I did a lot of planning on a word document and then placed a lot on the pages that i thought would be appropriate so that I could see what was missing and what was not needed.
Information booklet content:
Would you like to have AMBITION or ESTEEM be UNINHIBITED to develop your
sense of HUMOUR build CONFIDENCE enjoy a MIND CLEANSER or RELAX be ENERGISED
have more PERSPECTIVE be ENLIGHTENED or just at PEACE
What is it?
An 80-minute journey deep
within, using sensory massage, soaring soundscapes and behavioural
prescriptions to transform your state of mind. The signature treatment allows
you to decide how you want to feel by choosing from the eleven behavioural
prescriptions for a unique experience each time.
About synaesthesia
Synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation
of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads too automatic, involuntary
experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.
Where do you want to go today?
Seasons of massage and
sensory delirium fuelled by the way you want to feel. Here’s a mind cleanser.
Take an 80-minute journey deep within, choreographed by acres of coastline,
birdsong and the power of words. It’s the scent of magic, confidence and
esteem: a unique language of music, fine essential oils and full body massage
which engages and merges all your senses, sending you into a rapture of
storybook imagery and immersive sensations. Ponder this tremendous scene, this
whole experiment of enlightened green as the peal of distant bells rings out.
Hot sunlight, lush fields, going back in time - laughter wings away like butterflies,
all sweet, green humour and glorious mornings. Energised. Uninhibited: the
earth is turning, burning, giving you life. Perspective. Peace. Find yourself
on the hillside watching the sky darken and turn to night in Hardy’s country,
where the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement and massage
is exquisite poetry.
Enjoy the panorama: all
delight of human sense exposed in this composition of your own making and
experience, never the same and never predictable. Welcome to Xanadu, where
gardens are bright with sinuous rills, and blossoms many an incense-bearing
tree; where soundscapes of slow motion ring out, tuning your mind into a deep
state of relaxation, taking you from evening to night to dawn and day once
more. You’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole with Alice, dived into a verdant
fantasia, stepped into a vortex of imagination where your body is a landscape
made in the mind.
“Soundscapes of slow motion ring out, tuning your mind
into a deep state of relaxation taking you from evening to night to dawn and
day once more.”
Where?
Bath
8
Union St, BA1 1RW
01225
428271
Cardiff
59-61
Queen St, CF10 2AT
029
2039 9089
Edinburgh
115
Princes St, EH 3AA
0131
225 4688
Leeds
12-13
Commercial St, LS1 6AL
0113
243 3626
London
– Chelsea
123
Kings Road, SW3 4PL
020
7376 8348
London
– Oxford St.
175-179
Oxford St, W1D 2JS
0207
789 0002
Liverpool
9-11
Whitechapel, L1 6DS
0151
236 6952
Poole
29
High Street, BH15 1AB
01202
672217
Paris, Spain, Hong Kong, USA,
Japan, Brazil and Korea
The Treatment
When entering a Lush spa, you
may see our Synaesthesia wall, in the kitchen. During your Synaesthesia
consultation you will be asked to pick one of the behavioural prescriptions
from the wall and this will determine your treatment. Synaesthesia works to
alter your state of mind in a positive transformative way, based on the
behavioural prescription you choose at the start of your treatment.
A full body multi-sensory
massage, Synaesthesia stimulates all of your senses to create a specific
feeling. By using the secret blend of essential oils used in the bespoke spa
massage bars to stimulate the state of mind, they perfectly reflect the chosen
word to uplift the senses. As well as perfuming the skin, the Fair Trade
Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter base of these rich massage bars allow the
therapist to glide over the skin throughout the 80-minute treatment whilst
moisturising and conditioning. These massage bars are exclusive to our spas,
apart from the Peace massage bar which you can find on our shop floors
Finally, at the end of their
treatment, the customer is invited to drink a tea especially infused with their
behavioural prescription blend in the kitchen with their spa therapist. To
further the treatment’s effect, the customer takes away their massage bar and a
special spa exclusive reusable bubble stone to match, so they can continue
their Synaesthesia experience at home.
