March 27, 2005

What color is October?

Norm Geras reports that he (and some of his readers) sees the days of the week as having colors:

Some people see colours when they look at numbers and letters, and according to this report scientists can explain why: it has to do with 'cross-activation between adjacent areas of the brain involved with processing different sensory information'. I'm in no position either to confirm or to challenge this, but it reminds me of something I've never shared with you and you'll be aching to know; which is that for as long as I can remember I've seen the days of the week as having a colour.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday are black; Tuesday and Thursday are red; and Sunday is orange. The days are also spatially arranged, approximately so:
Friday

Thursday - - - Saturday

Wednesday

Tuesday - - - Sunday

Monday
The week begins bottom left, on Monday.

It's that spacial arrangement I find interesting. My week is a straight bar, but I see the year as a clock face, with Dec. 15 at the noon position. But it goes counterclockwise, with January where 11:00 is...
(Thanks to Natalie, who sees the number 7 as green)

Posted by John Weidner at March 27, 2005 08:41 AM
Comments

How odd!

Saturday_________________________________Sunday
Friday___Thursday___Wednesday___Tuesday___Monday

Seems logical and straightforward to me. Clockwise and repeating ad infinitum, in black and white. Maybe because I grew up with no color TV.

Posted by: Steve Lassey at March 27, 2005 01:01 PM

Steve's week is pretty much like mine, only it's lying down rather than standing up!

Posted by: Norm at March 27, 2005 01:40 PM

Nonsense -- the number 7 is dark blue. Everyone knows that. ;) Anyway, to me the rest of the numbers are: 1 is black, 2 is pale blue, 3 is yellow, 4 is red, 5 is brown, 6 is either aqua or powder blue (I have trouble with 6), 8 is yellow-green, 9 is dark brown. 0 has no color -- it's clear.

I think they call this sort of thing synesthesia.

Come to think of it the days do have colors, or rather combinations of colors:

Monday -- white, pale blue, gray -- three vertical stripes in that order from left to right
Tuesday -- dark blue, yellow, dark gray -- I see big lozenges of those colors sort of fitting into each other somehow, this is not very clear
Wednesday -- pale yellow, wheat, ochre -- in mingled brushstrokes kind of like a field of grain
Thursday -- red, dark red, dark blue -- these are in concentric squares
Friday -- red, purple, pink, in wavy lines or blobs
Saturday -- brown, green; a speckled pattern like leaves on water
Sunday -- white, silver, gold; tall leaping patterns like cirrus clouds or spires.

My week doesn't really have a spatial pattern, though. It can be either a standard horizontal or vertical bar.

Colors have taste to me too, occasionally, but this is more closely tied to foods that are actually those colors so I don't think this really counts.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 27, 2005 08:24 PM

Dr Cranford would diagnose PVS, and suggest that it's inhumane to try to keep you alive.....

Just kiddin'. That's actually extremely interesting. I've read about synesthesia, but I cannot even imagine what the experience could be like.

Posted by: John Weidner at March 27, 2005 09:56 PM

An example recently expounded upon in an article I read dealt with a synęsthetic who tasted chords; certain intervals were sour, salty, or bitter to her. What they ended up doing was playing a chord while flooding her mouth with a conflicting taste, something which slowed her identification time considerable.

You can kind of experience that sort of synęsthetic confusion yourself by looking at one of those graphics with color names printed in an opposing color: the word red is blue, for example, and the word yellow is green. Try saying the color, instead of the word, and you'll be slow (and often wrong) due to left-brain/right-brain conflict. (Left-brain deals with words and logic, and is usually both faster and stronger, which is one of the reasons that good artists are rare as opposed to, say, journalists.)

Posted by: B. Durbin at March 29, 2005 07:55 PM
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