Maybe Bob Marley says it best when he says, "One good thing about music: when it hits you, you feel no pain." In a certain sense, music for me is about healing. Whenever life hands me a situation that I dont know how to deal with or emotions arise inside of me that are unsettling, I can start singing and its like letting birds out of a cage; the negative emotions are filtered in the most direct way out from the soul. It's like the divine purgazione that philosphers discussed in Florence during the Renaissance (thank you Philosophy of Music course...).
Specifically, the writing and producing of Synaesthesia for me was an intense process of healing in the sense that most of the songs on the album are emotional bridges-they depart from one emotional phase and allow me to progress into another. They are also reflective in that they allow me to capture my feelings about whatever the song speaks about- a relationship, an emotional experience with a place, the ending of friendships- and place them in a sort of box, which is the song, thereby moving forward in the process of healing.
As an example, the song Alhambra which is track number two on the album is a sort of musical expression of the personification of the famous Moorish palace in Granada, Spain. Actually, it's more about the intertwining of my emotions about a lover of the past with the stark visions and awe that the Alhambra created inside me, both of them haunting me. I think I created for myself a sort of musical photograph of the situation, all of its complexities being somewhat captured either in rhythm, emotion or poetry, thus allowing myself to let go knowing that I captured and defined those emotions; they didnt just dissipate and fade.
Synaesthesia as a musical endeavor is both raw and complex, vulnerable and strong. Its idealistic, youthful and reflective. It lives up to its name in several senses-its a synthesis of feelings as well as art forms. When I play my songs they call up an intense spectrum of physical sensations for me- for example, Undeciphered is connected with the smell of lavender, and Alhambra the color gold. It's a synthesis of aesthetics provoked by the medium of music, leaving crisp photographic images that have attached themselves to these songs. Yet everyone sees art with a different eye. Welcome to Synaesthesia.