I did a writing exercise on colours once before, and wanted
to do another to see if I still had the same ideas, or if I’d actually managed
to squeeze some more thoughts or impressions out of my head in the meantime –
the last was over a year ago, I think. So here’s the reprise on colours. Free writes again, just seeing what comes to
mind when I picture each of the colours – and after the mammoth length of the
last 2 posts, I’ve let this one stay small and manageable! Won’t take you an aeon to read!
***
Blue makes me think of…
The sky over the lands, where it is always (or mostly) a
wonderful blue, and kingfishers and hummingbirds swirl through, dipping and
darting, free. There are no predators
here. It also makes me think of The
Dreamer, who was once told by one particular female that he looked very good in
blue, so now seems to wear it all the time, and it makes him feel
confident. It seems very much a man’s
colour, in those I see around me.
Troubadour used to love it too, always wearing shirts of old, much
softened cornflower blue, along with some absolutely awful polyester trousers
that ruined the whole effect. Along with
Stanley, both
of them have a thing about not wearing running shoes ever, and only wearing
suit shoes. Both of them sometimes ruin
this effect with crap trousers to go with the lovely shirts they wear! Blue also reminds me of when I was small, and
mum used to get cotton wool balls in different colours – pink and blue and
white. My friend Sian
who lived in the Barbican, used to suck her thumb, while clutching some of
these cotton wool balls and rubbing them gently and meditatively over the side
of her nose. I tried it one day when I
got home, sitting hidden in the airing cupboard (as only small children can
manage), and it was very soothing.
Pink makes me think of…
Small children’s toys, fluffy plush animals, clutched in
small hands with nails so small they look like they might flake off at any
moment. It makes me think of rose quartz
and the associations of that with peace and self love…rose petals and rose oil,
strewn and dripped into a bath. No
lights except the soft glimmer of a couple of tealights, the flames just
shimmering on the walls of the bathroom, and almost total peace in that room,
as I lay there, just looking out the window, watching the patterns of leaves
striated on the glass itself. I almost
trance myself out. When I was pregnant
with Fluffhead I was stunningly starkly aware of how little sleep I was going
to be getting in the next few years, and I spent a lot of time in that bath,
just lying there. In the stillness,
watching the leaves, feeling the utter quiet, watching the candle flames,
looking at my crystals. Slowly feeling
myself move, all unable to stop, from one calm and hard phase of reality toward another one - squishy, loud and confused.
Green makes me think of…
Deep forests, where I tromp in wellies or Timberlands, with
my feet cracking twigs. The smell of
pine, and other earthy smells, running through my nose and all pressing
in. Roots deep within the earth all
packed tightly to the surrounding soil and clay, baked and enmeshed inside, a
deep rootedness of trees surrounding me.
It’s the tops of trees, where leaves sway and quiver and gust in the
wind. It’s the tree outside my bedroom
window, where I lay on the bed in the golden room, and just watch the leaves
move – and feel privileged that I have that tree right there to see, every
day. It comforts me. I watch the trunk stay still, the individual
boughs move, and the leaves shake all over the place. I am mesmerized by the sight of them. I am calmed and beguiled.
Brown makes me think of…
Safety and growing things.
Tree trunks, soil playing through my fingers. The deeply dry and useless looking soil that
I planted my herbs in – but they are growing.
Basil is coming though slowly and delicately, coriander and oregano
growing at 2 totally different rates, and chervil growing through the wrong
hole in the pot, but growing nonetheless.
From that seemingly dead soil, is growing a bounty of herbs – possibly
the first things I ever remember growing from seed, and its working! So much I learn from the way things grow and
die and decay and come back. That tree
in the yard where we used to live, that started to come through, then Stanley
butchered it and broke off loads of its branches ‘cos it was in the way of the
washing line. And I mourned it for
months. It laid quiet all winter, and
then – wonderful surprise, it budded on the ends of the broken parts, and
burst, so quickly I was amazed, into shoots and leaves, then whole
branches. The next year I didn’t let him
touch it, and it grew by early spring, into a proper tree! A proper little tree! I was amazed.
So I learned, that even when things seem dead, they may be holding their
seeds of growth and regeneration deep inside them, and if left be, and tended
just ever so gently, they will blossom forth again, and be stronger than ever. Some clichés do seem to hold true.
Purple makes me think of…
The idea of occult pretention, and bishops and kings – and
how Troubadour said (he had such a habit
of killing things with his opinions) that its an immature colour. It seems to be the chosen colour of pomp and
circumstance. It makes me think of
crowns and fur lined cloaks – ermine, isn’t it?