The Inspiration
The term synaesthesia comes from Ancient Greek, “syn" and “aisthēsis” meaning together and sensation, respectively. Synaesthesia is a neurological condition where a sensation in one of the senses, such as hearing, triggers a sensation in another, such as taste. For instance, some people with synaesthesia can hear colours or see patterns or shapes to music. This is the case with two of the people who developed this treatment, Mark Constantine and musician Simon Emmerson. Together, they wanted to create a treatment to stimulate and merge all the senses to give a transformative effect.
The term synaesthesia comes from Ancient Greek, “syn" and “aisthēsis” meaning together and sensation, respectively. Synaesthesia is a neurological condition where a sensation in one of the senses, such as hearing, triggers a sensation in another, such as taste. For instance, some people with synaesthesia can hear colours or see patterns or shapes to music. This is the case with two of the people who developed this treatment, Mark Constantine and musician Simon Emmerson. Together, they wanted to create a treatment to stimulate and merge all the senses to give a transformative effect.
The first and signature
treatment of Lush Spa, Synaesthesia was proudly released at the flagship spa at
King’s Road, London which then had only this singular treatment on the menu -
an unheard of feat for any spa to do.
The training each spa
therapist undergoes ensures each client has a unique and immersive experience,
and none more so than with Synaesthesia. This treatment has eleven different
ways it can be performed depending on the behavioural prescription chosen by
the client, ranging from different massage techniques to hot and cold stones,
all choreographed perfectly in time with the music.
The Music
Blissful bird song and an orchestral score place you in the Dorset countryside on a perfect English Sunday morning. The soundtrack passes through the day and into a twilight of majestic bird chorus before you are led into the heart of a still, dark forest as night closes in. The patter of soft rain beckons in a dawn chorus of rooks and jackdaws stirring all around you before the music sweeps you off again to the magical Scarborough Fair. The music and movements dance together, creating a physical ballet of the senses.
Blissful bird song and an orchestral score place you in the Dorset countryside on a perfect English Sunday morning. The soundtrack passes through the day and into a twilight of majestic bird chorus before you are led into the heart of a still, dark forest as night closes in. The patter of soft rain beckons in a dawn chorus of rooks and jackdaws stirring all around you before the music sweeps you off again to the magical Scarborough Fair. The music and movements dance together, creating a physical ballet of the senses.
“Choreographed by acres of
coastline, birdsong and the power of words.”
Catalogue content:
Synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in
which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads too automatic,
involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.
The perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one
sensory or cognitive pathway leads too involuntary experiences in a second
sensory or cognitive pathway.
In auditory-tactile synaesthesia, certain sounds can induce
sensations in parts of the body. For example, someone with auditory-tactile
synaesthesia may experience that hearing a specific word feels like touch in
one specific part of the body or may experience that certain sounds can create
a sensation in the skin without being touched. It is one of the least common
forms of synaesthesia.
Mirror touch is a rare form of synaesthesia
where individuals feel the same sensation that another person feels (such as
touch). A synaesthete may witness someone being tapped on the shoulder and the
synaesthete involuntarily feels a tap on their own shoulder as well.
Spatial sequence synaesthesia causes a
numerical sequence to be seen as points in space, such as the number 1 being
far away and the number 2 being closer.
Ordinal-linguistic personification
This type is known as ordinal-linguistic personification or OLP. The
individual will associate ordered sequences with various personalities. Ordered
sequences may include numbers, letters, months etc. For example, someone may
look at the letter ‘A’ and think in his mind that ‘A’ is a rude letter.
Lexical-Gustatory
This one of the rarer synaesthesia types and those who experience this
kind of synaesthesia evoke different kinds of tastes when they hear certain
words or phonemes. Research has shown that associations between the words and
what a synaesthete is able to taste are constrained by tastes he or she has
experienced early in life.
