Regarding music as an influence, I can say a bit more.
The music that I found most "visually' interesting was composed by Alexander Scriabin, who is also thought to have been possibly afflicted (or blessed?) with visual/auditory synesthesia. Scriabin associated certain chords or even individual notes with certain colours. He believed that it was possible to combine all the senses into one sublime experience, in other words, he didn't see any need for a clear separation between them. I often look (pun intended) to his music or that of D. Shostakovich for visual inspiration. There are some pieces from both of them that strike me as extremely visual. Some of the work from DS is painfully visual for me, I can't stand it for that reason, it's just so dark and gloomy. Scriabin tends more often to evoke flight and unusual light, for me at least.
Funny, Albert Schweitzer pushed the theory that the music of J.S. Bach is visual- I certainly don't see it as such even though I dabble in it and have tried to "see" it. The intricate and interwoven pervasive fugue structure makes me more attuned to timing and dynamics, but not colour per se. Bach's successor (in many ways other than geographical), F. Mendelssohn, composed some of what I think is the most strongly visual semiromantic music. I find it impossible to listen to, for example, the Hebrides overture without getting a very vivid landscape in my head, and I don't think it's merely because pieces like that are often playing in the background when we see dramatic landscape on TV or the silver screen! I think that style of composiiton is as inherently visual as the impressionistic genre (Debussy et al). Mendelssohn composed a literally description of something he saw, he was just a tiny bit more shackled to convention than Chopin and later Scriabin.
Scriabin would interest anyone who wants to know how wonderfully chromatic "classical" music can be- it may well give you visual thoughts. Listen to, for example, Vers la flamme, which of course evokes a crackling flame and which (I think) somehow engages the sense of touch as well, when performed by someone with complete mastery e.g. Horowitz:
ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_FKKIC1oSw
Another very strongly visual piece, for me, is the trio op.67 of Shostakovich, now that is one glorious organic meal consumed in four courses; not surprisingly, I had it strongly in my head whilst looking at the microworld of bugs and lichen and moss and minerals around Mono lake a few weeks ago. It is just crawling with unfamiliar life, but has a strong undercurrent of Jewish folk rhythms, perhaps.
I just find it very hard to listen to this kind of music and not get visual ideas that inspire me to want to look for particular compositions, and conversely, when out shooting these things just pop into my head, quite audibly. I think the photographs that are most satisfying to me are the ones that I associate with a particular musical influence.
And no, I don't use and never have used any psychoactive substances
