Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to series three of the Life of Letters. I'm Laura Edrilyn, your host and London based calligrapher. Curious about the history and future of letters. This season we're diving back into the rich world of scripts, letter forms and the stories behind the marks we make on paper and elsewhere.
A massive thank you to Speedball for sponsoring this season of the podcast. It really means so much to us. Not only do we have their director of Product marketing, Melissa, joining me for an episode this season, but I've been using Speedball tools since my very early days of calligraphy, so their support truly means the world. Enjoy the episode and if you want to find out more about the guest, the podcast or me, please check out the show notes.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: In today's episode. I'm delighted to be speaking with Maika Pricing. Micah is a German UK based psychologist and synesthesia artist. She is also the host of the podcast let's Talk Synesthesia on Social media. She shares her experience of living with a brain as colorful as hers and raises awareness for sensory and neurodiversity. Maika, firstly, a huge welcome to the Life of Letters podcast. Very excited to be talking to you today.
[00:01:14] Speaker C: Thank you so much. I am so excited, so excited to see you again and so excited for this topic because that's going to be very different to what I've done so far.
Yes, thank you for having me.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: I'm dragging you into a very specific, very niche world of letters. So the podcast is all about the life of letters. We're celebrating letters throughout history, across the world, and not just on paper. So I was particularly keen to bring an episode to our listeners that perhaps stretched our perception of what letters look like and potentially feel like, taste, like all the things.
So for our listeners, can you explain what synesthesia is and in particular maybe a little bit of focus around the grapheme color form, which I think is what it's called.
[00:02:03] Speaker C: Yes, that's what it's called. Okay. Synesthesia is a neurodivergent trait or a neurodivergence where your senses merge.
Meaning that neurologically speaking, when your brain receives one sensory input, for example a sound, or, or in our case a letter, your brain would not only react with one area for, for a sound, it would be the, the auditory part that would be activated. Also for non synesthetic synesthetic people. But in a synesthetic brain there would be a double reaction, so another area of the brain would be activated too and that could be the taste area or the visual part of your brain. And, and that's because these areas communicate with each other more than they do in a non synesthetic or neurotypical brain.
So that leads to all sorts of fantastic combination and overlap of sensory experiences.
I experience around 10 different forms of synesthesia, so my brain is quite communicative.
And synesthesia, which we always have to add because there's always some question about is there, is there a cure, is there, can you heal this? Synesthesia is not an illness, it's not a disability, it's just a neurodivergent trait. It's sort of a byproduct of human evolution.
If we think of our body height, our faces, our hands, we all have, there's a spectrum of how we look. And the same goes for our brain. There are different neurotypes and having synesthesia is one of them.
That being said, some forms are a bit more challenging in a neurotypical coded world. But overall synesthesia is just a non variant of our brain and is pretty fascinating. And I would everybody encourage to look into it, especially if you work with people, teachers, carers, parents, clinicians.
I think it's really good to be aware of this talk about graphing, color synesthesia. So that's the connection between letters and colors.
And this is, as you maybe can already tell, a bit of a stretch of the original definition where we have two senses cross because letters are a concept that we learn at some point. It's not one of our sense, the sensory modalities that we were born with.
But this still falls very much under the synesthesia umbrella and is actually one of the more common forms. So for me, for example, every letter, every number and even a couple symbols like plus and minus have colors.
And for this form I experience them projected. So I don't just know that A is red or when I think about the letter A being red, I also see it in, when I look at the screen and I see your name, Laura, then I also see sort of a tinted color shade on, on your name projected. So that's how I experience it. But for other people it might not be projected and it's just a deep knowledge, like a deep, I don't know if it's knowledge, a deep certainty that the color matches this letter.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yes, it is. Oh my goodness, such a fascinating world. And there's so much you can look into in all of the different forms and how the senses cross over and it becomes this incredible world of beautiful things. And you know, it's referenced everywhere. We'll come on to kind of Other places and people and things later. But you immediately made me think of the film Ratatouille and how, you know, he experiences tastes and colors. And it's quite a visual concept that really explains that form.
But yeah, as you say, sort of yours is slightly different to mine in the sense that you can see it literally in front of you or projected onto the words and letters. Whereas mine is very much in my mind's eye, so slightly different. And I know lots of people will experience it in different levels as well. Right. It can be quite strong. There's certain letters for me which I'm like, oh, they're not quite this color. They're sort of pulled in two different directions.
Very interesting.
