Mirror Touch by Joel Salinas M.D

Author:Joel Salinas, M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

A Blessing or a Curse?

I SAT IN THE MAIN AUDITORIUM OF TATE MODERN IN LONDON surrounded by artists, musicians, professors, researchers, and a smattering of tourists curious about modern art. We all stared up at the stage, which was covered in red carpeting that hummed vibrantly under bright spotlights, waiting for the interview to begin, one of several scheduled that week during a symposium on mirror-touch synesthesia and the trait’s relationship with art.

James Wannerton, the longstanding president of the UK Synaesthesia Association, opened up a leather folio and scanned his list of prepared questions. A lexical-gustatory synesthete, James associates written words and letters with distinct flavors, sometimes as specific and powerful as malt vinegar, warm semolina, hair spray. His guest, a young woman named Fiona, was dressed in a black leather jacket, adorned in boots that ran halfway up her calves. She crossed her right leg over her left in anticipation of his first question.

I sat in the second row, captivated by Fiona’s humble plum 3 arranged with radial soft friendly blue 4s, which were speckled at the fringes with turquoise 7s, an eccentric and endearing combination. Fiona was the first mirror-touch synesthete I had seen in person. I felt as if I were meeting a fourth cousin once removed, a distant member of my clan. A riffle of familiarity and distance stirred in my stomach. My fingertips vibrated, my toes tickled. I felt the sensation of Fiona’s eyeglasses sitting on the bridge of my nose. The light brushing of her hair swept across my forehead followed by a soft pawing and patting of her outer thighs, which betrayed in my own a slight glimmer of stage fright.

When she finally spoke, a thick stillness slipped over the audience, and I heard a familiar chord in a foreign melody.

“This is what it is. Or, at least what it was,” she explained. “I had this experience in America. I was sitting in a car and there was this fury going on between two men over a parking space. One man punched the other, and that was it. I felt it. I felt punched. I passed out. All I had seen was the punch. That was it. The medical team couldn’t place it. They thought I had perhaps had a seizure of some sort. It was only when I returned to the UK that I learned of my mirror-touch synesthesia. I felt validated.”

I looked across audience members and felt the flickering of their wonder at Fiona’s mirror touch, wide-spread wonder and an unmistakable pity. Meanwhile, I wondered if I had been blinding myself all along. Was mirror touch a condition to be pitied? A disease to be treated? The thought left an acrid aftertaste in my mouth. Maybe people were right—perhaps mirror touch was not so much a disease as a tragic hex.

Some synesthetes feel strongly that their synesthesia is absolutely a blessing. Perhaps they found a way to relieve the tension between their internal and external worlds, bridging the neural chasm between “real” objects and their synesthetic qualities.

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