Bold Blind Beauty On A.I.R.

How Do You Sense Color? featuring Laurel Henry and Ken Meeker

• Bold Blind Beauty • Season 3 • Episode 6

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Episode title and number: How Do You Sense Color? featuring Laurel Henry and Ken Meeker 3 - #6

Brief summary of the show: Did you know some people can hear color? Synesthesia is a neurological condition that causes people to experience one sense in response to another. It's a fascinating condition where people can experience color through their senses and in this month's episode, we will be talking with two guests about this phenomenon.

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Bullet points of key topics & timestamps:
2:20 | Laurel's blindness  journey
4:07 | Ken's sight loss journey
5:17 | How people on the blindness spectrum sense colors
12:51 | Laurel's experience living with Synesthesia
13:57 | Ken's insightful research on Synesthesia
16:06 | Supporting Bold Blind Beauty
17:57 | Sharing our favorite colors and why
24:18 | Dana's Beauty Byte

Additional Resource:
Hearing Color, Seeing Sound. This is Synesthesia

Connecting With Our Guests:

Connect with Bold Blind Beauty to learn more about our advocacy:

Music Credit: "Ambient Uplifting Harmonic Happy" By Panda-x-music https://audiojungle.net/item/ambient-uplifting-harmonic-happy/46309958

Thanks for listening!❤️

Steph: Welcome back to another edition of Bold Blind Beauty On A.I.R. Podcast, the show that's clearing the air for more A.I.R. (Access, Inclusion, and Representation). I'm Stephanae McCoy, and with me are my co-hosts:

Nasreen: I'm Nasreen Bhutta,

Sylvia: Sylvia Stinson Perez

Dana: and I'm Dana Hinnant

Steph: “Color science is our visual interpretation of how light reflects off of surfaces. Color is that portion of the visible spectrum of light that is reflected back from a surface. The amount of light that a surface reflects or absorbs determines its color.” ~Chromaflo Technologies

How the human eyes and brain work together to create a unique perception of color in each individual is fascinating. Britannica has this to say about the topic. “The perception of color depends on vision, light, and individual interpretation, and an understanding of color involves physics, physiology, and psychology.”

In today's episode of Bold Blind Beauty On A.I.R. we will be talking with two guests to share their perspectives about color. Laurel Henry senses color a bit differently than most of the population through synesthesia. Ken Meeker has done extensive research and a presentation on sensing color.

It's my pleasure to introduce you to Laurel and Ken. Hi, Laurel and Ken.

Ken: Hi Steph. Hi Laurel and everyone.

Laurel: Hi.

Steph: It's so wonderful to have you both on this show today, especially to discuss this most interesting topic on sensing color.

Nasreen: Welcome, Laurel. Can you share with us your sight loss journey?

Laurel: Thank you so much for having me. I have been blind my whole life. I was born at 26 weeks and I have retinopathy of prematurity, and I've never had any functional vision. I have no vision in my right eye, and I had light perception in shadows in my left eye.

I think one of the most important things about my sight loss journey was I grew up in a family that had very high expectations of me, and they believed that I could do anything I put my mind to and expected me to do everything my sighted brothers did. I grew up on a ranch, so it took us all working together to make it work.

As a teenager, I developed glaucoma and they were never able to get my glaucoma very well controlled. And so when I was about 18, I noticed my vision getting dimmer and dimmer, and by the time I was 21, one day I was walking down the sidewalk with my guide dog and realized that I didn't have any light perception any longer.

My sight loss journey has also led me to the career that I am in today. I work in the vision field with individuals losing vision, and it's given me an opportunity to give them hope for their future. I've worked in social work in that field. I work as an orientation and mobility specialist, and I currently work in education

Sylvia: And I have had the wonderful pleasure of knowing Laurel for probably about 10 years, maybe even a little bit more than that, and working with her. So, so glad to have you with us, Laurel.

And I'm also glad Ken who I've known for now a couple of years. Ken, will you share with us a little bit about your sight loss journey? 'Cause I know it's a little bit different than Laurel's experience.

Ken: Yes, certainly. Thank you for inviting me to the show today. And so most of my life I was sighted.

And I experienced vision loss in 2014. It was very sudden, and it wasn't progressive like from one day to the next. It was pretty much gone on the 4th of July, 2014. And so what happened is I lost all vision in my right eye, and I have a very limited central vision in my left, and most of the retina is damaged.

So I see a very muted version of everything. I don't have any sort of sense of vivid colors or everything is kind of blurry as well. And so my whole life changed at that moment.

I used to work in the commercial insurance industry for over 20 years, and after that I decided that I was gonna do something that mattered to me on a personal level, and I wanted to make a difference. And that led me to what I do now, which is I do leadership and career coaching and I do a significant amount of advocacy and DEI work these days.