[00:06:48] Speaker C: But as a.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: As a synaesthete and an artist yourself, are there other forms of synaesthesia just to step away from letters that kind of influence your work?
[00:07:02] Speaker C: Definitely. But also synesthesia is kind of the reason I do somewhat artistic things. Because I started digital art collages to explain to people what I see. Because for me, my mind's eye is high definition, very detailed, very visual. And I want people to get an idea of what I see on a daily basis. When I have period cramps, for example, when I hear a voice or all sorts of different things here. Someone snore or hear a fart. Yeah, all those day to day things.
So I started.
So I started kind of turning them into digital collages using Photoshop and references and that.
I did some smaller exhibitions, but it's not really a main focus of my. My career. So I'm very much a psychologist trying to educate and help people understand their neurodivergence. And art is kind of a tool to explain to people professionally, but also to my family and friends what's actually going on.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
Incredible tool. And brilliant that you've identified that as a way of communicating it. Because it's not always easy to explain or to fully understand ourselves. So I presume that process. Process has actually given you more understanding of your own experiences as well.
[00:08:37] Speaker C: Definitely, yeah. And it also. What I love about synesthesia art is that when you sit down and you do it, you know exactly when it's right.
It's so odd. Even though it was maybe a sound from two weeks ago, I know exactly when it's right. And I think it's the same for picking the color shades of letters. I'm curious if you feel the same that when you pick the color it just clicks and you just. Yes, this is the blue. That's the shade of the letter E. That's exactly the.
The E. Blue.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. And actually, so my. My kind of first memory of experiencing a sort of synesthetic reaction was remembering back to being in my bedroom when I was probably about 8 or 9 years old. And I had, like, an Alphabet. You know, it's something like a long Alphabet that you stuck on the wall, but. And it had like A for apple, B for whatever. And. And all the colors were wrong. And I couldn't understand why they put the wrong colors on the wrong letters and had no kind of sense of knowing that they weren't wrong or that other people didn't see them as the wrong letters or anything like that until I got to university.
And so for the first sort of 18 years of my life, I just assumed everybody saw them as the colors of.
And months in space and all sorts of things. That I just happened to see a TV program with a lady that they were talking to who experienced it as a really quite a chronic kind of impact on her. Her life. So she really experienced it quite heavily.
And they touched. They mentioned this sort of synesthesia. And I was thinking, oh, what's that? Because, you know. And followed it up and looked on the fairly basic Internet that I had and did this online test about the letters. Because once I'd read about it, I was like, but isn't everybody doing this? And then. Yeah. Realized that.
[00:10:46] Speaker C: It would have been so funny if you realized that. Oh, that that must been what was wrong with the other people who set up this wrong Alphabet. Because clearly I'm right.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: I'm right. Yeah. What's wrong with everyone? I mean, they may well have had synaesthesia themselves. Right. Because actually, we don't necessarily see the same letters in the same colors either.
And I think that's a whole nother fascinating area because it's not like we were once taught that, you know, I know there's quite a comm.
Pattern that the A is red for a lot of people, and it's not for me. It's yellow.
So it's. It's always really interesting. What's yours?
[00:11:28] Speaker C: It's definitely red for me.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Is it? Okay.
[00:11:31] Speaker C: Yellow is quite shocking.
Never heard that one.
What about the letter O?
[00:11:36] Speaker B: The letter O is definitely orange for me.
[00:11:39] Speaker C: Oh, okay. I think that's like the second most close to being universal.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Really?
[00:11:47] Speaker C: Yeah. And people keep saying it's. It makes sense because of the word orange and the fruit orange. And I'm like, no, but it doesn't.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Explain why the N is green and The G is green for me, and, yeah, I have lots of blues, and the D is the only red letter for me.
Very strong, really.
D, like, so the whole name. Often for me, it's either dominated by a certain color within repeated color within the letters, or the first letter tends to be what the whole name gets.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Colored as.
[00:12:27] Speaker C: I think that's very. Is that common, that? Well, the first letters just seem to be a lot more dominant for a lot of people.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: So if you would.
[00:12:36] Speaker C: Would associate sort of a color cloud with a name.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:39] Speaker C: If someone's name would be Eric, then for me, the. The first. The dark blue E would be dominating the rest of the word. But the others are still present. And if you would. It's kind of. If you want to zoom in on every letter, you see the individual colors, but if you just think about it briefly, it's like, oh, yeah, blue name. Exactly. At work, if someone calls and I'm like, I don't remember their name, but I do know it was a green last name.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:07] Speaker C: You better know this is correct, because my synesthesia memory is not.
