Adrianne Blackwood, BA a Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of
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Hearing colors Item Type Thesis Authors Blackwood, Adrianne Download date 02/10/2021 00:54:33 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/11122/11258 HEARING COLORS By Adrianne Blackwood, B.A. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing University of Alaska Fairbanks May 2020 APPROVED: Dr. Gerri Brightwell, Committee Chair Dr. Daryl Farmer, Committee Member Dr. Terry Reilly, Committee Member Dr. Richard Carr, Department Chair Department of English Dr. Todd Sherman, Dean College of Liberal Arts Dr. Michael Castellini, Dean of the Graduate School Abstract This thesis project is the first part of a historical fiction novel. It takes place in the Outer Banks of North Carolina in 1910 and imagines the perspective of a sound-color synesthete named Bert Beasley, who witnessed the Wright brothers complete the first engine-powered flight. Bert wants to leave his home to pursue aviation but is unable to do so because he is needed to help run his family's failing general store. When Elisabeth Lavoie, a French musician, moves to town and buys a dilapidated house, Bert believes he'll be able to solve his problems by earning extra money as her repairman. However, her voice is purple—the only color he's never heard before—and her music changes colors, which shouldn't be possible. As he grows closer to Elisabeth, Bert becomes less sure that he wants to leave, but his decision is complicated once more when he learns that the Wright brothers have opened a flying school. The novel switches between the third-person points of view of Bert and Elisabeth. The dual perspectives provide insight into their individual inner conflicts—Bert longs to leave a home he loves as Elisabeth struggles to find a home she has lost—and demonstrates how their respective relationships with sound have shaped them into two people who have the potential to be a home for each other. The descriptions of synesthesia in this project present a creative interpretation of how color-sound combinations manifest themselves in synesthetes, both visually/audibly and emotionally. I conducted research to accurately portray the visual/auditory experiences of synesthesia, but I also took some artistic license in that the story implies that Bert's emotions, or the emotions of the musician playing the music he hears, has an effect on the color of the sound. i This is not based on the known science of synesthesia but allowed for a deeper exploration of the characters' relationship and the question of home. ii Table of Contents Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ i Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... iii Prologue .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One .................................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter Two.................................................................................................................................. 23 Chapter Three................................................................................................................................ 35 Chapter Four ..................................................................................................................................57 Chapter Five.................................................................................................................................. 65 Chapter Six.................................................................................................................................... 87 Chapter Seven ..............................................................................................................................113 Chapter Eight .............................................................................................................................. 129 Chapter Nine ................................................................................................................................143 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................157 iii iv Prologue The Outer Banks, NC - December 17, 1903 To the boy on the dunes, the wind sounded blue. It was the color of ocean water and roared in from the north in curling waves, crashing over the beach like a second sea. Whenever the wind swept through the long grass around him, its color changed right along with the sound, pale green shimmers flashing up from the swishing strands like fishes flipping free of the breakers. From the top of a dune, Bert could see the whole of Kitty Hawk beach. Three years ago, he would've taken the time to sketch all of it, whatever there was to see—the sandpipers scurrying to and from the waterline, the boats drifting along the horizon, or the banker ponies moseying between the dunes. But that was before the Wright brothers. Now whenever he set pencil to paper, he only drew their flying contraptions. The latest machine, the Flyer, was near about the most graceful thing he'd ever seen. It perched on top of a dolly at the start of the sixty-foot wooden track they'd built to launch it. It rocked side to side as the wind snapped at it, like a seabird balancing on a crag, its wooden frame light, but boxy, with long wings that stuck straight out to the sides. They were split into two levels, the space between supported by thin metal poles and crisscrossed bicycle wire. All in all, with the horizontal tail at the back and the two big propellers, it looked something like a dragonfly, although he knew from watching their glider tests that it wouldn't fly like one. Dragonflies darted, but the Wrights' flying machines soared. 1 When they stayed in the air, at least. He'd seen too many of the gliders splinter against the sand, their wood snapping with a harsh orange crack at the end of their plummet back to Earth. There was a chance this one wouldn't fly at all. He couldn't let himself forget that. Bert drew the wings first, keeping an eye on the men bustling around the Flyer. Of the five local men, he'd only met three, the ones that worked at the Lifesaving Station, because they came into his pop's general store all the time. The other two were from the next town over and he'd been surprised to learn that one of them was a teenager, only two years older than he was. As he watched, the men straightened out the two-by-fours that made up the track, checking to see that the ends lined up neatly. Meanwhile, the Wrights were fussing over the Flyer itself. They'd only been in his pop's store twice, and Bert hadn't worked up the courage to talk to either of them yet, but he'd learned which was which right off. Orville, the younger one with the big moustache and the booming scarlet laugh, had apparently won the coin toss today. He was already lying on his stomach in the pilot's cradle, testing the hip controls and the other steering mechanisms. As he shifted his weight, the Flyer's wingtips lifted up and down, like a bird ruffling its feathers. When he shifted a different way, the sheet of horizontal canvas fixed to the tail turned from side to side. Bert knew a rudder when he saw one. Pressing the pencil tip back to the page, he drew squiggly arrows around the tail to show how it would redirect the flow of the wind, turning the Flyer whichever way Orville wanted it to go. In the space above the arrows, he scrawled a question, “Birds steer like boats?” before returning to his study of the men and their machine. At the front of the Flyer, Wilbur, the one with sharp eyes and a sharper nose, tinkered with the engine, which rested on the bottom layer of the right wing, slightly off-center. 2 Bert couldn't see much of the engine from where he was, so he simply drew it as a box on the wing. Then he paused his sketching and looked back up at the Flyer. There was something off about it. Craning his neck to see better, he traced its shape with his eyes, comparing it to the pencil lines in his notebook. Its wings were uneven, the right one sticking out about four more inches than the left. That couldn't be a mistake. If he could see it all the way from his dune, the Wrights must've noticed it too. But the wings on their gliders had never looked like that. Bert erased the end of the right wing in his drawing, drew it longer, and then wrote another question above it: “Because of engine?” Before he could puzzle it out, Orville yelled something, his voice a red spark that was quickly doused by the color of the wind. Bert hadn't heard the words, but the local men moved away from the track, drawing around to the side of it and keeping their distance. He scrambled up into a sitting position, the better to see, and watched as Wilbur and Orville shook hands. They held on for a moment, like they were steadying each other, and then Wilbur moved to take up a position next to the right wing. They were ready. The engine sputtered to a start, snorting out a puff of bluish-gray that was only a shade darker than the sound of the wind. The propellers started to spin, twirling lazily but then picking up speed until they were only a blur. Another puff burst free, jouncing the wooden frame up on one side as the engine began to rumble.