Sylvia: Thank you so much, Laurel and Ken. We're so glad to have y'all with us. Dana.

Dana: Today we are talking about how people on the blindness spectrum sense color. So each of us will share how we sense color. So I'm gonna start.

Color, because I have the idea of the concept of what color looks like, the intensity of color has changed over time for me. So it's a little bit muted for certain colors. But color to me means vibrancy and life. So, Ken, what does color, how do you sense color?

Ken: So I still see some color similar to you, it's not vibrant anymore, it's not vivid. And colors that are in the same sort of spectrum, so reds, oranges, and yellows, they all kind of look the same. And the same thing for greens, purples, and blues. They all kind of blend together. And so without there being contrast, it's very hard for me to differentiate between different shades of color.

Like any metallic always just looks the same. I can, don't know if it's silver or gold or brass or whatever. And so one of the things that I've done is I took up painting and doing art because I wanted to be better at differentiating between various shades. And actually, prior to my vision loss, I never did art at all.

And so that's one thing I've done to try and actually get better at seeing color myself. Steph,

Steph: Similar to Ken, I began losing my sight later in life. As someone who has a graphic arts background, I've always appreciated colors, just love them. But as my sight began to diminish, I began noticing that colors weren't as vibrant or as I don't know what other word I can use to describe it, but I, I just couldn't determine, as Ken said, like certain shades, I can't differentiate between shades of color.

So contrast for me is a very important aspect of color. 'Cause when, when there's contrast, especially if they're bright colors, I'm able to more easily see them. I just still appreciate bright colors. So your reds, your yellows, those types of colors I appreciate more than the blues that I used to like.

So for me, I can still remember colors because of the artistic background. However, I just can't appreciate 'em as much as I used to when I could see.

Nasreen.

Nasreen: For me, color has always been very important. I have loved photography and I've enjoyed seeing color. As I'm losing my sight over the years. 'Cause I too, like you Steph, you, and Ken have had sight loss change over the last few years.

Seeing color has changed, it's a little bit more muted. Sometimes I have to be reminded of what shade of color it is and then be more specific about how vibrant the color is. And at many times I tend to associate color with objects.

So for example, when you're looking at the yellow palette, Is it a lemon yellow? Is it the color of a sunflower? Things that I remember from memory and what they look like in their colors. Is it a shade of green, for example? Is it a mint? You know, is it mint green? Is it chartreuse green? Is it mint green lighter than chartreuse green? Is it emerald green? It just helps me to associate much better when I identify objects or food objects with color.

So, That helps me identify and retain the color that I'm from the object that I'm looking at much better and clearer. And then I tend to remember what the color is.

I used to only wear blacks and whites and sort of winter colors a lot because that's what my color tests, that test that you get done sometimes to see what colors suit you best on your complexion came up as. But over the years as my sight has been changing, I've been turning to more vivid colors, lighter colors, things like corals, greens, things that I would never have worn in the past. So that's how I associate with color. Sylvia.

Sylvia: Well, I have been legally blind my whole life, but at one point I could see color, but I've gone through all the spectrum that you guys talk about. Over that, that vision loss journey and the changing in colors.

I sense color completely through memory at this point. And when I think about color and, and how I remember what specific colors are, I clearly remember that box of Crayola 108 crayons and reading the colors on the side of those and knowing what color was.

And, and the different colors that existed in the world from that crayon box. And then, you know, really just experiencing lots of beautiful colors. And like I remember on a trip out to see Laurel out in the west seeing that big blue Montana sky. And it surely is like this blue that is, is magnificent that is, I've never seen anywhere else.

And having these I had a house full of different colored walls on purpose and because it was my opportunity, I knew I was losing my vision to, to just be just embraced by color. And, but now everything for me is about remembering those colors and I hold those memories very close because it's one color is one of the things I would say that beyond, beyond the faces of people I love color is definitely second. The second highest thing I miss is being able to see.

So Laurel. You have a different experience of how you sense color, so share, with us how you sense color.

Laurel: So, I have never been able to see color, but I've always appreciated color. And I think the main reason I've always appreciated color is because my mom was always describing things in color. As a child, she would tell me the colors that I was wearing, the colors that other people were wearing, and the colors outside. The colors inside of our house, she would always be very descriptive of what she was seeing. So I think it made me appreciate color more.

I would say that I associate color with objects and things, so the lemon is yellow, the grass is green, and the sky is blue. Things like that are how I most associate color, and that's how it triggers the color in my mind or what I think is color.

Steph: Thank you, Laurel. Synesthesia is one fascinating way some experience the world including color. Can you share with us about your experience with this?

