Migraine and Visual Arts
| Author: Klaus Podoll | 06. March 2007 |
| Edited by: Klaus Podoll |
DKV
"I have migraine aura with and without pain, the fortification spectra. Recently, I painted this. The following are a few of my reproductions. This picture (Migraine) is during my classic migraine. During ocular migraine without pain, the aura is black and white (not illustrated). A more condensed outline has shown after pain (Migraine Leftovers).
DKV, Migraine, oil on canvas (16" x 20"), 2002. © 2002 DKV
DKV, Migraine Leftovers, fractal image, 2005. © 2005 DKV
I am also synaesthetic, watch music, taste words, touch emotion, color numbers, etc. I am a poet.
My synaesthesias are:
• Seeing sound.
• Seeing numbers in color, texture, personality, some in temperature.
• Tasting words.
• Seeing emotion/situation pictures. (This is hard to explain. Usually very emotional direct situation. These are often read in my poems - I suddenly saw ruby red rectangle moving upward. I later read of red stairs in a poem.)
• Feeling emotion texture (sharp glass in my palm, smooth, soft ball, etc).
• Hearing a conversation mix as a separate sound. (Funny, I can recall a conversation verbatim later.)
• Some people are colored/texture. Some are not.
DKV, Pager, fractal image, 2005. © 2005 DKV
Pager: This is a pure (without any migraine) synaesthetic image of a pager ring.
DKV, Landscape, acrylic on paint board (20"x 16"), 2003. © 2003 DKV
Landscape: This is the blur of 'actual' and synaesthetic mix of environment.
***
Synaesthesia has always been my 'third arm'. Do I see fractal?
I had connected migraine aura with blood-pressure, brain spark. Is it possible to see our own EKG?
These questions appear ludicrous, yet, why do I question my own sight?
DKV, Mendelssohn Violin Concerto op. 64, fractal image, 2005. "Violins often appear as white." © 2005 DKV
Among many of my 'tangibles' of prisms, mobiles, marbles, etc. are my new found fractal computer programs, especially the flame fractals. You asked me to comment further on this topic: 'Tangibles' means actual objects that can be touched. (I apologize for my terms, I have been known to make up words, mostly in verse). So, prisms = a prism... people can see the spectrum that I at times see with migraine and/or synaesthesia. Marbles = actual marbles... for some reason I tend to see circles often. I guess 'tangibles' refers to the actual object AND a migraine and/or synaesthetic sight. For example, I saw a green streamer while someone was talking, therefore a green streamer/ribbon would be a 'tangible' of that sight.
Fractals are fun because I am trying, at the time, to copy. The computer programs are very interactive. I feel as I am picking up and playing with my synaesthetic pictures as a toy, at a later time.
***
I am driven, most subconsciously, to express what I see in any form available. Sadly, this is a very frustrating task. Fortunately, my poems write themselves, without thought process.
I feel a need of interacting, communication with the forms seen in migraine aura or synaesthesia. To me, this sounds almost crazy, but I feel as an outsider while watching music, seeing migraine, etc. I like to 'answer' it by writing/painting. I also feel a 'duty' to communicate them to others... as best I can. I hope this statement doesn't confuse you, as it is somewhat confusing to myself.
You asked about the frustration I expressed in reproduction. All of the above EXCEPT Landscape were difficult due to the attempt at color, movement, texture, tone, and even temperature. The transparency of music/fractal pictures during synaesthesia (without migraine), during music, is impossible to reproduce. Landscape was painted as my poems are written, without thought. The others were my attempt at copying what I saw... with migraine or as purely synaesthetic (the picture of a sound).
As one example, I was watching a classical piece of music and saw small pastel colored rings. They were interlaced both in rows and height, and in rows of depth. These rings were spinning all at the same time, yet each in its own individual speed and direction. I could not paint this. I thought of making a mobile, (the drive to reproduce), but the rings would not spin as they were connected. I, at that time, wished I would have wrote the picture in verse... as so many times during/after synaesthetic experiences 'showing up' in my poems. The rings, I believe, may have represented individual connection to the whole!!!
