Musk (January)

Pantone is the proprietary company that standardizes colours for matching internationally, its existence premised on the belief that the spectrum can be calibrated. William Blake would have written a terse verse about Pantone, as if science could explain away the rainbow. Musk, for example. The SOED says it’s from Sanskrit for the reddish-brown scrotum of the musk deer and/or the deer’s glandular secretion used in perfume. Which came first, scent or shade? It’s all some distance, and calibrations, from the bright pink musk sticks we bought from the Milk Bar during January holidays. Pantone, understandably, has not yet numbered musk.

Cream (January)

Before Patti Smith made ‘Horses’ she tried some journalism. First job was interviewing Eric Clapton, but when he arrived she’d only come up with “What’s your favourite colour?” A study on gender norms by the University of Maryland asked nearly 2000 men and women the same question. Blue turned out to be most popular colour generally, followed by green for men and purple for women. Reds and yellows, curiously, are minorities. This January I meet the norm, tending to see-saw between green and blue, but draw a line through red. We may never know Clapton’s, but it probably isn’t cream. 

Cerulean (January)

Language has ghost words awaiting the necessity of invention, or that pre-exist before exciting new meanings. Consider the Brazilian language Pirahã. It has no colour words, only terms for bright and dark in general. Things are described using comparison (leaflike, sunlike) but with no fixed terms (green, yellow). Nature abhors a vacuum. Pirahã speakers refer every day to colours, but have no generic words for them. Colour evolution seems to come entirely from poetic naming of objects. Sitting in Australia in January, it’s hard to believe that ancient Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew had no word for blue. Let alone cerulean.

Ghost (January)

Technology has not produced many colour words. When Rolls-Royce makes a Silver Ghost we see it instantly in mind’s eye, but it’s a synonym, just as Silver Ghost is a gumtree. Cadillac, Fluorescent, Halogen. Microsoft conjures no colour, only a line of three notes when turned on. Google’s primaries invite us to the kindergarten playground of Internet, but at end of the day it’s just a black screen in a dead box. Concrete January daydreams of techno-colour persist. Poets may use Qantas by inference, but how many readers see red? Colour itself is an add-on, the ghost of the machine. 

Techno-colour daydream: Asphalt Berocca Cadillac Desktop Elastoplast Fluorescent Google Halogen Inkjet Jet-trail Kodak Lemonchiffon Marlboro Neon OMGWTFBBQ Petroleum Qantas Roundabout Strepsil Telephone Ultraviolet Vacuum Wikipedia X-Ray YouTube Zipper

 

Sienna (January)

The icon is means to prayer, but its existence is resolution to fierce words and bloodshed. Second Nicaea (787) laid out a theology that informed an aesthetic of procedure, materials, subjects, forms, and colours. A main distinctive difference through time is how locations (or, as they sometimes become, nations) treat icons contemporaneously. The Auburn School of Oxley Road sources raw Australian siennas, ochres and other outback earth, dust and ash. Results are strangely muted and sombre, more like Lenten moodiness of April than Epiphany brilliance of January. “Gold gathers the light against it.” A robot could never write an icon.

Maroon (January)

My first game was Melbourne versus Fitzroy, Members Stand, home and away 1963. Fitzroy wore the leonine colours of blue, gold, and maroon. Murray’s Maroons played a presentable but losing game to Barassi’s Redlegs. They “languished” down the ladder too long. When the Lions were transcribed to Brisbane in a horse trade they changed name but kept the ursine colours of blue, gold, and maroon. Maroon continues to colour Fitzroy, badge of its schools, livery of trade, feature of murals and graffiti. The match itself was academic. January previous I'd chosen Collingwood, the only choice if you barrack for Collingwood.

Aquamarine (January)

Janet Campbell, lover of colours, Journal 15, 27 January 1987: “A right beautiful day in my life. Awoke + ran into the coolness of a birthday morning– swang in park. Returned to my lover who had picked daisies in an eggcup + redgum leaves with white ribbon + given me a handprinted Japanese card + an aquamarine 1920’s ring to fit a princess of the sea. He is gifted in his romantic vision… Swim then visit Lenore’s…This eve I received pink carnations + a handdrawn card on a lacecloth… I am filled with love… A new time begins. Thankyou God.”