Laurel: So, for as long as I can remember, I've always associated color with its letters, numbers, words, and names. I always thought that was a very normal thing. I thought that everyone did it probably till I was around 20 years old and I was talking to someone and they said, that is not how people associate color in words.

But I've always done that and I think it helps me remember things. It helps me recall information. For example, Sunday has always been like a dark red in my mind, and Saturday's been Like a white blue, and my mom's name Susan, has always been orange. The number five has been a whitish color, and those things have just triggered things in my mind to recall information.

Nasreen: Laurel, that is very fascinating. Thank you for sharing that.

Ken, you have extensive insight on this topic. What does research show about the relationships between our senses and color?

Ken: So interestingly enough, there was a lot of research being conducted about 150 years ago on this very subject of synesthesia.

And people were researching what the relationship between color and sound was and people being able to see what color is. But then around the end of the 19th century behavioral science really started to take over. And the relationship between color and sound, kind of disappeared until around the 1970s when research started back up.

And institutions such as MIT and Oxford and UC Berkeley there were professors they started studying that relationship once again. And what they've discovered is that there are several scales within sound and also within taste and smell that have a direct relationship between color and our senses, specifically with our hearing.

So the basic, the most simple, simple scale is five colors, red, yellow, green, blue, and purple are the basic ones. And then it goes, there's other research that says different scales that go up to about 24 different colors that are represented by sound. And so there are specific notes that can translate to frequencies that our brain can translate into various types of color.

So like, I don't know if anybody's ever heard of white noise. And so white noise is, is, is actually a frequency, which is like that hissing sound that old TVs used to make. And that's basically all of the sounds together or all frequencies together. And then there are other types of noise like pink noise, blue noise, and gray noise, all different types that represent a frequency that can be that are sometimes more pleasing than other tones to our ears.

So there's actually been quite a lot of research that has been conducted to support, you know, the idea of synesthesia.

Steph: Bold Blind Beauty is an advocacy platform that showcases uplifting stories of individuals navigating life while on the blindness spectrum.

We are excited to offer a limited edition Berry Crew Neck Tee, in honor of The Color Of The Year, Viva Magenta. The Tee includes an embroidered Bold Blind Beauty braille logo on the upper left side of the chest.

By shopping at our online store, you are not only supporting our mission but also projects like our podcast. For more details about our products, please visit boldblindbeauty.com.

Sylvia: I think color is just super fascinating and I actually, when you talk about that, Ken I think that you can actually ask your smart devices to play those different colors. I'm not going to do it right now, but I think you can. And It's, it's really interesting how different people sense colors. I know we put it out there on social media asking people, and one of the things that, one of the comments I saw that was super fascinating to me was there was a musician, and she would tell her band members, give me more red, give me more blue, and that had meaning for them. They would change up things.

And so that, I think for everyone, just think to just think about how they appreciate color, how do they sense color? Just pondering that, and those who, so who can appreciate color really taking the opportunity to truly appreciate it.

So I think it'd be fun to know what everyone's favorite colors are, and, and I'll share mine first. My favorite color varies from day to day, and I think it's about which one I'm remembering best at the time. So I love those vibrant colors, purples and the bright pinks, and emerald greens and that beautiful, like vibrant blue and yeah, lemon drop yellow, those bright, bright colors.

So I can't say I have a favorite color. I think I have favorite color memories. So a beautiful sunset out in the ocean that had purples and pinks and oranges in it I mean, I vividly remember that. I vividly remember that blue, blue sky in Montana. And so things like that are my favorites. Steph, what about you?

Steph: Let's see. I really like how you explained your favorite color, so I can't, I can't steal that, but I do like that. I like the idea of all the colors swirled together. A sunset is an excellent example of that.

But I'd have to say that my favorite color is red. I remember years ago going on a job interview and one of the advice at the time was never wear red to a job interview, but I don't, I don't pay attention to that. And I wore red.

And you know what? I, I ended up getting the job and I felt so confident and it's just powerful in this, this red outfit I had on, it was a skirt and a jacket, and I loved it, and I still love red. Especially now that I can see less than I used to. I just really appreciate red.

Sylvia: I love red too.

Nasreen, what's your favorite color?

Nasreen: My favorite color would have to be coral, whether it's in the red shade, the pink shade, or the orange shade. I just love that color because it makes me happy. It's carefree, it's light. It's a color I'd never worn growing up. I didn't even know about it, didn't know it existed.

Never seen anything coral, and now that corals come out a lot more in many, many things. I've seen where, whether it's wearables or makeup or whatever, and I feel that that color also looks very good on me in its particular shades. I really like the color. It makes me happy. It tells me, it just allows me to be who I am and enjoy life and be carefree, and sometimes we just need a little bit of coral in our lives.

