Zoesthesia Turns Synaesthesia Into a Powerful Story of Healing on “Coloured Clouds”

Singapore-born, Japan-based alternative pop artist Zoesthesia is preparing to release “Coloured Clouds,” a deeply personal electro-indie-pop single that explores the relationship between music, color, trauma, and emotional recovery.

For Zoesthesia, color is more than an artistic choice. Living with 14 forms of synaesthesia, a neurological trait in which different sensory experiences become interconnected, Zoesthesia experiences music and emotions through distinct colors. This unusual relationship with perception has become fundamental to Zoesthesia's songwriting, offering an entirely different approach to musical storytelling.

“Coloured Clouds,” the artist's second solo single, originated during a particularly difficult period following traumatic experiences in 2020. Zoesthesia temporarily lost the ability to perceive the colors that had always helped make sense of emotions and relationships. What followed was a prolonged period of uncertainty, ultimately becoming the foundation of the new release.

The song's emotional narrative revolves around two specific colors: dark blue, representing guilt, and dark purple, representing relief. Rather than treating these colors as decorative imagery, Zoesthesia incorporates them directly into the songwriting and production process, allowing the composition to reflect the gradual disappearance and eventual return of an essential part of personal identity.

“I’m lost without my coloured clouds. Just doubts,” Zoesthesia sings, capturing the vulnerability at the center of the release.

Beyond recording music, Zoesthesia is an advocate for greater awareness and understanding of synaesthesia. Through educational content, public speaking, and the podcast Let's Talk Synaesthesia, co-hosted with psychologist Maike Preissing, Zoesthesia works to challenge misconceptions surrounding the neurological trait.

“If you embrace who you really are, you will never truly lose yourself,” Zoesthesia shares.

With “Coloured Clouds,” Zoesthesia presents a compelling example of how personal experiences can inform artistic expression. More importantly, the release addresses something universally recognizable: the difficult journey of losing touch with yourself and discovering that recovery is possible, even when the path back takes years.

Your synaesthesia plays a central role in how you experience and create music. When writing “Coloured Clouds,” how did you translate specific colors and emotions into musical decisions, and what were the biggest challenges in that process?

The biggest challenge in the process is communicating the visuals that I see in my head to Kevin, my producer, in a language that he is able to translate into sound. I’m essentially using an instrument that only I can see and have access to, so I drew out those images and explained them to him. The way my sound-color synaesthesia works is with timbre. The quality of the sound, and the type of instrument used, is what triggers my synaesthesia. I would draw what the sound looks like now, where the “problem” was, and explain how it’s supposed to look. We would experiment by tweaking the sounds, throwing on different effects, adjusting and readjusting until the sound looks like what I want it to look like. Eventually, Kevin figured out my synaesthesia patterns and my preferences and was able to quicken the process.

The only thing he was unable to figure out were my colours patterns - why they are those specific colours. The shapes made sense to him, but not the colours. I didn’t know why either, but I eventually figured out that they were my emotion-colours, which explained why I was very stubborn about the song’s main colours being dark blue and dark purple. So, when the track drifted off into turning brown, I was able to tell, and we would go into the track, toggle each instrument, and figure out which instrument was causing the brown and remove it, returning the track to its original colour When the song is in its supposed colours, I know I’m communicating those emotions that I want.

You’ve shared that traumatic experiences temporarily disconnected you from the colours you had relied on throughout your life. How did that experience change your understanding of your identity, and what did you discover about yourself when those colours began returning?

At that time when I lost my synaesthesia, I had no idea I lost it, or why I lost it. My understanding of synaesthesia at that time was very limited to my sound-color synaesthesia only. I had no idea I had other forms of synaesthesia. I only noticed that I couldn’t see people’s colours anymore and I thought it was just one of those things that ebbs and flows, but when a year went by and the colours have not returned I got worried. I didn’t feel confident meeting people anymore because I didn’t have my colours to back me up. Every time I tried to “look” I got more confused, and my confidence dropped even more. I wasn’t sure I was reading people correctly or if they were “safe” people for me to be around. When the colours return, it was slow, unstable, and unclear. It took another few more months until everything stabilized again.

It was only 3 or 4 years after my colours returned, when I started Zoesthesia, did I learn that it is a known phenomenon that trauma can cause a synaesthete to temporarily lose their synaesthesia. Then it all started making sense to me. I learned how much I relied on my synaesthesia without even knowing that I do. Most of what I felt during that period of time was not an articulated thought or feeling. It was just a whole bag of question marks that didn’t feel right. I discovered so much of who I am is led by my synaesthesia. From what I am drawn to, to my aversions.

“Coloured Clouds” went through several transformations before you confronted the emotions behind its blue and purple imagery. Was there a particular moment during the creative process when you realized what the song was actually trying to tell you?

It was a growing, gnawing feeling that the lyrics and the song were becoming more and more disconnected. The lyrics at that time were joke lyrics about how I couldn’t find my blanket in the middle of the night, which felt nothing like the blue and purple that felt heavy. It is also just like me to use humor to deflect how I truly feel. The deeper we went into the creative process, the more I couldn’t ignore that gnawing feeling. So, I sat down on my own and started digging. I asked myself a tonne of questions, starting with why those two colours? Why was I so stubborn about it? If I followed the same unconscious pattern like my debut solo single, Poison, where the colours of that song were my emotion colours, this would be the same as well. I went back to the time when I first started writing the song, what was going on in my life back then, and what I was struggling with the most emotionally. I finally arrived at blue being guilt, and purple being relief. Everything snapped into focus for me once I figured that out, and I rewrote the lyrics, and Kevin and I changed the direction of the track to follow suit. It was a bit of an overhaul, and I’m always grateful that Kevin was willing to do it with me.

The animated music video gives audiences an opportunity to experience your music through your own perception. What was most important for you to communicate visually, and what do you hope people without synaesthesia will understand after watching it?

There is so much haha! The most important thing I would say for me is that I want people to enjoy music like I do. Not just audibly, but visually as well. I would love for people to watch my animation in the dark, blown up on the biggest screen they have, with their noise-canceling headphones, and be fully immersed. That would be very close to my experience when I listen to music. If they can then compare it with other synaesthesia artists, they will notice how different it is for every synaesthete. I would love for them to see how I painted the song with my mind, how it influences how I write, and how overstimulating it can be for someone with synaesthesia. If this is what I see with only one song, imagine my daily life when there are a tonne of overlapping sounds. Hopefully, this will help not only me, but other synaesthetes in gaining more understanding of their sensory limits and perception.

Through your music, educational content, and advocacy, you've become a voice for people whose experiences are often misunderstood. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about synaesthesia you hope to challenge, and how do you see your artistic work contributing to that conversation?

Some of the biggest misconceptions that I have received are that it’s a fake condition, a disorder, hallucinations, just imagination, a superpower, or that it is schizophrenia. Synaesthesia is a well-studied neurological trait that is consistent and involuntary, and at times can impact our lives negatively even though it is not an illness. I have absolutely no control over what, when, and how I experience my synaesthesia, and it has been very consistent throughout my life. While I understand how it may be difficult for someone without synaesthesia to see how it’s possible for someone to see sound, I hope my work can bridge that gap and make people rethink how our senses speak to one another. We have come a long way since synaesthesia was brought into the scientific community back in the 1980s, but we still have a lot of work left to do. I hope my artistic work can contribute to awareness and understanding, and be living proof of how the trait can manifest in a person.