It's not failing me.
Do you experience that, too?
[00:13:16] Speaker B: Absolutely. The people that I know closest, and I don't know if it's because I've seen their names so much, but they are more dominant than other people that I don't know so well.
So it's as though the more I get to know someone, the stronger the color is of their name.
So.
[00:13:35] Speaker C: Oh, that's my.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: And my brother's Daniel, which is very red. And he is such a red person. He is so red in my experience of him.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: So to be clear for you and your listeners, yes, it sounds like there is a bit of emotionally mediated synesthesia sprinkled into it, because this is not just graphing colors in a stage of what you're describing.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Okay, so.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: So this seems like two forms of synesthesia. Shaking hands and agreeing that, yes, this works, this person is actually red. Or maybe it started with your person, the personality of your brother, deciding what is red for you.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:18] Speaker C: So we have an episode on emotionally mediated synesthesia on our podcast, if you're curious about that.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: I am.
I'm going to listen to it.
But yes, sorry.
Drifting off into all sorts of beautiful areas. And I was going to say about people experiencing not just letters, but numbers as well and symbols. So you have it with symbols as well, which is really interesting.
When you're writing, do you experience anything?
[00:14:47] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely. And I think that's so. I'm so excited to dive into this because I. I'm just going to say it. I really like my handwriting. Good.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: So.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: So you should really like writing.
And whenever I do write something, I want it to look nice and if not, it makes me not want to use those notes at all.
And I remember a specific situation in my last job where we had this team board and there was a word that I couldn't read because some people have not so nice handwriting and. And I couldn't tell what the first. Or I thought I knew what the first letter was and it didn't make sense. And then someone pointed out, no, no, it's not an H, it's a B.
And the moment the person said it, the. The green, what I perceived as H just switched to a blue B and all of a sudden the letter on the paper was blue because now I could read it properly. And ever since I saw this switch so, like directed by someone else, I keep noticing it and it definitely, like whenever I write, I see the colors on, on the paper when other people write.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: That's incredible, isn't it? Yeah. And it's influencing your understanding of the letters, the spellings of things.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Fancy joining me for a calligraphy workshop?
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Or course, soon.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Whether you're a total beginner or want a mindful creative boost, I'd love to see you there. Check out what's coming up via the link in the show notes. Now let's get back to the episode.
[00:16:37] Speaker C: Another trick, if you haven't tried that yet. I think it's so, so fun to use, for example, just a small piece of paper and then put the letter M on it and then rotate, rotate it on the table until it's a W.
And just observe when the color switches.
It's like tingling your brain.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: It's so fun. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, playing with, playing with the synesthesia almost. Yeah. That's really interesting.
And I was going to ask about your art. When you create art, do you ever incorporate letters into some of the pieces? Or is it mostly kind of patterns and colors and movement?
[00:17:24] Speaker C: I remember I had a red dream once, a synesthetic dream, and I did, when I recreated it, also put a big A in it because it just felt like in that dream everything was red. And I'm sure there was letters floating around too. So.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: See, I immediately was like, why would you put. Why would you put a yellow A in the middle of your red dream?
My brain just immediately snapped into. Oh, that's interesting. Right? Red. Yes, red.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: Because it, it exactly matched this.
Maybe. That's so funny because synesthetes often are expected to have this common language, but because we have our own associations, we often don't even communicate better.
So I feel like I even should say, and then I also put the red letter. And then you would imagine a D. I'd imagine an A. Yes. Nobody's hurt.
But I wouldn't say that letters are. I mean, I. I do things based on my graphic color synesthesia. I have this series on my Instagram account where I dress, give people outfits based on the colors of their name, which was a very popular series that went viral. And it was very overwhelming because there were so many name requests.
But I wouldn't call this art. It's more of a fun game.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: It's an engagement tool. Yeah, for sure. And it's fascinating for people who don't necessarily experience it to see what they're there. You know, everyone loves to see their name. It's the beauty of things, of being able to personalize stuff, is that it becomes uniquely you. And I guess that's what I get really excited about, the synesthetic side. And actually I don't use a lot of color in my calligraphy specifically because I find it overwhelming.
