I didn’t expect to start a blog while in Florence, and much less to begin by talking migraines. Yet here we are; they’ve been a part of my story here, and I wrote a caption too long for Instagram, so blogging it is. Maybe sometime I will set aside the time to write fuller stories about my adventures here as a sacred art student in Firenze. For now, though, the caption in question:

___

As an artist, it is a profoundly strange thing to have things go wrong with your vision.

This is a view from my walk home from class on a mild migraine day; the beautiful Ponte Vecchio covered with persistent visual snow and typical aura, and the flashes of moving nebulas when I close my eyes.

One of the interesting things about migraines (which are a different category altogether from “really bad headaches”) is that migrainuers get to regularly and consciously experience the edges of what the human brain perceives. This is especially the case for those who have multiple sensory and neurological auras at once. It’s not exactly a superpower I’d wish on anyone, but once I’m past a migraine attack I’ve gathered a new collection of impossible memories: a grainy film over reality flattening 3D space, phantom lights illuminating the sky, and the swiftly tilting world riddled with the shapes and colors of dancing noises as each sound source—a bird, a wailing police car, a chatting pedestrian couple, a gust of wind carrying a busker’s opera song—passes by. 

There are colors which exist only in our minds and which can’t be created through additive color (lights) or subtractive colors (things like paint and pigment that absorb and reflect wavelengths of light), called impossible colors. It’s fascinating; normally, you can only perceive these as afterimages against the eigengrau of your closed eyes. The colors are beyond our retina’s ability to perceive. I highly recommend staring at the pictures on Wikipedia to tire your eyes and see these colors yourself. 

I see impossible Stygian blue—a deep, rich electric indigo blue which is literally darker than pitch black—in the background of my migraine sight. It’s represented with purple in this painting so that the other colors make some semblance of sense. 

If I’m going to temporarily lose normal vision, I hope it’s always accompanied by this celestial, magical blue.

___

(Many thanks to the wonderful friends at school who are so understanding and helped me when I needed medical care!)

Learn more about migraine auras and Visual Snow Syndrome.