Indigo (August)

Mood Indigo played by Thelonious Monk in the stairwell of old Carlton when we were crazy and uninformed and Chernobyl hadn’t happened but Three Mile Island had. Mood Indigo on the ear stirrups of our craniums when we knew no better and the Soviet hadn’t fallen but Persia had. Rude Indicator by Thessalonians Drunk on zithers of old sleep-ins when we were sleeping it off and Nine Eleven hadn’t happened but November Eleventh had. Mood Indigo on the record player of Carlton in August when we were Thelonious Monk in our craniums and nothing much was happening and something had.

Indigo (January)

The business of living with the sky takes a lifetime. Or a moment. The ancients spent lifetimes extracting indigo, for a moment’s grace. An indigo-dyed kimono (‘Blue: Alchemy of a Colour’, NGV January 2016) covers the body with sky. Or sea. Live with it. Light-blue for a young woman, dark-blue for an older woman. Summer streams and cloud flowers. The moderns are no different in this respect, quarrying into the ground for a mineral, jewels, dust that will provide indigo machinery, indigo technology, indigo fashion. The moderns tear the world apart, pay exorbitantly the earth, for a little look-right feel-right.