So I tend to use just black or just one color. And I can almost block out the idea that each letter. I mean, sometimes I'll get a sense that I'm doing an A. And I feel like that A is yellow. But thankfully. And it'd be interesting to know if there are synesthes out there who do experience the projected grapheme color form and are working with letters in whatever form and how. How that impacts their. Their art. But the other form I was going to question you about, which is letter related as well, is the ticker tape one, which is new on my kind of radar, synesthetic radar. But something that does happen to me, and I wondered whether it was a new form that's kind of come about or. I know there's lots of different forms and studies are always ongoing and discovering things, but I just wondered whether it's a particularly common one. So ticker tape is where actually. Can you explain it?
[00:20:21] Speaker C: Of course.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: I'll stop talking.
[00:20:23] Speaker C: So ticker tape synesthesia is where you see mental subtitles, so subtitles written out in your mind's eye as someone speaks, as you watch a film or as you think, or as you hear yourself speak or listen to music. Whenever you perceive language, either from someone else or yourself, you would see the words written out in your mind's eye.
I have that form, and for me, the words Kind of float in the space between us.
They're quite quick because, of course, we speak very quickly. It's not like I see a whole script or.
But if there is a word that is especially important or since English is not my first language, if there is a word that stands out and I find really cool, it would stick around a bit longer because I'm probably trying to figure out how to spell it.
Um, and to your question, whether it is a new form.
I think I found out about my ticker tape synesthesia around four years ago, maybe. Okay, so it's not too. And it was also not because of a new article. It was just someone else referring to it.
So I think it would be around for a couple years now. But, I mean, even if it was five or 10 years, it would still be a kind of new experience. Is not new.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: No.
[00:21:44] Speaker C: Maybe the. The research for it is new. And then because I also explained the graphing color synesthesia before. I do see these subtitles in color because of.
Sometimes they're more black and white if the language is really quick. But in general, if I have more time to think about a word or I look at it with more time, it's always colorful because I barely can imagine black or white letters.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:14] Speaker C: Yeah. My brain doesn't allow it. It's like a hard task to imagine letters in the color that they're not assigned to.
So that's one part of the experience of colors. And then depending on someone's dialect or accent or with what kind of emotional force they speak, how loud they are, the size of the letters, and the font would change, which I find quite funny to observe.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: That's really interesting.
It's making me think about reels and. And things that we see these days on YouTube and all sorts of places where you've got so many captions and they're doing lots of animated things.
I find more recently.
And my husband hates subtitles. He finds them really distracting. And I find them very supportive because I'm constantly visualizing it. It actually helps me stop visualizing it so much. So it's less fatiguing when you're watching a film to have the subtitles up for me.
But I wonder whether that's a help or a hindrance to other people and who experience ticker tape. What about you?
[00:23:26] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a. It's a difficult one. I can see how subtitles on a film can be distracting because they kind of distract me too. But then again, they're also a great accessibility tool to people who don't speak the language as a native speaker or are hard of hearing or have synesthesia or auditory processing difficulties. So subtitles really cover so many groups of people.
But I can also understand that it is more enjoyable when you're not member of any of those groups to watch it without because it kind of draws your attention from the film down to the bottom. And I'm sure we would miss out on other things. For me personally, I think I have quite poor auditory processing skills. And I don't know what came first.
I don't know.
I don't know if the ticker tape is a solution to this or I just don't really have to process auditory things because there's always a visual component to any sound, to any word. I will see it anyway. So if I go to.
I had a hearing test a couple months ago and where they want you to press a button when you hear the sound. And I noticed that I will press a button once I see the sound.
Not really when I.
When I hear it.
I still wouldn't say that there is a delay. I think it's just.
That's when it becomes more conscious.
And then we press the button anyways when it's conscious.
So I didn't notice that it was a delay or that I would be quicker. It was just the thing that then made me feel.
I have perceived the sound wasn't the sound itself, but the visual of the sound.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah. That's a lot of mental processing as well for you. Because there's lots of different forms of synaesthesia going on and you're being tasked with something which is very specific. And then you don't necessarily know what element is helping you identify that. Right.
[00:25:36] Speaker C: But it's a running, functioning system. So I don't want to complain.
What is it like for you? Do you experience ticker tapes? Synesthesia.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: So I experienced ticker tape, but it's mostly black with white writing. It's almost like.
It's almost like the very old. I don't know if you know, like. Is that what a ticker tape was? It was like the.
The little machine that you'd like that would bring out a little ribbon of.
[00:26:08] Speaker C: I think so I think there are a couple different words that I don't feel completely like. Typewriter. No, that's the machine.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Yeah. But it is a bit like a typewriter. But I would say the background is usually always black and.