Grapheme-to-colour
Associating/seeing individual letters or numbers with a specific
colour. Usually, two people do not associate the same colours, apart from the
letter A which has commonly been reported to be red.
Sound-to-colour
Sound triggers the visualisation of coloured, generic shapes. For
certain people, the stimuli are limited, and only a few types of sounds will
trigger a perception. Usually, the perceived colours appear in generic shapes
such as squares, circles and triangle.
Number-form
A number form is a mental map that consists of numbers. When a person
with number-form synaesthesia thinks about numbers, a number map is
involuntarily visualised.
LUSH
Mark
Constantine OBE, LUSH co-founder and managing director
Do you have any
other forms of synaesthesia besides scent-colour/shape?
MC: I don’t think so but I’m not completely sure. I find that when
I look at a set of numbers, I know when they are wrong. I can sense it. Or when
I look at percentages, I intuitively know if they are not right.
When did you
realize you perceived scents this way? Did you keep it a secret or tell people?
MC: In a meeting at work with about 50 people. I thought the
reason I looked at things this way was normal until everyone explained to me it
was not actually normal.
It was then reinforced in an interview with Vogue magazine
who brought a number of items for me to smell (such as coffee, lemon, different
fragrances) and then asked me to draw what I was smelling.
What do you
think the meaning/value of synaesthesia is?
MC: It’s a different way of appreciating the world. It’s not
wrong, I think it heightens your awareness.
I find it exceptionally useful in my work, particularly with fragrance
– everything has a right or wrong shape and I know intuitively straight away.
I’m not thinking in numbers so much as shape.
I think it helps but I don’t like to think about it too much as it
makes me feel a little self-conscious.
Simon Emmerson,
LUSH’S musical director
What are some
of your musical associations? For example, what colour/shape is F#?
SE: I am not totally convinced by the popularized reductive
approach to understanding synaesthesia that explains it away by
simply tagging one concept/sensation with another random dissociated experience
or concept.
f# = dark blue, Number 7 = the smell of fish
This is the popular conception of synaesthesia and I do appreciate most
synaesthetes have this. But this form of synaesthesia can easily get confused
with what may be just deep random/creative memory connections.
Yes, I would say E major is a very black key but that may be because it
is the guitarist’s favourite key and is used in heavy rock. D minor (especially
in its modal form without a 3rd) is very 'Blue' but then it's the preferred key
of cool modal jazz and Blue Note records. F+ is for me an earthy rustic red,
the colour of the soil in Senegal but that may be because I co-wrote a song
with a Senegalese Kora player that was in F#.
What are some
of your favourite synaesthetic moments?
SE: My favourite Beatle as a child was always George Harrison who
for me was represented by the number 3 (the 3rd Beatle?) and the colour green
and the smell of oranges. I was obsessed with shades of green and the number 3
and the number 9. Whenever I saw a picture of George Harrison I smelt oranges.
It became a family joke.
The rhythms I REALLY love have always been 3/4, 6/8 and 9/8.
When producing Baba Maahl in Senegal in the early 90's I found a deep
connection between the triplet rhythms of his music and traditional Celtic
music and went on to form the Afro Celt Sound System to explore these
connections. But to be honest this was as much to do with my inherent love of
the way triplets move against a 4 or an 8 count.
When I hear hardcore 4/4 music like house/disco music, I can't stand
it. It's the only form of music I can't listen to and will leave a club if they
are playing relentless House music with the same 4/4 bass drum pounding
throughout the night. It literally 'closes me down'. 3's and 9's are very
maternal, open, excepting numbers and rhythms, whereas 4 is a very male,
authoritarian, judgmental rhythm.
I think there is a much more complex understanding of synaesthesia that
works on the level of deep archetypes and unconscious creativity.
