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A Mexican artist rediscovers a lost color sacred to his ancestors.
As of late, I've been obsessed with colors. To think that some of them can't really be replicated because they have been lost to time or they're too damaging due to their composition with dangerous chemicals is something I never thought of until recently.
A whole color/shade disappearing because of it. I get just as intrigued by people who are dedicated to making attempts at recovering those colors, even if it's just through written media, taking the time to register it. But when they actually achieve itāthe recreationāI'm impressed by their level of commitment.
Dec 21, 2024
š
āI had long wanted to see ātrueā indigo, and thought that drugs might be the way to do this. So one sunny Saturday in 1964, I developed a pharmacologic launchpad consisting of a base of amphetamine (for general arousal), LSD (for hallucinogenic intensity), and a touch of cannabis (for a little added delirium).
About twenty minutes after taking this, I faced a white wall and exclaimed, āI want to see indigo nowānow!ā And then, as if thrown by a giant paintbrush, there appeared a huge, trembling, pear-shaped blob of the purest indigo. Luminous, numinous, it filled me with rapture: It was the color of heaven, the color, I thought, which Giotto had spent a lifetime trying to get but never achievedānever achieved, perhaps, because the color of heaven is not to be seen on earth. But it had existed once, I thoughtāit was the color of the Paleozoic sea, the color the ocean used to be. I leaned toward it in a sort of ecstasy. And then it suddenly disappeared, leaving me with an overwhelming sense of loss and sadness that it had been snatched away. But I consoled myself: Yes, indigo exists, and it can be conjured up in the brain.
For months afterward, I searched for indigo. I turned over little stones and rocks near my house, looking for it. I examined specimens of azurite in the natural history museumābut even they were infinitely far from the color I had seen.
And then, in 1965, when I had moved to New York, I went to a concert in the Egyptology gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the first half, a Monteverdi piece was performed, and I was utterly transported. I had taken no drugs, but I felt a glorious river of music, four hundred years long, flowing from Monteverdiās mind into my own. In this ecstatic mood, I wandered out during the intermission and looked at the ancient Egyptian objects on displayālapis lazuli amulets, jewelry, and so forthāand I was enchanted to see glints of indigo. I thought: Thank God, it really exists!
During the second half of the concert, I got a bit bored and restless, but I consoled myself, knowing that I could go out and take a āsipā of indigo afterward. It would be there, waiting for me. But when I went out to look at the gallery after the concert was finished, I could see only blue and purple and mauve and puceāno indigo. That was nearly fifty years ago, and I have never seen indigo again."
Jan 20, 2024
š
This eye test says the boundary I use to define the difference between green and blue is between hues 174 and 168 (I took it a few times), but Iām not really sure what that tells me. I guess itās just semanticā we could all see the same color but call it something different. I donāt think we have a way to actually prove if weĀ seeĀ things the same way.
When I was a kid my friend and I had a recurring conversation about the idea that we could be perceiving the world differently and not know it. We wondered about a scenario where two people agreed on the name of every color they saw, even though their eyes were showing their brains two different shades. For them, all colors would be relatively the same (like a color wheel spun some number of degrees clockwise, with the labels staying stationary), while the real truth would be undiscoverable.
But also, maybe the language we use actually changes our understating and experience of the colors. Like Orwellās idea that having a smaller vocabulary does not just limit your ability to describe the world, but limits your understanding too. Maybe turquoise isnāt green or blue. The ancient Greeks apparently did not have a regular word for āblueā. The Iliad describes āthe wine dark sea.ā But did they simply choose to group blue in with red/purple, or did they literally not see it as blue, either due to a biological difference in our eyes, or a psychological difference produced by language restrictions.
I donāt know, whatever. The blue I see is probably my favorite color.
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