Sees the Gramophone

Last month, I posed the question, "What do you see when you listen to music in the dark, or with your eyes closed?" to you, and several notable mp3 bloggers and musicians.

Sean from the indispensable Said the Gramophone recently replied:

I see the world, but it's dancing.

I see the same things I see in my head all day. There are trees, skyscrapers, streetcars, skies, deserts, desserts, girls. There are men with moustaches, there is sun through a window in the dining room, there's my friend Heather. There she is! But as I watch, as the camera swoops and spins and zooms in right close, there's dancing. The leaves jerk and flitter, green bleeding from the edges. Strange colours swoop in, they get in the way. The ground goes brown, browner. The night shakes a bit, the windowlight freezes and then fast-forwards. The streetcar gets grainy, it turns black and white, it rocks, the image tears at the edges. Everything gets distorted, no- no, that's not right. But all the pictures in my head, listening to music, they're not paintings on canvas. It's more like someone's painted pictures on top of the waves. They swell and subside, they crash and blend, they keep on coming and I don't know where they're headed.

Thank you, Sean, for sharing your vivid musical daydream. I'm tempted to take that and separate it into lines and stanzas.

I'm guessing that most people would have to ingest something to have the same experience.