When I mix music I know we have hit a sonic sweet spot when I sense the
convergence of shapes forming a harmonious whole. The bass frequencies are
circular and oval moving up the sonic spectrum to the pyramid/triangular shapes
of higher frequencies. Each shape has a non-specific colour but when the mix is
working the shapes and colours fall into a very pleasing spectrum that is like
a meta language of the music. A 'bad' mix is a mess of shapes with jagged edges
and 'noisy' confused colours, it can make me very uncomfortable and even angry
at times!
A good mix is the physical sensation of shapes and colours falling into
place in a way that is impossible to describe other than as a harmonious whole.
The ‘Synaesthesia’ LUSH spa treatment was a joy because I could
literally bathe in the colors and shapes I use when creating music.
Products used
The power of sensual massage
The Music
Blissful bird song and an orchestral score place you in the Dorset countryside on a perfect English Sunday morning. The soundtrack passes through the day and into a twilight of majestic bird chorus before you are led into the heart of a still, dark forest as night closes in. The patter of soft rain beckons in a dawn chorus of rooks and jackdaws stirring all around you before the music sweeps you off again to the magical Scarborough Fair. The music and movements dance together, creating a physical ballet of the senses.
Blissful bird song and an orchestral score place you in the Dorset countryside on a perfect English Sunday morning. The soundtrack passes through the day and into a twilight of majestic bird chorus before you are led into the heart of a still, dark forest as night closes in. The patter of soft rain beckons in a dawn chorus of rooks and jackdaws stirring all around you before the music sweeps you off again to the magical Scarborough Fair. The music and movements dance together, creating a physical ballet of the senses.
“Choreographed by acres of
coastline, birdsong and the power of words.”
Track list:
1.
Song Thrush At
Corfe Castle
2.
The Great Western
3.
Song Thrush And
Jackdaws
4.
Jack Snipe
Hornpipe
5.
Last Night
6.
Nightjar And
Tawny Owls
7.
The Star Studded
Plough
8.
Nightingale
9.
Peace Love and
Harmonium
10.
Nightingale And
Owls
11.
The night Vigil
12.
Dawn Chorus
13.
First Rain
14.
Scarborough Fair
15.
Rooks And
Jackdaws
16.
A Parliament Of
Rooks
Interviews
Michal Levy
Giant Steps - 'I play
saxophone and am deeply attached to music. When I play or listen, I always feel
that I actually “see” the music. Both music and the visual arts share concepts
like tone (of colour or sound), composition, harmony. Naturally they mixed and
mingled in my consciousness over the years.'
This visual representation of Coltrane's Giant Steps, attempts to
represent the complex harmonic structure that has challenged many musicians and
performers. Michal Levy expresses that there was no need to invent something
new in order to visualise the music, it just required listening over and over
again as the answers to the questions were within the music itself.
The repeated pattern in the melody has been visualised as a building's
structure, played twice and then in the film the framework is complete when
constructed twice, showing this idea. The general approach was to understand
the emotional meaning of each musical phrase and to then choose the direction
in space in the visual world that will suit it best.
Michal Levy
One – Michal Levy
discover Jason's music back in 2000 when she participated in a student exchange
program in New York. His music was seen to be 'colourful and exciting' and when
closing eyes, it was visualised in shapes and colours.
'What are the colours of music, in what space does music live? If it's
moving, then in which direction?' are the questions that framed the creation of
another animation that would 'show the music'.
As a saxophonist, observing music and translating it into a language of
forms and patterns is often exciting and rewarding. This animation was created
with attempt to express this in a visual way to those who may not experience
synaesthesia, but are interested by it.
Melissa McCracken
How did you realise that most people don't hear in colour?
I used to think my synaesthesia was normal and that asking anyone about
it would be like asking them if they could smell the coffee in a coffee shop.
