by Jeffrey Ford
I laid the whole thing out for him and then sat back in my chair, now somewhat regretting my weakness, for he was smiling and the smoke was leaking out of the corners of his mouth. He exhaled, and in that cloud came the word that would validate me, define me, and haunt me for the rest of my life—synesthesia.
By the time I left Stullin’s office that day, I was a new person. The doctor spoke to my father and explained the phenomenon to him. He cited historical cases and gave him the same general overview of the neurological workings of the condition. He also added that most synesthetes don’t experience the condition in such a variety of senses as I did, although it was not unheard of. My father nodded every now and then but was obviously perplexed at the fact that my long-suffered condition had, in an instant, vanished.
“There’s nothing wrong with the boy,” said Stullin, “except for the fact that he is, in a way, exceptional. Think of it as a gift, an original way of sensing the world. These perceptions are as real for him as are your own to you.”
Stullin’s term for my condition was like a magic incantation from a fairy tale, for through its power I was released from the spell of my parents’ control. In fact, their reaction to it was to almost completely relinquish interest in me, as if after all of their intensive care I’d been found out to be an imposter now unworthy of their attention. When it became clear that I would have the ability to go about my life as any normal child might, I relished the concept of freedom. The sad fact was, though, that I didn’t know how to. I lacked all experience at being part of society. My uncertainty made me shy, and my first year in public school was a disaster. What I wanted was a friend my own age, and this goal continued to elude me until I was well out of high school and in college. My desperation to connect made me ultimately nervous, causing me to act and speak without reserve. This was the early 1960s, and if anything was important in high school social circles at the time, it was remaining cool. I was the furthest thing from cool you might imagine.
For protection, I retreated into my music and spent hours working out compositions with my crayons and pens, trying to corral the sounds and resultant visual pyrotechnics, odors, and tastes into cohesive scores. All along, I continued practicing and improving my abilities at the keyboard, but I had no desire to become a performer. Quite a few of my teachers through the years had it in their minds that they could shape me into a brilliant concert pianist. I would not allow it, and when they insisted, I’d drop them and move on. Nothing frightened me more than the thought of sitting in front of a crowd of onlookers. The weight of judgment lurking behind even one set of those imagined eyes was too much for me to bear. I’d stayed on with Stullin, visiting once a month, and no matter his persistent proclamations as to my relative normalcy, it was impossible for me, after years of my parents’ insisting otherwise, to erase the fact that I was, in my own mind, a freak.
My greatest pleasure away from the piano at this time was to take the train into the nearby city and attend concerts given by the local orchestra or small chamber groups that would perform in more intimate venues. Rock and roll was all the rage, but my training at the piano and the fact that calm solitude, as opposed to raucous socializing, was the expected milieu of the symphony drew me in the direction of classical music. It was a relief that most of those who attended the concerts were adults who paid no attention to my presence. From the performances I witnessed, from the stereo I goaded my parents into buying for me, and my own reading, I, with few of the normal distractions of the typical teenager, gathered an immense knowledge of my field.
My hero was J. S. Bach. It was from his works that I came to understand mathematics and, through a greater understanding of math, came to a greater understanding of Bach—the golden ratio, the rise of complexity through the reiteration of simple elements, the presence of the cosmic in the common.
Whereas others simply heard his work, I could also feel it, taste it, smell it, visualize it, and in doing so was certain I was witnessing the process by which all of Nature had moved from a single cell to a virulent, diverse forest. Perhaps part of my admiration for the good cantor of Leipzig was his genius with counterpoint, a practice where two or more distinct melodic lines delicately join at certain points to form a singularly cohesive listening experience. I saw in this technique an analogy to my desire that some day my own unique personality might join with that of another’s and form a friendship. Soon after hearing the fugue pieces that are part of The Well-Tempered Clavier, I decided I wanted to become a composer.
Of course, during these years, both dreadful for my being a laughingstock in school and delightful for their musical revelations, I couldn’t forget the image of the girl who momentarily appeared before me during my escape to The Empire of Ice Cream. The minute that Dr. Stullin pronounced me sane, I made plans to return and attempt to conjure her again. The irony of the situation was that just that single first taste of coffee ice cream had ended up making me ill, either because I’d been sheltered from rich desserts my whole life or because my system actually was inherently delicate. Once my freedom came, I found I didn’t have the stomach for all of those gastronomic luxuries I had at one time so desired. Still, I was willing to chance the stomachache in order to rediscover her.
On my second trip to The Empire, after taking a heaping spoonful of coffee ice cream and experiencing again that deep noetic response, she appeared as before, her image forming in the empty space between me and the front window of the shop. This time she seemed to be sitting at the end of a couch situated in a living room or parlor, reading a book. Only her immediate surroundings within a foot or two of her body were clear to me. As my eyes moved away from her central figure, the rest of the couch and the table beside her, holding a lamp, became increasingly ghostlike; images from the parking lot outside the shop window showed through. At the edges of the phenomenon there was nothing but the merest wrinkling of the atmosphere. She turned the page, and I was drawn back to her. I quickly fed myself another bit of ice cream and marveled at her beauty. Her hair was down, and I could see that it came well past her shoulders. Bright green eyes, a small, perfect nose, smooth skin, and full lips that silently moved with each word of the text she was scanning. She was wearing some kind of very sheer, powder-blue pajama top, and I could see the presence of her breasts beneath it.
