Mar. 31, 2003 - 22:48:22
Dear Vincent,
I read a book several months ago about what would happen to our world if the lie detector was perfected. A short time after its development everyone is wearing one on their wrist like a watch. It speeds up dating because people get to know the hard core facts about each other- no one can lie. What you said about sex reminded me of that book. It would be much more direct because you'd know how someone felt about you. But if red is both love and pain what is the color for lust? The first thing that struck me was a shade of red but everything cannot be red. The more I thought about it the more bright lime cooled by yellow (this color) appealed. It's like those little color swatches you find at the paint store. You look at this color and think it could work for you for a while. Then you put it on your walls and realize you should keep your passing whims in check.
Something else to consider: Would the colors display what you're really feeling, or what you think you're feeling Vincent? I can count on two hands the number of people I know who I honestly believe to be in love. I can't even begin to list the number of people I know or have known who have believed themselves to be in love. If we were to write a story would the characters be able to amble off on their own and contemplate their emotions simply by observing their color changes? Would the heroine be able to sit on her bed and think, "am I in love with him?" Patiently, she'd wait, and regarding her reddening luminesance she'd conclude, "must be." Or would the hero wonder, "am I in love with her?" As he colors mahongany (maybe the color for fear?) he still must contemplate if he is in love with her or not as his fear of commitment may be overriding other colors? Will the colors provide a certain certainty, or leave the world no less certain, just more visual?
And yet something else to consider: Do the colors manifest what you are feeling even when you're not thinking about it? Like if you were an actor, could you get rid of your nervous coloring just by the force of sheer concentration and willpower? Or does it remain regardless? If emotion cannot be completely mastered will we make the colors also thus? And further more would the colors register artificially induced emotion? If a girl goes to a movie and cries her eyes out for the star crossed protagonists will she leave the movie aglow with pulsing, cleureen blue?
Throw some thoughts back at me, I'm definately interested in 'coloring' the story idea in.
"Would you agree that, in order to truly be an individual, one would have to not be subject to the stimuli of the civilized world? Indeed, isn’t the use of English a tool that unites us, makes us part of a group?"
Saskia speaks English. She also speaks flawless Dutch. English makes her part of a group living in the United States. But living in the United States and speaking Dutch makes her an individual due to circumstance of location. Like the originality discussion, I suppose it's not that it's not truly individual or original characteristics that make us individuals so much as it is a lack of those same characteristics in those around us. Also like the originality discussion it is a question of interpretation. Part of my individuality is being caustic and contrary. I am certainly not the first to be so. But Vincent, no one will ever be contrary in quite the same way as I.
Do you remember finger painting? All this talk of colors called it to mind and I can honestly say that is something I desperately miss about being five. Remember how the paint smelled sort of like tap water and rain? And how your finger could slide so slickly across the page. And how the paint was cold and bright. After your finger had rubbed all the paint around if you looked at your fingertips the color had filled in the little ridges of your fingerprints with elegant, loopy lines that you never knew were there? Sometimes you'd stick your whole hand in. And no matter how hard you pressed down on the paper you couldn't rub off that glob of paint that took refuge in the curve of your tiny hand. Right on the inside where when you curl it the lines on your palms wrinkle at you. If you squeezed your hand into a fist the paint burst in insistant little rivets out between your fingers and when you opened your fist again the paint made a sucking sound.
I always imagine that if would be joyful to be a painter. Their hands make those deft little strokes. I recognize those cramped hands curled around utensil, they share those hands with writers. But there's knowledge in painter's hands, there's translation but in the writer's hands there is only transcription. They are like muscians in that they read. Musicians read notes and painter's read images. I had a music teacher once who used to say, "Notes are not music." So sometimes I wonder if words are writing.
Sublime, Cut Time, Forced Rhyme, A Douzen a Dime, Punishment and Crime...Lime,
Meghan
what they said - what they will say