At 16, I found out that it wasn't when I was trying to choose a ringtone. My
phone was blue and I told my friend I was going to pick an "orange"
song to match it because they're complementary colours. He seemed really
confused and I thought there was something wrong with him. It finally clicked
in a high school psychology class. It was shocking because I'd never thought it
was unusual.
Do you have to close your eyes to see the colours or do they cloud your
sight?
Synaesthesia doesn't interfere with my sight in any way and it's not
hallucinogenic. It just floats there in a similar way to how you would imagine
something or visualize a memory. I don't need to close my eyes but it helps me
visualize it better if I do.
How did you come to start painting your favourite songs?
Colour seemed like the most natural thing for me to paint because I've
always loved it, so I wanted to go down an abstract route. I started painting
memories from notable times in my life and thinking of the specific songs that
related to them. People seemed interested in my synaesthesia so it became my
core subject.
Do certain music genres look prettier than others?
I think so. Expressive music such as funk is a lot more colourful, with
all the different instruments, melodies, and rhythms creating a highly
saturated effect. Guitars are generally golden and angled, and piano is more
marbled and jerky because of the chords. I rarely paint acoustic music because
it's often just one person playing guitar and singing, and I never paint
country songs because they're boring muted browns. The key and tone also has an
impact, so I try and paint the overall feeling of the song.
Does a song look the same every time you listen to it?
It depends what I'm focusing on. If I notice a bass line I'd never
noticed or honed in on before, the look will change, but generally it looks
exactly the same. If I try to paint the same song twice it'll turn out
differently because you can't splatter paint the same way twice.
Do synaesthetes see the same colours in the same songs?
Not always. I once met another painter with synaesthesia and for
comparison we both painted "Little Wings" by Jimi Hendrix. Our final
pieces looked totally different, proving how subjective it is. I love studying
Kandinsky's art because he also had synaesthesia but his paintings are much
more geometric.
Do you ever turn down requests to paint songs?
I want to stay true to who I am as an artist, so if a song isn't
visually appealing or doesn't personally resonate with me then I politely say
no. People are usually understanding and don't want to make me do anything I
don't want to do. On the other hand, I often discover bands I like through
people's suggestions.
Do you like songs because of how they look or do they look nice because
you like them?
It's a chicken and the egg argument! I've heard that synaesthesia is
highly associative. Many people with colour to letters synaesthesia find it
correlates with the alphabet magnets they used to have on their fridge. I loved
pink and purple as a little girl and my favourite songs from that time are
those colours. I'm not sure whether I created that, or I was simply around pink
and purple a lot, or if everything moulded together.
Do you only paint songs or do you paint other sounds too?
Sound isn't as jarring as music. There's usually one quick burst of
colour and then it disappears. But for my mom's birthday I painted the sound of
her footsteps. I remember hearing her clicking heels when she came home and it
was such a comforting (purple!) sound to me as a child.
Have you met anyone else with synaesthesia?
I met a girl at college who saw shapes when she heard voices—I remember
her dad's was triangular—and she also tasted pitch. A banana would be a high C,
or something. Talking to her is so strange because, even though I can totally
relate to the concept, her synaesthesia still makes no sense to me.
Pharrell, Kanye West, and Lady Gaga have all spoken about their synaesthesia
recently. Is this rise in awareness a positive thing?
Definitely. Everyone who has experienced synaesthesia is going to
process it differently. I've received many lovely emails from synesthetes who
struggled with the sense that something wrong was with them just because they
saw colours when listening to music. It's great that there is more awareness of
it today because whether an experience is positive or negative, it's always
nice to know that someone can relate to you and that you're not alone.
Daniel Liam
Glyn
'Changing Stations' is an album based on the 11
main lines of the London Underground map. Now being re-released by
composer and synaesthete, Daniel Liam Glyn, every track has been
transformed into an eclectic mix of Electronica, Ambient House, Nu Disco, and
Drum & Bass. 'Changing Stations: Derailed' injects a new lease of
life into the original classical piano compositions, with the track listing
being re-arranged to form a new 'journey' on the London Underground. We
wanted to know more about Daniel, his motivations, and his synaesthesia.