I took two spoonfuls of ice cream in a row, and, because my desire had tightened my throat and I couldn’t swallow, their cold burned my tongue. In the time it took for the mouthful of ice cream to melt and trickle down my throat, I simply watched her chest subtly heave with each breath, her lips move, and I was enchanted. The last thing I noticed before she disappeared was the odd title of the book she was reading: The Centrifugal Rickshaw Dancer. I’d have taken another spoonful, but a massive headache had blossomed behind my eyes, and I could feel my stomach beginning to revolt against the ice cream. I got up and quickly left the shop. Out in the open air I walked for over an hour, trying to clear my head of the pain while at the same time trying to retain her image in my memory. I stopped three times along my meandering course, positive I was going to vomit, but never did.
My resistance to the physical side effects of the ice cream never improved, but I returned to the shop again and again, like a binge drinker to the bottle, hangover be damned, whenever I was feeling most alone. Granted, there was something of a voyeuristic thrill underlying the whole thing, especially when the ice cream would bring her to me in various states of undress—in the shower, in her bedroom. But you must believe me when I say that there was much more to it than that. I wanted to know everything about her. I studied her as assiduously as I did The Goldberg Variations or Shoenberg’s serialism. She was, in many ways, an even more intriguing mystery, and the process of investigation was like constructing a jigsaw puzzle, reconfiguring a blasted mosaic.
I learned that her name was Anna. I saw it written on one of her sketchpads. Yes, she was an artist, and I believe she had great aspirations in this direction as I did in music. I s
pent so many spoonfuls of coffee ice cream, initiated so many headaches, just watching her draw. She never lifted a paintbrush or pastel, but was tied to the simple tools of pencil and paper. I never witnessed her using a model or photograph as a guide. Instead she would place the sketchpad flat on a table and hunker over it. The tip of her tongue would show itself from the right corner of her lips when she was in deepest concentration. Every so often she would take a drag on a cigarette that burned in an ashtray to her left. The results of her work, the few times I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse, were astonishing. Sometimes she was obviously drawing from life, the portraits of people whom she must have known. At other times she would conjure strange creatures or mandala-like designs of exotic blossoms. The shading was incredible, giving weight and depth to her creations. All of this from the tip of a graphite pencil one might use to work a calculation or jot a memo. If I did not adore her, I might’ve envied her innate talent.
To an ancillary degree, I was able to catch brief glimpses of her surroundings, and this was fascinating for she seemed to move through a complete, separate world of her own, some kind of other reality that was very much like ours. I’d garnered enough to know that she lived in a large old house with many rooms, the windows covered with long drapes to block out the light. Her work area was chaotic, stacks of her drawings covering the tops of tables and pushed to the sides of her desk. A black-and-white cat was always prowling in and out of the tableau. She was very fond of flowers and often worked in some sun-drenched park or garden, creating painstaking portraits of amaryllis or pansies, and although the rain would be falling outside my own window, there the skies were bottomless blue.
Although over the course of years I’d told Stullin much about myself, revealed my ambitions and most secret desires, I had never mentioned Anna. It was only after I graduated high school and was set to go off to study at Gelsbeth Conservatory in the nearby city that I decided to reveal her existence to him. The doctor had been a good friend to me, albeit a remunerated one, and was always most congenial and understanding when I’d give vent to my frustrations. He persistently argued the optimistic viewpoint for me when all was as inky black as the aroma of my father’s aftershave. My time with him never resulted in a palpable difference in my ability to attract friends or feel more comfortable in public, but I enjoyed his company. At the same time, I was somewhat relieved to be severing all ties to my troubled past and escaping my childhood once and for all. I was willing to jettison Stullin’s partial good to be rid of the rest.
We sat in the small sunroom at the back of his house, and he was questioning me about what interests I would pursue in my forthcoming classes. He had a good working knowledge of classical music and had told me at one of our earliest meetings that he had studied the piano when he was younger. He had a weakness for the Romantics, but I didn’t hold it against him. Somewhere in the midst of our discussion I simply blurted out the details of my experiences with coffee ice cream and the resultant appearances of Anna. He was obviously taken aback. He leaned forward in his chair and slowly went through the procedure of lighting a cigarette.
“You know,” he said, releasing a cascade of smoke, the aroma of which always manifested itself for me in the faint sound of a mosquito, “that is quite unusual. I don’t believe there has ever been a case of a synesthetic vision achieving a figurative resemblance. They are always abstract. Shapes, colors, yes, but never an image of an object, not to mention a person.”
“I know it’s the synesthesia,” I said. “I can feel it. The exact same experience as when I summon colors from my keyboard.”
“And you say she always appears in relation to your eating ice cream?” he asked, squinting.
“Coffee ice cream,” I said.