Pearl (January)

Janet Campbell, lover of colours, Journal 55, 27 January 1993: “Melati. I wrote all of these [letters]… at Coconuts - served pineapple juice by fine Ayu just as Tarini – both in classic temple-gilded garb – serves me my banana juice… Collect mail find this pearler from Mr. Corbet who gives me food for thought in transcribing songs I’ll love + well he knows it… Couldn’t play a tune to mine though I betcha… I’ll return, later, empathy from afar to him, Lyrical Lord… It rains now + has teemed, bucketed, for my birthday + I’ve walked, paddled, done yoga in it…”

Pink (January)

My globe was mainly pink. My atlas, a rash of prudent conquests. When the sun set over Lygon Limbo Melbourne it had already set on Forever Foreign Field Empire. Glam rockers came out in hot pink, unblushing. January 26, a non-day. Sleep through sunrise, line of rose prose. Maybe a spot of gardening, but don’t get burnt. Coral grevilleas in a vase. If it rains, retreat to browny-pink China tea. Read about Invasion Day, everyone in a pink fit. Or US elections, a pinko fit. Later siesta, behind lids a whiter shade of red-eye, a purple doze. No pink elephants.

Admiral (January)

The double cross of the Union Flag (1788) made way for the jumping Jack of further union (1801). Did Menzies prefer the Blue Ensign (1950) because of his aversion to Reds? I see the background as Admiral Blue, for the men who decided to discover and then secure from afar a land they never saw, never never never being slaves. The Southern Cross (approximately 10-20 million years old) rises to the occasion each nightfall, just after flags are taken down. Bruces, battlers, barrackers, bogans, become instant vexillologists every twenty-sixth of January, before debate flags, folds, and moves on to politics.

Album (January)

Album is Latin for white. No-one knows who called it The White Album. My turntable copy crackles and undulates in the January of Planet Nine, a great accidental classical pun of modern music. Album was a white board on which Romans placed public notices. Only cheeky chaps of Albion jested at the USSR or said of revolution, that won’t help make it with anyone anyhow. The White Album remains a chronicle of 1968. The Fabs almost called it A Doll’s House, but it’s an album in the very Victorian sense, a collection of varied stuff stuck onto white white spaces.

Red (January)

Hair a heinz of titian, ginger, rust. Battler from Carlton backlanes. Mouth to make a meal of. Neighbours heard his purr. He was a night factory. Landed up in Balwyn. House of the Homeless. Claws were his finer points. Picked open cabinets. Ate half the fruitcake. Telltale teethmarks in almond icing. Dragged the Sunday roast round the backyard. Body a half-tamed fire, a breathing constellation. Slept the length of the bed. Elongated tiger. Thought some: not a cat, a machine. Standing near rubble left of redbrick fence. Whiskers wire. Red answered to no-one. Eyes a January dream, a June statement.

Ice (January)

Mercury is usually golden, Venus turquoise. Earth, though itself brown, is blessedly called the blue planet or green planet. Mars, red. Jupiter is big and yellow, Saturn big and hula-hooped. Neptune and Uranus are traditionally greenish-blue. Pluto is still sort of black even after it stopped being a planet. This January astronomers have discovered Planet Nine, though they cannot see it yet. Centuries peering through their jolly telescopes and they’ve never seen this planet. Weird, really. What’s the colour of a planet you cannot see? Is this a Christmas cracker? Maybe, so far from the sun, it’s colourless. Ice-white? Ice-black?

Isabel (January)

Language is full of mysteries, words we never use that suddenly assert their existence exactly on the page. Isabel, for example, first appears just when the Elizabethan Age concludes, but to me in January 2016. The dictionary, painfully literal, says it’s a woman’s name, but doesn’t know whose. It’s a shade of grey-yellow. Was isabel the Queen’s favourite combination? Is it like Shakespeare, an unprovable reference to the Queen? We wonder how many isabels belong in our own personal vocabulary. Isabel shifts between shade and light, its meaning alive to our seeing eyes, lost again in a closing book, unspoken.

Purple (January)

Purple of Hermannsburg attracted attention. The purple of London were sceptical, mountains could not be that purple. Best purple prose writers paled with disbelief. Royalty had apoplectics. Bishops turned purple. Cognoscenti, fed on diets of purple people-eater movies, went looking for something more mauvie. But Namatjira sales were steady (as The New Yorker likes to say). Purple outback had its place, though London had no idea this was only the beginning. Only the beginning for walls, vivid as January. When they step through the gallery door, purple pinot-sippers gaze upon Hermannsburg presents, take stock, search for words, test their superlatives.