UK Synaesthesia

See http://www.uksynaesthesia.com/ for more info.

At a recent writer's group, a member explained this condition. A person affected by synaesthesia might see a certain colour and imagine hearing a particular sound, or might experience a certain event that they would then describe with a colour. The writer at our group had developed a writing exercise based on the notion of a colour linking to some of the other senses. She provided a range of pictures and asked us each to pick one that intrigued us. The ten minute exercise: Link the picture and the theme of synaesthesia within a story.

I didn't totally get it, to be honest, but I gave it a shot. Here's the picture I picked:

Here's the writing I wrote.

Jane sat at the kitchen work surface, surrounded by food. She had starved herself for two days, as a personal challenge. Her hands shook as she laid out the fruit and veg on the table.

Her hunger pangs had driven her senses to a heightened level. Tiredness had made her ravenous and now, with the uncooked banquet in front of her, consumption was paramount. But something was different. She picked up a carrot, still caked in dried soil, and bit into it.

She was no longer sat in her kitchen. Her work surface dissolved into hard mud. She could see the sky above her, the earth ploughed into rows, a distant tractor coughing out dirt and uprooting vegetables.

She chewed as the crows cried out above her head.

When she swallowed, she was jammed back into her kitchen chair in an instant. To her left, in a bed of crushed ice, lay a solitary dead haddock. She looked at the fish. It looked at her. She scooped it up in one hand. They stared face-to-face. Her work surface morphed into corrugated iron. A motor churned loudly.