It took me awhile to figure out how I wanted to do this, because there are so many options. I decided on art as music, for one very particular reason:

My brain is wired funny.
I mean, it's not exactly debilitating, it just means that things are connected that shouldn't necessarily be connected. It's called synesthesia, and it makes my world an interesting one. When I read text or numbers, I see colors. The same is true of listening to music. It's like watching someone throw balloons filled with paint at a wall. The colors mix and go everywhere.

Shostakovich is hands-down one of my favorite composers. When you find someone that musically makes you think, that's sort of special.

This piece, Sonata Op. 40 II for cello and piano, is gritty. And I don't mean my recording of it (though it is, and I'm sorry about that). It's just sort of a raw composition.

Though I don't have a recording of the piece I can upload, you can find it at youtube, which was being a pain and wouldn't let me upload to this site.
...



I listened to the piece three times, and each time I used only one color. Blue first, then yellow, and last red. These are the main colors that make up the piece for me. I used my brother's crazy sherpa hat as a blindfold.


Finger painting was definitely the way to go. It feels way more personal than holding a brush.

I started with blue. Toward the beginning of the sonata the blue comes in these sharp little v's when the cellist saws away at the strings, then it fades to lighter dots when the tone of the piece changes.


Took the hat off. Started the piece over.

On to yellow. The yellow is so much lighter than the blue. I mean, even to non-synesthetes yellow is generally seen as happier than blue. But Shostakovich wrote these ridiculous tone changes into the sonata, so it's a pretty abrupt change. They form these crazy polka dots, much friendlier than those that are blue.


Took the hat off. Started the piece over.

When the piano hits those high notes, the whole thing just screams in red. Very violent lines. The paint smeared on those, mixing with the old blues and yellows, and made this weird...this weird thing, kind of purplish, that made these little peaks out of the paint.


Everything became this odd mess, but that's somehow okay because it's a bit of a mess in my head as well. This piece holds a lot of emotion for me, and I knew that putting it down on paper would mean it ending up a little different than intended.


It wasn't exactly my initial vision of Shostakovich, but I'm happy with it. Finger painting is definitely a higher form of art than people give it credit for- it's really hard not to smear it!

After the painting dried, it was going to be tacked up to the fence next to the main road that cuts through my area of town. Unfortunately, the constables are a bit picky about who gets to post what where, so it didn't work out as planned. Instead, it was taped to the back of the HOA sign, where hopefully the next person who changes the sign will see it.