And small children seriously holding up the trains of kings and queens
in huge majestic cathedrals like Salisbury or Westminster. Its blockbuster epic novels by Edward
Rutherford, about the whole of Ireland;
or by Ken Follett, about Pillars of the
Earth (that was very good). It makes
me think of flowers I don’t much like – overly serious, almost
philosophically dark flowers, as opposed
to the ones I have behind me – white, lilac and pink scented stocks – so
delicate and yet so overwhelmingly beautiful.
It is a colour of ritual and sacrament, and possibly opium induced
dreaming: of secret things that spin the head.
It’s not a colour I’m much interested in, in its deeper shades. I am more likely to go for a happy, brighter
purple, an almost lilac glint of amethyst – that you can fall into and swim
inside, crystalline and with the breath of winds up high, white horses
galloping way below, snatch of salt from the sea.
from: videohive.net
White makes me think of…
Currently it makes me think of the gleaming crystal perfect
brightness of the toilets at my last job, when you first go in. White tiled floor, brilliant white walls,
dark melamine surface the only difference.
The doors to the toilets were also painted gloss white. The whole room shone, with hints of silver –
the door handles, a scuff-guard at the bottom of all the doors.
It makes me think of Sylvia Plath and how she saw white not
as a colour of purity, but as a colour of death and bleached bones, and purest
ashes of nothingness. Chinese funerals,
where people hold their heads low, in white hats. It makes me think of tiny birds in nests,
cuddled up together, their eyes barely opening, small feathers tucked closely
in to their bodies. It makes me think of
a friend I once had and her thing for angels – and the idea that if you see
feathers it means an angel is about.
When I was last in the gardens of Michelham Priory and I was with
mum. We wandered the grounds, and she
thought that statue of the monk with no face inside its cowl started to breathe
and she jumped! She’s a throw back to
the middle ages, she makes me laugh. As
I wandered I saw loads of wonderful feathers, and I gathered them all, and a
twig – in my head about to make some gorgeous smudge fan. They are all still here, and I still may well…6
years later. They are in a bag, softly
folded and flat, in a drawer in my book room.
I just never seem to feel arty when I am at home, so much to write and
read…but the potential for a beautiful smudge fan is still there.
Black makes me think of…
It used to make me
think of Goths, and black magic, and darkness – but one day I read somewhere
that black symbolized discipline and holding in, and I really identified with
that. That’s why its such a good colour for work – not because its safe or
boring, and goes with everything (Trinny and Susannah deeply disagree), but because it helps you focus. It doesn’t get in the way. It lets you shine out from within it. Hence my password at home on my old laptop
used to be about darkness being light.
Which felt very true, somehow when I wrote it, and I am only just starting
to see how true it is now. The learning
from within hardship and suffering. The
joy you can get even in the midst of pain.
Light is so much brighter, when tempered by the dark. (Of course, this does not obviate way too much
darkness in anyone’s life – but it helps to be able to move through it, and
without too much fear, to understand that it will be there and that one will, of necessity, have to learn how to move through it.) So now I find black comforting, and sort of
sleek; it helps thought, on some days.
Red makes me think of…
Other people’s ideas of passion, and red slickened lips,
pouting for kisses. Women’s lips sucking
cherries. Women’s tongues tying knots
with cherry stems. (Do I even believe
that is possible? NO!) It’s a colour that people have as much loaded
associations for as black and white. Red
is a siren colour – a colour for toe nails; women with red fingernails suddenly
have talons. Vampires seem to wear a lot of red in
Hammer. Vampy women wear a lot of red
lingerie; it’s seen as naughty. To me,
red is juice from strawberries; juice from bright red (temptation) apples;
juices running over your fingers and chin.
It’s a decadence of fruit.
Grapes, plums, redcurrants; raspberries especially. Its small children dripping strawberry sauce
off of cornets; dripping chemical ice cream off of strawberry splits. Eating slush puppies, crunching ice and
sticking out their tongues that are cherry red, violence red.
Red doesn’t really make me think of blood. Despite that time when I heard the Falklands
War had broken out (as if barely able to contain itself), and I was in the
toilets in St Georges (my primary school, despicable place), and wondering if I
was going to be dripping my nosebleed into the sink forever and ever. Would I still be there when the war was
done? At that stage I was fed up of
trying to staunch the blood and didn’t want to go back to class, so I was
letting it drip and drip, with my head hung close to the sink, watching the white
enamel turn redder and redder, until the whole sink was blood covered. I thought it looked quite pretty and
dramatic. I used to have massive
nosebleeds every other summer, regular as clockwork for no discernible
reason. So did my dad. I don’t anymore; they just stopped one summer
in my late teens.
Oddly, I still dream about those toilets. Though when I went back to visit some years
later, they were midget toilets, and I was amazed I had ever been small enough
to bend seriously over that sink standing, and not on my hands and knees.
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