TELL US WHAT FORM OF SYNAESTHESIA YOU HAVE?
I have both grapheme-colour and spatial-sequence synaesthesia.
HOW DID YOU FIND OUT YOU HAD IT?
After watching a documentary about grapheme-colour synaesthesia, I was
met with the possibility that I had it. I was sixteen or seventeen, and up
until that point, I just assumed that the way I would envisage numbers, letters
and words was just how everyone did. From a young age I associated ‘September’
with the colour yellow, the number ‘4’ was green and the letter ‘E’ was pink.
I’d ask people if they thought the same way in which I did – but they’d often
be puzzled.
I was known for having an expansive long term memory such remembering
anniversaries of certain dates, even occasions with no real sentiment attached.
Sometimes I would look at the date on the calendar and test myself with how far
back I could remember, week by week working backwards until I managed a full
year. It was only until around 3 years
ago when I researching into the condition further when I realised that I also
had Spatial Sequence Synaesthesia. Along with assigning colours of the months
of the year, I also visualise them as a celestial map of space. Each month is
depicted as a planet with a designated colour, illustrated in an uneven circle
where I move from day to day, gliding through the map. When the circle is
complete, it leads onto a new year and the orbit begins again.
Every time I need to remember something from a past event, my mind
takes me to the map in space. All my random life events and memories would be
sitting in their rightful positions depending on what time of year they were
featured – rather like a peculiar filing cabinet.
HAVE YOU FOUND YOUR SYNAESTHESIA HAS CAUSED YOU ANY PROBLEMS?
A lot of the conversations I had during the Changing Stations campaign
focused on how wonderful having synaesthesia is. Yes, it’s completely
fascinating how it enables me to perceive the world in a different way to
others, and I’m lucky that it inspired me to utilise it within my musical
compositions. However, like most things in life, the stuff that is a blessing
can also be a curse. There are times where I do see it as a hindrance.
It’s so hard to describe because synaesthesia isn’t something that is
tangible; it makes little sense, sometimes even to the person with the
condition. When I think about the Spatial Sequence part of my synaesthesia, I
break it down, and see that my brain has involuntarily connected two things
together. When that happens the outcome is usually permanent, which is how I
then perceive things going forward. This means it can sometimes leave a mark on
certain events in my life.
I can begin to associate several numbers, weeks and months with a bad
memory, which can then encourage me to think too much. My mind focuses heavily
on time frames, which becomes difficult when my brain connects a present life
event with one from the past. Inevitably, it can have an effect on my mood and
also hold me back from moving forward from experiences. Due to the past being so
clearly mapped out in shapes and colour, my ability to ‘see’ into the future is
rather vague. A lot of my synesthetic associations with ‘time’ are mapped out
in the past.
WHAT MAKES YOU SO DRAWN TO THE LONDON UNDERGROUND MAP?
I have been mesmerised with the London Underground map for as long as I
can remember. I think it was the amalgamation of the busy and complex structure
of the map along with the assigned colours on each line that captivated me. The
structure reminded me of my own brain – immaculately designating the different
colours to different sections. The lines all cross over one another, connecting
stations at intersections that take you from one place to another. I love the
history and the evolution of its design, plus it can also be quite similar to
synaesthesia – difficult to understand!
TELL US ABOUT THE EUREKA MOMENT WHEN YOU KNEW YOU HAD TO USE THE MAP TO
INSPIRE YOUR MUSIC?
In 2009, when I had finished university and was pondering with the idea
of moving to London, I sat awake in bed one evening and somehow decided to look
at my Underground Map leaflet that I’d picked up on a recent trip to the city a
week earlier. I looked at all the different stations and places, imagining how
interesting it would be to get to know the Underground system a bit better.
