The Story of Moodboard

Creating things is my attempt to show others what the world looks like to me. A big part of this is colors, as I’m a synesthete. According to Google, synesthesia is “a neurological condition in which information meant to stimulate one of your senses stimulates several of your senses.” So, when I listen to music, I hear color. When I feel something strongly, I feel color. As a result, people and experiences and times of my life have colors associated with them based on what I heard or felt at the time. From there, I started capturing these seasons of my life in Pinterest boards and playlists. I wrote poetry about what I was experiencing, or thinking back on what I experienced, and linked it in my mind to those images and songs. This became a creative lens through which I thought about my life. It’s the art I’ve made about my experiences. If my life was a story, that story would move through colors like the seasons with their colors.

Moodboard is my attempt to show this internal vision of my life to you all. I’ve picked one poem that encapsulates each season of my life, but behind what is on this website, there are hundreds of poems separated into “moods.” I hope to share the rest of the poems with you all someday, but for now, I hope this is enough to convey my vision to you. 

If you look close enough at Moodboard, you’ll see a progression, a narrative that develops as I grow up. The poems shared here were written from ages 19 to 23. Sometimes the “moods” repeat themselves or mirror each other. For example, Mood 8 is the younger, angstier version of Mood 13. Both are chaotic, full of energy, color, and light, but Mood 8 is the lights of a city at night. Mood 13 is the light reflecting off the ocean at sunset. Both of these “moods” reflect periods where I was working something out, something that hurt, that made me grow. I felt like I was throwing myself into the ocean, hoping the waves would toss me over and over till I came out smoother. The colors and music in this “mood” go along with that kind of feeling.

This is not the only poetry project I have worked on over the years. There is more to come, but until I share the rest, I hope you enjoy this project.