This made him laugh briefly, but his smile soon diminished, and he brought his free hand up to stroke his beard. I knew this action to be a sign of his concern. “What you are describing to me would be, considering the current medical literature, a hallucination.”
I shrugged.
“Still,” he went on, “the fact that it is always related to your tasting the ice cream, and that you can identify an associated noetic feeling, I would have to agree with you that it seems related to your condition.”
“I knew it was unusual,” I said. “I was afraid to mention it.”
“No, no, it’s good that you did. The only thing troubling me about it is that I am too aware of your desire to connect with another person your age. To be honest, it has all the earmarks of wish fulfillment that points back to a kind of hallucination. Look, you don’t need this distraction now. You are beginning your life, you are moving on, and there is every indication that you will be successful in your art. When the other students at the conservatory understand your abilities, you will make friends, believe me. It will not be like high school. Chasing this insubstantial image could impede your progress. Let it go.”
And so, not without a large measure of regret, I did. To an extent, Stullin was right about Gelsbeth. It wasn’t like high school, and I did make the acquaintance of quite a few like-minded people with whom I could at least connect on the subject of music. I wasn’t the only odd fish in that pond, believe me. To be a young person with an overriding interest in Bach or Mozart or Scriabin was its own eccentricity for those times. The place was extremely competitive, and I took the challenge. My fledgling musical compositions were greeted with great interest by the faculty, and I garnered a degree of notoriety when one day a fellow student discovered me composing a chamber piece for violins and cello using my set of crayons. I would always work in my corresponding synesthetic colors and then transpose the work, scoring it in normal musical notation.
The years flew by, and I believe they were the most rewarding of my entire life. I rarely went home to visit, save on holidays when the school was closed, even though it was only a brief train ride from the city. The professors were excellent but unforgiving of laziness and error. It wasn’t a labor for me to meet their expectations. For the first time in my life, I felt what it meant to play, an activity I’d never experienced in childhood. The immersion in great music, the intricate analysis of its soul, kept me constantly engaged, filled with a sense of wonder.
Then, in my last year, I became eligible to participate in a competition for composers. There was a large cash prize, and the winner’s work would be performed by a well-known musician at a concert in the city’s symphony hall. The difficulty of being a composer was always the near-impossibility of getting one’s work performed by competent musicians in a public venue. The opportunity presented by the competition was one I couldn’t let slip away. More important than the money or the accolades would be a kind of recognition that would bring me to the attention of potential patrons who might commission a work. I knew that it was time to finally compose the fugue I’d had in mind for so many years. The utter complexity of the form, I believed, would be the best way to showcase all of my talents.
When it came time to begin the composition of the fugue, I took the money I’d made tutoring young musicians on the weekends and put it toward renting a beach house out on Varion Island for two weeks. In the summer the place was a bustling tourist spot for the wealthy, with a small central town that could be termed quaint. In those months, I wouldn’t have been able to touch the price of the lowliest dwelling for a single day’s rent. It was the heart of winter, though, when I took a leave from the school, along with crayons, books, a small tape player, and fled by way of bus and cab to my secret getaway.
The house I came to wasn’t one of the grand wooden mansions on stilts that lined the road along the causeway, but instead a small bungalow, much like a concrete bunker. It was painted an off-putting yellow that tasted to me for all the world like cauliflower. It sat atop a small rise, and its front window faced the ocean, giving me a sublime view of the dunes and beach. What’s more, it was within walking distance of the tiny village. There was sufficient heat, a telephone, a television, a kitchen with all the applian
ces, and I instantly felt as at home there as I had anywhere in my life. The island itself was deserted. On my first day I walked down to the ocean, along the shore the mile and a half to the eastern point, and then back by way of the main road, passing empty houses, and I saw no one. I’d been told over the phone by the realtor that the diner in town and a small shop that sold cigarettes and newspapers stayed open through the winter. Thankfully, she was right, for without the diner, I would have starved.
The setting of the little bungalow was deliciously melancholic, and for my sensibilities that meant conducive to work. I could hear the distant breaking of waves and, above that, the winter wind blowing sand against the window glass, but these were not distractions. Instead, they were the components of a silence that invited one to dream wide awake, to let the imagination open, and so I dove into the work straightaway. On the first afternoon, I began recording in my notebook my overall plan for the fugue. I’d decided that it would have only two voices. Of course, some had been composed with as many as eight, but I didn’t want to be ostentatious. Showing reserve is as important a trait of technical mastery as is that of complexity.
I already had the melodic line of the subject, which had been a castoff from another project I’d worked on earlier in the year. Even though I decided it wasn’t right for the earlier piece, I couldn’t forget it and kept revising it here and there, playing it over and over. In the structure of a fugue, one posits the melodic line or subject, and then there is an answer (counterpoint), a reiteration of that line with differing degrees of variation, so that what the listener hears is like a dialogue (or a voice and its echo) of increasing complexity. After each of the voices has entered the piece, there is an episode that leads to the reentry of the voices and given answers, now in different keys. I had planned to use a technique called stretto, in which the answers, as they are introduced, overlap somewhat the original subject lines. This allows for a weaving of the voices so as to create an intricate tapestry of sound.