It wasn’t until I moved to London when I started to properly consider
the idea of working on a music project that would lend itself to the
characteristics of the tube lines. I wanted something that would represent the
different journeys, commuters, and speeds of the trams – something that was
unique and special to me, but without alienating the listener by being too
complicated.
During a journey home from work one evening my synaesthesia was
triggered, and it was then when I felt the scope for a major project had been
widened: connecting together journeys and colour with music.
I felt that working on a collection of pieces that would eventually
form a 'series' would also be a respectful nod to “The Planets” suite by Gustav
Holst. My dad had this particular orchestral work on vinyl, and it was one of
the first classical pieces of music that I was introduced to. Each movement of
the suite is named after a planet of the Solar System along with their
corresponding astrological character (as interpreted by Holst). At this point, I felt that all of these ideas
that were coming together for 'Changing Stations' was like the planets aligning.
What started as a simple idea eventually grew into 11 pieces for piano – each
based on the 11 main lines of the London Underground. My grapheme-colour
Synaesthesia dictated the way the tube line was composed, and the key signature
it was composed in.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE TUBE LINE?
Of all the questions, this is the most difficult! They are all quite
unique, yet so strangely familiar and uniform.
I loved the rush of the Central Line – the places it would take you and
the atmosphere on the carriages. The Victoria Line would also remind me of all
the times I would visit friends. With that said, I think I’ll have to go with
the Northern Line. This is the first line I would come into contact with when I
arrived at Euston station, which would then take me to my flat in Kentish Town.
Along with this, black, to me, is a strong colour. It’s bold, it’s deep and
it’s substantial.
This particular piece is written in D major – one of my favourite keys
to both play and listen to, and I have many personal connections to the
tonality of the music that is written in this key signature. Subject to much
popular belief, travelling on the Northern Line for me felt rather simple. It
was consistent and reliable. This line to me symbolises ‘home’, which it why
it’s entitled ‘Abode’ on the album.
Find out more: changingstations.london
Follow Daniel: @DanielLiamGlyn
Musicians
Poetry
Nolan Liebert – How to eat a tornado
You use your hands,
the ones that carved
runes in the sky
with blood orange
lightning. Wrestle
world-breath – sweet green
inhales, exhales,
cloudspun tofu,
windwhipped seeds. Plant
your fearless mouth
firmly against
the wild blue storm,
let it kiss hard
your cracked-earth skin,
breathe the bitter
apocalypse.
Finally, swallow.
Felix cohen – Licking a 9V battery: a synaesthetic
response to flavours and cocktails
I work as a bartender. I’ve
been doing it for 10 years, and the way I taste things has changed loads in
that time.
I used to experience flavour
like I experience music (I have absolutely no idea how music ‘works’, but I
love it: it was just an overwhelming sensory blast that I couldn’t analyse, but
it was amazing. When I began in this industry I was lucky enough to work for
bar owners who, for various reasons, wanted to make a loss. So I tried a lot of
assorted boozes. In those early days, I mixed some terrible drinks, because I
didn’t understand that building drinks was about creating balances; where the
synaesthesia of flavour comes into its own.
Wine tasting is fascinating
to watch: people taste various different wines and wax lyrical about all the
flavours they perceive; something is vanilla-y, has notes of stone fruits,
finishes with a note of leather, and so on. But only expert wine tasters tend
to say: this tastes like Beaujolais. When people taste wine, they pull it apart
into other flavours they already know, and it takes an expert to look at that
‘constellation’ of other flavours and reassemble it into an identifiable wine.
It’s the same when we talk
about food; ‘it tastes like chicken’ is a tired trope, but only because we need
to say it all the time. Everything tastes like something else, but we don’t
tend to talk about taste in terms of what psychologists call primitives.
Instead, we cast about for likenesses.
