Cymatics

Prose Number Two

A flat and B flat turned burgundy.  The stoplight flashed green light and my song sung smoothed notes, I the sultry one evolved to silhouettes, my curves morphed to waves, me the calm breeze.  Clashing symbols synchronized beats with the ear drum, a bee-ing buzz firecrackered yellow blossoms, violent and thrashing red foamed the street.  The flat line held its tone, enter the black. 

Response

In the recent past is when I became aware of synesthesia, one of my poetry professors explained to my forms of poetry class about the relation between sound and colors and also how she saw numbers in color.  I found the topic very interesting, and as a poet I secretly longed for what I considered a gift in becoming a better artist.  

The reading on synesthesia and its mentioning of Disney’s Fantasia made me recall my sophomore year in high school, because that year in band we played the music from the Fantasia soundtrack.  I remember to how the director would explain how staccato he wanted the low brass and low woodwind section to play the Sorcerer’s Apprentice section of the arrangement.  He went to describe playing the notes, comparing it to splashing water in a pool, saying “If you use long strokes of your arms and hands, then you’ll end up splashing a large amount of water on the people around you.  I want you to think of the notes as skimming your hand just above the water’s surface, making little splashes.”  In a way he used a reverse synesthesia on us, making our section see and hear the notes as small splashes of water, instead of actual noted music.

In a way I think synesthesia is a method that the mind relates things for a person to have a certain understanding.  Even when people don’t recall on shapes or smells or colors or numbers, they’re mind still has a function in working, in a mysterious mode that no scientist can ever understand.  The human is a complex being, an entity far superior than the normal creation, do to our ability to make choices beyond the average animal.

On the topic of cymatics and how sound waves can form recognizable shapes due to the harmonic vibrations, further proves the idea of visual music.  Let’s imagine Stan Brakhage’s The Dante Quartet as a symphony, much like any symphony, the melody of the entire piece will go through movements (most of the time four), but in some way will transform.  Paint as Brakhage’s notes and film and camera are his instrumentation, Brakhage’s music explores, in its own right, the Allegro, Scherzo, Adagio and Recitative.