Ya’ll have posted some really great questions!
I’d like to address one in particular that has come up several times, and that is the issue of whether or not my synesthetic colors “override” the colors I see in the real world. Specifically, if you show me a red “D,” do I actually see a blue “D”? I want to stress the important fact that synesthesia is an automatic association between a stimulus (like a letter or number) and an attribute (like a color).
There’s no “d” in banana… blue or otherwise!
If I come up to you and say the word “banana,” an image of a banana most likely pops into your head for a fraction of a second. It happens automatically, often before you can recognize it is there. If I show you a black and white line-drawing of a banana, you don’t see yellow, but you inherently know that the banana should be (and is) yellow. It’s the same type of experience for a synesthete when you say the letter “D.” For an instant, a blue “D” pops into my head in its proper location in my colored alphabet. A second later, the image is gone and I’m moving on to whatever comes to my attention next. If I see a “D” on a page, I don’t see blue, but I inherently know that letter should be blue if I had it my way. The blue is a property of “D” just like yellow is a property of bananas.