When we see, we don’t do
that. Instead, we have a ‘gestalt’ view. Our brain identifies things like
cubes, spheres, flat surfaces or the path of a moving object – basic functions
that let us build a comprehensible scene in our heads that lets us sit on a
chair or catch a ball. These primitives tend to be things we can talk to each
other about, but there are elements of our senses that we find impossible to
talk about, like the concept of red.
Psychologists (and
philosophers) refer to these as qualia: the completely subjective impressions
of a colour you see, a texture you touch or a flavour. There is no way to know
if your perception of red feels the same as somebody else’s.
So what’s happening in your
brain when you taste something? You’ve probably noticed how a bad cold stops
you from enjoying your food, and kills your appetite. Well, that’s because
taste isn’t just a matter of what’s on your tongue (which, by the way does not
have different sections for tasting different flavours); how something smells
is a huge factor, and so is what’s called the ‘trigeminal systems’ – the nerves
that cover your face, nose and cheeks, and contribute to the ‘mouthfeel’ and
texture of food and drink you’re tasting. Those three systems combine to give
you the flavour of what’s in your mouth.
That flavour impression is
incredibly subjective; you can pull out parts of it that remind you of other
flavours, and what you’re expecting makes a huge difference. So if wine tasters
are given cheap wine in an expensive-looking dusty bottle, they report it
tasting better than the same wine in the proper bottle. Same with plastic
glasses vs Riedel crystal. Even the famous Pepsi challenge was an exercise in
tricking peoples taste buds; Pepsi is sweeter, so the small portions people
tried were more enjoyable than Coke, but when you drink a whole can, Coke’s
subtler flavours are preferred.
A regular of mine once asked
me for a drink he’d had elsewhere that ‘tasted like licking a 9V battery’.
Clearly, we’d both licked a few too many batteries, as I knew exactly what he
meant, and made a Sazerac (rye whiskey, sugar, absinthe and peychaud bitters).
He’s right; the drink does
give you the same jolt in your jawbone that a few volts will provide, and even
has the same metallic aftertaste. It’s incredibly rare that I hear such a
succinct description of a drinks flavour, and it was an amazing moment for both
of us.
After all, when I’m coming up
with new drinks for a cocktail menu, or tasting food to put together a pairing
list, having an idea about how other people might perceive the flavour is
incredibly important. And incredibly impossible. So I rely on my own perception
of taste as well as experience and precedence over what people like.
That might mean an old
classic gets updated to reflect modern palates and modern ingredients, or it
might mean that I’m coming up with a completely new drink. Sometimes inventing
a new drink is as easy as swapping an ingredient in an established drink for
another; if gin works well in Negroni, I bet Pisco will as well. Sometimes,
though, drinks are a flash of inspiration.
In those cases, taste is
fascinatingly synaesthetic. When im creating a recipe that im excited about, im
often trying to make something that tastes nothing like its constituent parts.
A Tom Collins showcases the particular gin that you’ve chosen in a simple and
glorious fashion, but signature drinks for a menu should almost do the
opposite; the ingredients and proportions are essential, but the drink
shouldn’t taste noticeably like any of them.
And that’s where the
synaesthesia of flavour comes into its own; if an ingredient reminds me of another
flavour, I will sit and drink and think (nice work if you can get it!) until I
can distil what it is that im really tasting.
For those drinks, thinking
about balance is like thinking about a painting, or a song. The drink has to
work in an unexpected way. So, my reinvented Sex on the Beach (yes, really)
starts with me wanting desperately to use corn whiskey in a frivolous drink.
From corn whiskey, like a
frying pan of butter just starting to sizzle, I add peach: almost colourless,
but taking away the rough edges of the corn whiskey mental image. Then some
blood orange juice; it fits in with Sex on the Beach, but more importantly, it
replaces the mellow buttery yellow blob with a corduroy red pool.
Finally, it’s given a sheen
with cranberry bitters, adding a metallic glisten. Beautiful in my mind, and
the drink works spectacularly … it tastes like all of its ingredients, but also
none of them. Alchemy.
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