And the words of the letters of white. Sorry. And it does fluctuate, as you say, when people. If I'm in a really noisy environment.
It's. I almost. It's very strong because I'm trying to hear what people are saying. And so what I end up doing is sort of visualizing the words more.
But again, it's only fairly recently I've realized that I do it. It's not.
It's not something that I've ever known that I hadn't done or did do, if you know what I mean. Until it was like, oh, yeah, but isn't that how we normally. Isn't that what everyone's doing?
So, yeah, I think, I guess that's a lot of synaesthesia forms do come across like that.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: But have you interviewed your kids on this yet?
[00:27:12] Speaker B: I have.
What did we discover? So my eldest has got colors, but they're slightly different to mine.
[00:27:21] Speaker C: Upsetting.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So we don't talk about it anymore.
That's not true.
And my youngest, he was. He was kind of mixing up two different elements of something. I need to remember what it is now, but I can't remember. But we haven't gone through all the forms. That's what I was thinking. We might kind of actually explore all the list of. How many are there, do you know?
[00:27:44] Speaker C: Over 80.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Over 80 different forms. Wow. Okay. That's incredible. And it's not a new thing, is it? It's. It's.
Especially in the art world and throughout history, there's quite a few well known synesthetes that sort of starting to come forward. So it feels like quite a new thing that people are talking about.
Um, but as you said earlier, it's.
It's evolutionary. So it's been there for years and years and years, but we've only just beginning to dive into the study of it.
[00:28:16] Speaker C: Yeah, that's so true. In the 1980s, Richard Cytoic, who is a researcher, looked into it and tried to push to look into it. And people were very skeptical about it.
But he did amazing, amazing work. Built a really fantastic legacy on his work on synesthesia and helped the community a lot.
So now we have a bunch of different labs looking at synesthesia around the world and around Europe.
But that's true. The trait was always there and we can see it in art and kind of reclaim.
Like Kandinsky, for example, or other artists. I think Van Gogh is one of the artists that people believe to have synesthesia. And then of course, there are a lot of artists alive that do experience anesthesia, like Pharrell Williams, which is actually where the two of us meet.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: It is, yeah. So we met a few months ago. It was this year, wasn't.
Was in November last year, but it was incredible. So you held a brilliant UK Synaesthesia event at NBC Universal in London, and it was celebrating the release of the film Piece by P Piece, which kind of follows Pharrell's Pharrell Williams's journey and life as a musician, producer and creative mind that he is as a synesthete and discovering how that works in his life as a person in the world, but also through his music. And it's an incredible film if people haven't seen it. It's definitely one of the. The great ways of understanding something a little bit more.
And many, many other artists, especially musicians, are kind of starting to talk about synesthesia as well. I want to say Billie Eilish. I don't want to say the wrong people, but true.
[00:30:14] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: And many, many more, I'm sure. But then you can look back in history and start to see lots of people who. Who probably did have it as well. I.
[00:30:23] Speaker C: We did record an episode on the history of synesthesia, but it was with. With Richard Saitoic. So therefore it was kind of around 1980, 1980s until now, which was very interesting. But I also want to understand what. What documents do we have? Because I know they're a bunch to understand what happened throughout history and evolution, because it definitely was around and I understand why it does have a clear advantage to society. So it's not a question why it's still around.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: And you have recently come on board as a member of the UK Synaesthesia association, which is doing incredible work.
But you are the social media and commercial director, I want to say. And in this series we're exploring the theme of kind of legacy and innovation. So whilst we can dip into history at some other point, I'm really keen to talk to you about what see as the kind of the work for the association and obviously all the work that you do personally as well, with the podcast and.
And across all the social channels. What does it. What's your sort of hopes for the future in terms of synaesthesia and. And raising awareness and everything that you do?
[00:31:43] Speaker C: I just want to host cool events.
Yeah. I think that that's really where my passion is, hosting events that are a neurofirming space where people show up and go home and feel great and they don't feel judged and they go there with good intent and expect good intent from each other and just to have this really fantastic space where people can have deep talk from the moment they walk in. And yeah, I think just as neurodivergent spaces where you then also can extend it to synesthesia is. Is just really cool. So that's what I do in general, I think. And then for the UK Synesthesia association, hosting events in collaboration with different projects, I think is a really good way to go about it. And what James and I both are quite passionate about is that synesthesia is connected to so many other neurodivergent traits like autism and ADHD or giftedness, dyslexia.
