What do you see when you listen to a song?

Particular songs cause me to experience graphic visualizations more than others. Sometimes these visualizations are based in real experience but many times they are completely animated.

I find it fascinating how sounds can visually stimulate us. They hit conscious and subconscious levels of our brains. They offer nothing but a series of vibrations and when sequenced properly open the door to a netherworld in our imaginations.

Nai Palm from the quartet Hiatus Kaiyote even says she is a visual writer and sounds inspire imagery. Sounds not necessarily lyrics. Although in this post I would like to talk about both.

There are some visualizations that are common and easily explained as they are based in reality. For example, when I experience these more common sights while listening to a song, I may see images of the band members playing, being at their concert, the music video, or a specific person. This is basically recalling memories, real or not, that I have attached to the music.

When I am not recalling memories, I might be creating visualizations based on lyrical content. When the lyrics of the song are descriptive and scenic, I find the experience similar to reading a book. Especially if the song is describing a person, event, or story. The more detailed and descriptive the content, the more clear and vivid the image. Artists I find that visually stimulate me with their lyrical content are alt-J, The Beatles, and Simon and Garfunkel, whom are highly poetic and/ or good storytellers.

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Less common, purely organic visualizations, might be harder to describe. Instrumental music can do this to me. When I am stimulated by an organic, uninfluenced flow of music, my visualizations tend to be more animated. I will typically see shapes or undefined figures in motion. Once, when i was meditating to purely instrumental music, I had a muddied vision of a bicyclist riding his bike up and down large hills repetitively. Sometimes I see the tessellation of shapes. The shapes will build up, break down or flow in all directions. Motions tend to be repetitive or in a particular sequence. Artists that may influence these types of visualizations are Aphex Twin and Kim Hiorthoy.

And then there is nothing…..many songs do not stimulate me visually at all.

I find that there is a certain amount of healthiness that comes with listening to music that can turn on the imagination.

If you are what you eat, are you what you listen to? I find truth in this but lets save it for a later discussion. For now I encourage you to put on your headphones, press play, and tell me what you see.

-A