I used the word 'subconsciously' driven, because I notice the need to communicate what is seen AFTER the poem is written. I have many times re-read one of my poems and thought, I'm doing it again.
This is my frustration in verse form:
Worlds
As I stare into fractal world,
Believing what I know,
With total lack of ability
To display what has shown,
There is at least reliability
Relating toward design
With incomparable brush
To stroke within the mind.
A familiar resonant song
Engrains, permeates, round
Rememberance pierced hum,
The syllable spoken sound.
As echoes within caves null
Scrape with flash of lines,
As chill slaps with warmth
To solidify dust behind,
All that can be seen by one
Ethos eternity of flight,
Is nothing to be seen at all,
No touch, or sound, or sight.
DKV, Common doodles, digital images, 2005. "The doodle in the lower right corner is very similar to my ocular migraine in black and white! I drew these on computer as a representation of my common doodles... I just did this, today. I don't save my doodles on papers." © 2005 DKV
Three years ago, I read of synaesthesia. Before that time, I considered myself a poet/artist who was somewhat different and very isolated. After my reading, my poems and paintings have a label to them as synaesthetic... which is quite different from the very factual, as a brown table or green leaf, that the pictures were.
I doodle alot. I have seen zig-zag lines as migraine aura, geometric designs (as Klüver's form constants) and kaleidoscope patterns, and literally any shape/pattern with synaesthesia. It was after reading about synaesthesia that I noticed their meaning. Not unlike re-reading my poems and understanding what I wrote.
I must interject here, the naturalness of synaesthesia... before the definition has been read. When I read my poems before, I understood 'white waves' as naturally as if I wrote of a green leaf. At the same time, I knew it had a metaphor. After I read of synaesthesia, I then understood the 'white waves' was the pattern I saw. It was so natural before, that it wasn't noticed. Again, I apologize for any confusion.
I have had migraines since my 20's. I am 44. I first painted my migraine three years ago. I have not painted another migraine image, as of yet. Interestingly, it was after I read of synaesthesia. I was reading about migraines on a web-site and saw a drawn picture of an ocular migraine (I believe it was a picture of a clock, with the spectrum overlayed, it may have been this one [see here] I retrieved from the internet). I turned around and saw a very similar painting on my easel (Migraine). I have had a fortification spectrum before a very painful migraine. I have also seen a similar aura without pain. I am very drained after a migraine. The pain of a migraine feels as though it is outside of my head - as an aura. To relieve the pain of migraine, as no medication helps, I use the visualization of a doctor touching the pain in my brain with a needle. This perspective seems to localize the pain thus bringing some relief. I'm not sure, and sorry that I cannot answer the synaesthesia/migraine connection. I don't know how/if they connect.
Before reading of synaesthesia, I 'knew' that a migraine aura was medical. Whereas the synaesthesia just was. I cannot express the feeling I had as I read of synaesthesia for the first time. I can't remember not being synaesthetic. Migraine aura seems more medically explained, thus less strange. Synaesthesia has always been a part of me and is so inclusive as is breathing. It was strange to hear that others did not have this. I cannot explain this to its fullest. I appologize.
To try to articulate: Migraine pictures are to me, a direct indication either before, during, or after pain, of a medical experience. As I wrote, perhaps seeing the EKG? Whereas synaesthesia involves a direct influence, music, sound, touch, emotion, etc. - mixed with my influence to produce the combined effect.
***
Thank you for the references. I appreciate your word 'ontological' problems (Podoll et al., 2005) in relation to the experience of migraine aura hallucinations. Richard E. Cytowic (2002) used the word 'noetic' in relation to synaesthesia. I deeply appreciate these terms used with migraine and synaesthesia descriptions as synaesthesia in particular is much more than colored music, etc., but also a deeply trusted knowledge base. Which does seem to go against the general population thought. There has been for me a paradox of opposite. Deep isolation and at the same time a deep internal oneness.
Migraine art, fractals, poetry, 'tangibles' from sole synaesthesia, fireworks, prisms, rainbows, to name a few are my connection to people. They can see what I see at the same time. Again 'subconciously driven' to express... I believe what is seen through migraine and/or synaesthesia must be of deep importance.
Thank you
D..."
