My Swirling, Morphing Collage

I would love to know if anyone shares my awesome experience.

Since I learned to read, a book has been my nighttime companion. I don’t have music playing as I will stay awake to keep listening. At times, reading makes me so sleepy that I set my book on my bedside table, turn off light, and I’m out. Or, I’ll try to keep reading and find myself staring at the same paragraph over and over until the realization that my book fell to the floor and my light is still on three hours later. Such is common to us all.

But many times as I’m trying so hard to keep reading, the words morph into music notes on a staff. I’m actually reading “words” but seeing music. Music phrases that rise and fall which correspond to the words in the book. Sometimes it is music I have been practicing, certain shifts or bowings. Sometimes it is music unknown to me. I don’t recognize when this occurs; it seems very real, natural, and logical. Eventually, my mind grasps the non-reality, that it is time to go to sleep.

Oxford Dictionary, my go-to friend, defines synesthesia as a "perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway". Most likely, I do not have the gift but am merely a musician half awake and half asleep?

Whatever, I love this, and I’ve never heard anyone else mention it. Does this happen to every musician?

Please share your experiences.

“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls:

All your waves and breakers have swept over me.

By day the Lord directs his love,

At night his song is with me—

A prayer to the God of my life.”

Psalm 42:7-8