Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Purple Haze



Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don’t seem the same
Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why
’scuse me while I kiss the sky
Purple haze all around
Don’t know if I’m comin’ up or down
Am I happy or in misery?
What ever it is, that girl put a spell on me
Help me
Help me
Oh, no, no

I am listening Jimi Hendrix from Mercora Radio. There is a new klang in this song now. Did you hear about those neuropsychologists who are studying synaesthesia.

Take a free test. Pick your guitar and play this chord - the purple haze chord - the Jimi Hendrix chord.


E7#9 \ \ \ E7#9 \ \ \ G \ \ \ A \ \ \ ... - you must barre the A and G or it will not sound right ... Purple haze ... all in my brain ... G \ \ \ A \ \
Now, does the world look like having a purple color? No? : ( Your brain, thus, works normally. But some people really do see colors to certain sounds. This is called synaesthesia. It kind of mixes your senses. Yu hear a sound and it makes you see a certain color. Or you hear a name and it makes your mouth taste a certain taste. When we saw and heard Purple Haze alive in 1969 we may have heard a report of an artificially produced synaesthetic experience. Given the right drugs, it seems, anybody could experience synaesthesia.

This is actually a pretty interesting fact, i.e. if anybody can produce that experience synthetically. You see what it means? It is consistent with the idea proposed by neurologist V. S. Ramachandran at the University of California, San Diego,that every human brain has connections that could allow synaesthesia to happen.

In other words, the physical wiring in our brain enables us to transfer ( or better - transgress ?) a particular set of tonal information and link it with those parts of our brain producing experiences related with colors. There is something here that reminds me of the Matrix-movie. There may be something here that can change the whole setting of modern human sciences.

Ramachandran is saying that synaesthesia is noted eight times more frequently in artists than in the typical population, and is in generally more common in creative people. The rest of us ....

"Lately things just don’t seem the same ...
’scuse me while I kiss the sky
Purple haze all around..."

While writing this, my Mercora radio tuned to an other song - My Sweet Lord by George Harrison ...
A ... Em ... A ... Em ... A .... and then (as the lyrics go to the "I really want to see you") comes the D ... Bm .. can you see how the world turns brighter and lighter here? There must be some synaesthesia here too!!!!! hm My lord ...hm My Lord

1 comment:

slÖ said...

definitely purple!

btw my sweet lord is warm brown with diffuse orange glow