The Fallen
- Автор: Паркер Т. Джефферсон
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-06-056238-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Fallen». Краткое содержание книги:
The evening’s speaker was Darlene Sable, author of Red Sax and Lemon Cymbals. She described the book as a “straightforward telling” of her growing up synesthetic in San Francisco, California. Her mother was a piano instructor and her father a commercial pilot. From early childhood she remembered seeing music — certain colors would sweep through her vision when certain musical sounds were playing. Later she understood that specific musical instruments caused her to see specific colors: The saxophone was of course red and cymbals lemon yellow; violins were lime green, guitars magenta, and so on. Because of this she craved going to concerts, which her mother was happy to indulge.
By the time Darlene was five she knew that not everyone saw music like she did. She talked about this with her mother a few times but not with anyone else. Her mother said it was probably just a childhood thing that would go away. Darlene grew to be ashamed of it and desperately wanted to be normal, though it never interfered with her life in any way. To Darlene, live musical concerts were jubilant synesthetic extravaganzas almost beyond description — waves of colors and swells of sound rushing all around her, sweeping past her skin. She would leave the concert hall exhausted and elated.
At age eight Darlene began pretending that she no longer saw music. She developed terrible migraine headaches and ulcers. After two years of doctors and medications, she finally confessed to her mother that she was seeing music more vividly than ever. She began visiting a psychiatrist, and the headaches and ulcers gradually subsided. The psychiatrist was the first person to use the word “synesthesia” to describe her “talent” and encouraged her to develop and enjoy it. She had written the book to help others with synesthesia recognize their gifts and be proud. As an adult she had become a piano instructor like her mother and few things pleased her as much as sitting next to a young student and seeing the swells of crimson music flowing out of the instrument.
After the meeting Lillian and I were invited to join six of the members for coffee at the café next door. The inside tables were full so we sat outside in the brisk March night with our coats buttoned up and the steam rising from our cups. Most of the members described their various gifts for Lillian and me. One experienced just the opposite of Darlene Sable — she heard colors as music. Another experienced powerful tastes from certain spoken words. Most were pleasant and unexpected tastes, such as strawberries from the word “loyalty” and cumin from the word “archdiocese.” But a few tastes were bad. The word “scrumptious” tasted faintly of a rotting tooth, while “chockablock” made her taste sulfur. Another saw the printed black letters in books or newspapers in varying vivid colors. A, for instance, was always yellow. D was always light green.
“Describe your gift,” said Bart. He was a heavy, bearded man who had shaken my hand with exaggerated firmness when we were introduced.
All of the others went quiet. I told him about colored shapes being prompted by spoken words. By the emotions behind the spoken words, to be more exact.
“Example,” he said.
“I see blue triangles from a happy speaker. Red squares come from liars. Envy comes out in green trapezoids, so ‘green with envy’ is literally true for me. Aggression shows up as small black ovals.”
“That’s not synesthesia,” said Bart. “I’ve read every word ever written about the subject, and no one has ever established that a speaker’s emotions can be visualized.”
“They can,” I said. “That’s what happens.”
“Maybe you should write an article, Mr. Brownlaw,” said Moira. “The ASA would consider a piece, I’m sure.”
Bart raised his eyebrows and sipped his coffee drink. Whipped cream came off on his mustache. He dabbed the bristles with a paper napkin.
“Have you taken the Reynolds?” he asked me.
“Reynolds?”
“Test. The Reynolds Test of Synesthesia. Obviously you haven’t. It’s in three parts: a basic questionnaire, Geography Test Eighteen — which of course has little to do with conventional geography — and the triad-solution section, which is just basically Form 1 RAT derivations by Mednick and Mednick. Ring a bell?”
I said no.
“I didn’t think it would,” said Bart. “Maybe you should find that test and take it, if you really want to make claims. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about synesthesia. And a lot of bullshit.”
“God, Bart,” said Moira.
“What do you see coming from my mouth right now?” he asked me.
“Little black ovals. Quite a few of them.”
“Aggression. Right, uh-huh. But what if I was really asking you these questions with a sense of humor in my mind?”
“Then I’d see orange boxes. You can’t fake what I see. That’s the synesthesia.”
“That’s parapsychology and crap,” said Bart. “What did you really come here for, to find a date?”
I told him I was happily married.
“Hey, whatever,” said Bart.
“Bart, come on,” said Moira.
I watched the little black ovals pour from his mouth like some kind of plague. My heart was beating fast and I could feel the comforting flow of adrenaline in my blood. When I get angry, I see particularly well and my body feels light and quick.
“Thanks for not saying any more about my wife,” I said.
Bart sipped his coffee and shook his head. “And what about you, shy Lillian, what kind of extraordinary talent do you claim to possess?”
She looked at him.
“None at all, you stupid prick,” she said quietly. Then she stood. “Nice to meet the rest of you.”
“I’ll walk you out,” I said.
“It’s not necessary.”
I walked her to her car. She said she couldn’t believe that Bart would be “such a great big dork to complete strangers.” She said she had worked with a guy like that once, a guy who wanted to expose everything she did as false.
We walked to the covered parking and she unlocked an old brown Toyota. She turned and leaned against the door. Lillian was slender and long-legged, with wavy black hair, freckles, and nice blue eyes. Her wine-colored velvet coat looked two hundred years old.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
“Did that take a lot of self-control? I know who you are and what you do for a living. You could have hurt that guy, couldn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but that wouldn’t have accomplished much.”
She nodded and looked me in the eyes. She was a notch younger than me, mid-twenties maybe.
“So anyway,” I said, “what kind of synesthesia do you have?”
“Oh, I’m still not sure.” She bit her bottom lip with noticeable anxiety. “It’s... well, it sounds weird, but what happens with me is faces make music.”
“Oh, that’s a good one.”
She eyed me levelly. “It’s only some faces. Not every face makes me hear music. But if they do, they make their own unique melody — every time. It’s consistent.”
“Are you a musician?”
She nodded and laughed quietly. “Yes. I can’t wait to read Darlene Sable’s book. It really sounded good, and she loves music as much as I do.”
“Can you remember the melodies?”
“Oh, sure. I write them all out. Some I just hum into a recorder and transcribe them later because I have so many.”
“You can hear a melody and write it as music?”
“Well, sure, Robbie, just about every musician can do that. I mean, it’s how we read and write.”