And it's such a wonderful, colorful bouquet of traits. And there aren't many. Well, I, I don't know the statistics, so maybe I shouldn't say that, but I don't really know many synesthetes that only have synesthesia. There's always something else sprinkled in. So I think it's so good to. To provide a space where we. Because we're so close to neuroscientists who research this, to provide a space where we have kind of give access to the information of. Oh, if this sounds like you, you might also want to look into this and this and this topic, and to kind of give people access to understanding their cognitive profile beyond just colorful letters.
Because if you do associate colors with letters, there's a good chance that you also have increased scores for creativity and memory, that you're more sensitive, you might be more likely to be autistic. So there are just all sorts of things that might be really, really interesting for you. And synesthesia is the first thing you came across, or maybe it's the last thing you came across.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And if it, if it allows people more access to understand themselves and each other, I think it just creates an even brighter future, doesn't it? A more beautiful world. And there's lots of societies, networking groups and events all over the world. And I was looking on the association website, there's lots of resources on there. So if. If you're not in the uk, you can look into it. And if you're wondering whether you're a synesthete and you're not sure, there's little online tests. That's where I started. And then ended up doing, you know, studies for Dr. Jamie Ward. And so I went and met him all those moons ago and had nodes stuck to my head and things flashing up on the computer and things that. It was. It was brilliant because it was just. That sounds so cool. Yeah, it was great. And it was something that I felt not only was I learning, but it was giving them some more data to understand more people and maybe understand a little bit more about the bigger picture of synesthesia. So if they, if anybody is listening and they suspect they might have a form of synesthesia, what is the sort of first thing that you would suggest they do?
[00:35:06] Speaker C: I always recommend the website the Synesthesia Tree by one of our community. Community members. Pow. She is British and based in Spain and she put so much work into setting up a website that lists all the reported synesthesia forms with definitions, some art, some anecdotes and, and quotes. And I think it's such a good place to go through and be like, oh, this sounds familiar, let's read about that. Or this. I thought everybody does that.
But also to, to go like this, I definitely do not experience, which is also a really good way to outline what's my experience, what is other people's experience.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:52] Speaker C: So that's one thing. And then of course, selfishly, I always recommend our podcast because it's such a nice library of personal stories.
It's a mix of experts by experience and expert by training.
So I have Jamie Ward, for example, was on twice, James Warnerton, Joel Simner, people who study synesthesia, and then a lot of synesthes who talk about their experience of being misdiagnosed or how they make use of it in their art. And we always try to dive into a specific form for each episode.
So if you have an inkling about one form, you might want to go to that episode straight.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And I listen to quite a few and the one that's really stuck with me is they forget his name. So apologies, but he tastes names or people so often it's the name of the person. And it was just fascinating hearing his experience and actually how incredibly impacting it is on, on his sort of day to day life. It's just bringing us all that little bit closer together, which is absolutely what I'm here for and what your podcast is doing as well. So definitely go and check it out. Let's talk synesthesia. But to find out more about Micah and all of the fascinating stuff that she does on Instagram, it's Ika pricing and at Synesthese. Is that how you say it? Underscore A?
[00:37:32] Speaker C: It's synesthesia, but the I is replaced with an underscore.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Gotcha.
Brilliant.
[00:37:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Or at your website, obviously micahpressing.com but we will put all the links in today's show Notes, have you got anything else that you wanted to add? Because I've sort of wrapped it up before you've had a chance to say anything else.
[00:37:54] Speaker C: Well, I guess the one thing I really want to know is if you have any hand lettering workshops coming up.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Oh, you've asked just the right question. Always.
Yes, I do. I have workshops and an online club. But you're in London now. I mean, uk.
Not quite London, but you're not close enough.
[00:38:15] Speaker C: Oxford close enough, close enough, close enough.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: We'll track you over or get you online to something. But yes, I'd love to have you along. That would be incredible.
[00:38:24] Speaker C: I would love it. Yeah, send him over. Thank you so, so much for having me. This was so fun. Thank you.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Loved it. Loved it. Thank you, Micah.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Life of Letters. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss the rest of the series.
If you can, leave a quick review that really helps the podcast reach more ears. And if you're enjoying these conversations, please consider buying us a coffee to help keep the episodes coming. All the details are in the show notes.
Finally, once again, a big thank you to Speedball Arts for supporting this season and for being part of my calligraphy journey from the very start. Until next time, keep writing, keep creating, and keep celebrating the life of letters.