(Emails to Klaus Podoll, August 11-14, 2005; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)
"I have finished reading of Migraine Art on the migraine aura website. Though the articles were very interesting, I am now confused. I have migraine aura with and without pain... I am also synaesthetic... are migraine and synaesthesia connected in some way?"
(DKV, Email to Klaus Podoll, August 11, 2005)
"I was confused to see synaesthesia mixed with a migraine/medical website. I have always seen written as separate issues. Now, I'm not sure myself if there is a connection... I was sure, before reading that there wasn't. Note: I deeply miss the days before I read of synaesthesia."
(DKV, Email to Klaus Podoll, August 15, 2005)
"You may be fully right, for your own experience, that your synaesthesia has nothing to do at all with your visual aura. Although synaesthesia and migraine aura have often been compared because of their phenomenal similarities (Cytowic, 2002), they are different conditions. There exists, however, a borderland between the two phenomena in question. The study of posts from the internet and the responses to our website have helped to learn a lot more about these issues. Up to now, we are aware of the following types of relationships: (1) Transient synaesthesia may occur as migraine aura symptom in otherwise non-synaesthetic individuals (Podoll and Robinson, 2002). (2) The visual auras of non-synaesthetic migraineurs may include synaesthetic features, i.e., after having started on its own (unrelated to any external stimulus as in synaesthesia) it may show some synaesthetic responsiveness to outer (most often acoustic) stimuli in its course [Podoll, 2007]. (3) In synaesthetic folks, the synaesthesia may be more intense during migraine aura. (4) Synaesthetes/migraineurs with pain-colour synaesthesia may experience the pain of a migraine attack in a synaesthetic way. (5) A synaesthetic observer (be it migraineur or non-migraineur) with emotion-colour synaesthesia may even experience the pain of a migraine of a loved one (i.e., not his own) in a synaesthetic way."
(Klaus Podoll, Email to DKV, August 15, 2005)
"I corresponded with you about migraine art in August of 2005. At that time, I mentioned the possibility of being able to actually see our own EKG. I just read about the cardiac arrhythmia and migraine on Migraine Art from Wiener and Rosenblueth in the pathomechanism section. It seems to me that we continually fight with our own perception of what we should/could be with scientifically based fact and what is right there before our own eyes. For example, I know that we can see music as I see it synesthetically and it is a fact through fractals. Now, my question of seeing EKG/EEG appears to have some merit. (?) Thank you... DKV")
DKV, Email to Klaus Podoll, April 20, 2006)
"Thank you for your response... May I share another poem with you. I believe I was 'talking' to the medical field at the time:
Apology
If my juction confuses,
I deeply apologize.
The mind is always aware
Of that cornered glance stare.
Molecule definitions
Are rarely read, as their
Honeycomb syllables pattern
Pretend an existence mattered.
Roam within the six soft
Walls, adorned with sum
Proven paints plastered lit
As significant silhouette.
Room by room, around
Fingertip traced stone,
Shown to dance the balance
Trope to sister sight valence.
Down the dust kicked
Tan plushed silence path,
Lined with spirit staff's bright,
Echoes hum by harmonized light.
Hand on chin, I wonder how.
Foreign ground with voiceless
Places persist as common time,
As birds balance on the line.
Those pills are of no use.
Placebo prays on the crossroad.
With or without followed direction,
I am sorry, I have failed the connection.
DKV 09/13/02"
(Email to Klaus Podoll, August 14, 2005)
References
Cytowic RE. Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses - Second Edition. MIT Press, New York 2002.
Podoll K. Migräneaura, Synästhesie und künstlerische Inspiration. In: Clausberg K, Bisanz E, Weiller C (eds) Ausdruck - Austtrahlung - Aura. Synästhesien der Beseelung im Medienzeitalter. Hippocampus, Bad Honnef 2007, 185-196.
Podoll K, Robinson D. Auditory-visual synaesthesia in a patient with basilar migraine. J Neurol 2002; 249: 476-477.
Podoll K, Robinson D, Nicola U. The migraine of Giorgio de Chirico - Part II: The poetology of revelation. Neurology Psychiat Brain Res 2005; 12: 9-20.
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