Sylvia: Oh, I agree. It's a gorgeous color and I think it's one that most people can wear. What about our beauty expert? Dana, what's your favorite color?

Dana: You know, Sylvia, I have to kind of go with you in the fact of colors. As I've gotten older, it's pretty much whatever, like whatever color phase that I'm in, I might be in a blue, purple, you know, just different colors.

And so it's hard now. I did have a favorite color when I was younger, but now it's like it depends on my mood and all of it can and all of it can pair with black, just saying.

Sylvia: Awesome. Laurel, what's your favorite color?

Laurel: I think my favorite color is aqua. The reason I like Aqua is that I feel like it's relaxing, it's tranquil, and it reminds me of the ocean.

Sylvia: Ooh, nice. You you know what, that's what it makes me think of. So you are so right. Ken, what's your favorite color?

Ken: So I don't really have a favorite color, but the one thing that I will say, and you made me think of this, Sylvia, so is a, an experience of like a, of color, how you said, you know, a sunset.

The thing that I probably miss more so than anything is the experience, of a sunrise and the, and how vivid the sun rising and that color, that just how it just comes over the horizon and it just hits you . And you feel the warmth and you can, and you, and it's just, I think they're much prettier than sunsets actually.

That is something that is just forever ingrained in my mind what that sense, that whole sensation is because it's an experience, but

Sylvia: it's also, it's more than just the seeing.

Ken: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But that is probably my favorite thing. And then another thing that I actually, I miss is the ability to see stars.

And so, but that's, that's not really a color. It's also an experience, but that's something, that I love looking at pictures of, of, of the sky and of the stars and stuff because that's my, the way that I can relate to it now versus actually being able to see it.

 Sylvia: Yeah. So I could never see stars and I'm sure Laurel's in my boat. So yeah,

Ken: It's like this bright silver kind of is what it, what the color they reminded me of.

Sylvia: Thank you for creating that visual picture. And, and I think that when I, so, so I'm taking us a little bit off topic here, but you made me think of that when I read posts. This is why audio description descriptions of pictures of posts when people post stuff. When you can provide that visual picture for someone who can't see that. It really does help create that magic.

Nasreen: Yes, I, I have to agree. That definitely helps knowing what you're looking at and then the imagery behind it, because again, blindness is a spectrum and we all see things differently.

Dana: As we explore the world of color for the season, some hair colors that you might wanna check out are Strawberry Blonde, caramel Blonde, and Anime Pink might be associated with that Barbie movie that's recently out. And for the nails, neon is still popular, watermelon colors, nail art with airbrushing, and different patterns and designs.

So have a ball y'all, and enjoy color for the season. And that's your Bold Blind Beauty Byte.

Sylvia: Well, I love colors. I love the colors you talked about. Awesome. Hey, Nasreen?

Nasreen: Yes.

Sylvia: Water. Watermelon is coral. Just so you know.

Nasreen: Thank you.

Sylvia: Or at least see Watermelon is coral. I could be wrong.

Nasreen: It could probably gel in the family. I can see it sitting there somewhere. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. This has been a wonderful conversation on color.

Laurel and Ken, thank you so much for joining us today. How can we find you both Laurel? How can we find you first?

Laurel: You can find me on Facebook at Laurel Henry, or my email address is Laurel CHenry@gmail.com.

Nasreen: Ken, how about you?

Ken: Yes so I am, they can find me on LinkedIn. It's Ken Meer, that's k-e-n-m-e-e-k-e-r A like Apple, Z like zebra is my handle on LinkedIn or they can go to my website, which is Vitality Career Coaching dot com.

And then I'm also on Bold Beauty too. I have several articles.

Sylvia: And you have a podcast, Ken?

Ken: I also have a podcast. Yes. And, they can link to that through my website as well. But I have a podcast called the Dissing My Ability podcast, which has just started its second season, so I encourage people to check it out.

Nasreen: I have certainly learned a lot here. It's been a wonderful, colorful conversation. Want to thank you both, Laurel and Ken, for dropping by and sharing your insights and experiences on Synesthesia. Fantastic conversation. 

Thank you very much.

Thanks for listening to Bold Blind Beauty On A.I.R. With your hosts Stephanae McCoy, Nasreen Bhutta, Sylvia Stinson-Perez, and Dana Hinnant. If you enjoyed this episode and you would like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post it on your socials, or leave a rating and review to catch all the latest remote blind beauty.

You can follow us on Instagram, and Facebook, and check out our YouTube channel at Bold Blind Beauty. Thanks again for listening, and we will see you next time on another edition of Bold Blind Beauty on Air.

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Nasreen Bhutta

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Stephanae (Steph) McCoy

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Sylvia Stinson-Perez

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