Do you think old-time artists looked at their paintings and thought, “I did good!”?. Some paintings, like Starry Night and the Mona Lisa, were good, but others, like the Madonna of Veveri or the various works of Sharaku, such as this painting, make you think about whether or not these people thought their art looked good. If they somehow did think it looked good, it makes you wonder how they could begin to think that way. Now, I’m not saying that I could draw something like that, I’m just saying that someone who called oneself an artist should be able to draw something better than that. I’m not going to even start with ‘modern art.’ This painting sold for about $44 million. How? There is no plausible reason to even buy this painting. Can you even call it art? It is quite literally a blue canvas with a white line painted down the middle. Imagine spending over a month on an art piece, defining the form, perfecting the value, creating a near perfect masterpiece, only to have some guy paint like a three-year-old and have his painting sold for more than you can ever dream. Conversely, I’d imagine that the guy who spent maybe thirty minutes to an hour on this painting was ecstatic.

You know how our fingernails and our hairs are both made of the same material? What if hair grew in place of our fingernails and toenails and vice versa? It’d be so weird. Haircuts would probably take an extremely long time and cleaning your ‘hair’ in the shower would take an eternity. Also, since hair grows out of most places in your body, you would have tiny, little ‘hairs’ with the consistency of fingernails everywhere on your body. We’d look like a porcupine. Not to mention your eyelashes and eyebrows would be made of fingernails. Facial hair would also probably be less popular, since it would be troublesome to eat and live with. I’d also imagine it’d be extremely odd to have long locks of hair in place of your fingernails and toenails. Finger painting would probably look more like you were painting with brush. Overall, this would just be extremely weird.

What if everyone could experience synesthesia? If you don’t know, synesthesia is when stimuli from one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to an involuntary sensation in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Hearing sounds and then perceiving a color along with the sound is an example of this. I’m most interested in Chromesthesia, where certain colors are perceived alongside sounds. Imagine being able to describe certain songs in color. What colors would these songs be? I feel as though chromesthesia would feel like an extra sense that normal people don’t experience. It is also noted that certain people with chromesthesia, ones who sing or play an instrument, can have perfect pitch because they can perceive certain sounds, such as the note they should be playing, as colors, allowing them to be able to play better than others. Another interesting type would be lexical-gustatory synesthesia. This is where you perceive certain tastes whenever certain words are spoken. This type could be good or bad. You could get the sweet taste of Mountain Dew when someone says ‘yeet,’ or it could be bad because you experience the taste of rotten milk every time someone says ‘brick.’ Either way, I think these phenomenon would be nice to experience.