I thought you already knew. Except that I haven't been comfortable as identifying what I experience as synaesthesia becuase every written description of synaesthesia I've encountered has described effects I don't experience and presented those as being "what synaesthesia is".
So is what I've been calling "my kindasorta synaesthesia-like thing" formally actually synaesthesia (just with different manifestations than what all the magazine writers understand), or is this an informal use of the word because that's what the phenomena are closest to and there's no more convenient word to use?
In either case, it comes in handy in magick as well as in cooking (and I wonder if some small degree of it can be learned). But in both fields it does induce head-scratching in listeners who don't share the experience.
To some small degree it can be learned. I was a HF radio operator once. We used good old-fashioned Morse. The sound pattern di-dah quite soon looked (yes, the sound looked) exactly the same as the graphic shape of the written letter a sounded.
As for spices, for me they have more like shapes than colours.
I would call it that, especially if (and only if) your perceptions of which spices etc. taste what colours don't match up with the actual colours of the spices (like how cumin tastes grey-gold but is actually a brown-green colour, and thai basil tastes red, even though it's green with purple accents). If you have a near-zero colour-perception match (unlike some of the posters on here who've been matching "red things" with red things and "green things" with green things -- what do you do when a "green thing" actually tastes yellow?), then you're talking about a form of genuine synaesthesia.
You downloaded the "electroklezmer" song, right? Quick, what colour is it predominantly? (I'm betting you'll be able to tell me.)
Tomble has the more classic kind of synaesthesia, the kind where letters and numbers have distinct colours. (I'm so glad I don't have that -- it would mess up my reading speed for sure.) Actually, how you're describing what you see seems to be classic synaesthete behaviour. See this link from SciAm. Apparently no one else can describe it adequately, either. :)
Re: Glenn, I didn't know you are a synaesthete!!
So is what I've been calling "my kindasorta synaesthesia-like thing" formally actually synaesthesia (just with different manifestations than what all the magazine writers understand), or is this an informal use of the word because that's what the phenomena are closest to and there's no more convenient word to use?
In either case, it comes in handy in magick as well as in cooking (and I wonder if some small degree of it can be learned). But in both fields it does induce head-scratching in listeners who don't share the experience.
Re: acquired synaesthetics
As for spices, for me they have more like shapes than colours.
Re: Glenn, I didn't know you are a synaesthete!!
You downloaded the "electroklezmer" song, right? Quick, what colour is it predominantly? (I'm betting you'll be able to tell me.)
Tomble has the more classic kind of synaesthesia, the kind where letters and numbers have distinct colours. (I'm so glad I don't have that -- it would mess up my reading speed for sure.) Actually, how you're describing what you see seems to be classic synaesthete behaviour. See this link from SciAm. Apparently no one else can describe it adequately, either. :)