AFI Ignite

This mysterious B-side from Sing the Sorrow is one of the most popular AFI songs among fans. From the difficult-to-understand lyrics, to the strange intro on the demo version, to the controversy over its spelling, this page aims to be the authority on "Synesthesia."

Synesthesia was released on the UK version of Sing the Sorrow. It took the place of the US version's "...But Home is Nowhere."

On the UK version of Sing the Sorrow the 12th track is titled "Synthesthesia." This is a mistake. The correct title is "Synesthesia."

Synesthesia is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes. In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored, while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities. In spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be "farther away" than 1990), or may have a (three-dimensional) view of a year as a map (clockwise or counterclockwise). Yet another recently identified type, visual motion → sound synesthesia, involves hearing sounds in response to visual motion and flicker.

You can read more about it here on Wikipedia.

Here are the official lyrics to the regular version of Synesthesia as given to us by Davey:

Heartbreak incarnate. I'm nothing if not your memories, your heartbreak, please let me be your joy and your pain. Someday I will be those common words spoken uniquely because I may... will forever be floating as you feel. Please let me haunt as scent on your pillow, letters of past all tear stained and wrinkled. Just say you will for me, invite me to your memory. Just sing again for me that long forgotten song. Someday I will be that waking warmth from a fading dream because I will... I may at best, float as you feel. Let me be all the words echoing comfort. Let me be all the words that you'd unsay.

Along with other Sing the Sorrow demos, the Synesthesia demo was released on the Girl's Not Grey UK Single CD1, as well as the Girl's Not Grey German Single. Apart from being a more raw recording, the demo version includes a mysterious intro that lasts for 1:20. A haunting piano can be heard, as well as Davey whispering. Deciphering these whispers has been a challenge, as the demo's lyrics were never given to us. Here is the generally accepted best guess:

Last night
Last night the moon fainted
Something went wrong, changed me 
Something in turn changed me
I cried, I cried in my sleep
The song has the faint grace of angels
Oh, we're only ourselves

Click here to see a Youtube video of the demo. 

Synesthesia has never been played live.

This is the gear Jade used to record Synesthesia: Les Paul Standard thru a Marshall Plexi with modified tubes and a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier with a Lexicon MPX1