Some of the most brilliantly blue things in nature don't have a single speck of blue pigment: http://t.co/tYTVRzui8J pic.twitter.com/owQjRwLmQQ
— NPR News (@nprnews) November 12, 2014
Let me begin by saying, "I love the color blue."
I love the way that sunlight reflects off of it when it's iridescent and shape- and shade-shifting and found in glass, bugs wings, bird feathers, or people's eyes. I love the way that it sucks in light when it is thick and gooey and found in a dark oil pastel stick, an Eastern Blue Bird's back as it whips past my line of vision in a blur, or in the sky just after dusk and just before night as the stars begin to peek out and wink. I love the way that it cools the air and soothes the eye when it's serene or frothy and found at the bottom of a billowy, summer cloud promising rain; riding on the top of a crystal clear ocean wave bringing bubbles to pop against my legs in the surf; or painted on the ceiling of a southern front porch to ward off stifling humidity. I love glimpses of it. I love gazing at it. I love dreaming in it. Blue.
From Wikipedia, "Blue is the colour of the clear sky and the deep sea.[2][3] It is located between violet and green on the optical spectrum.[4]
Surveys in the U.S. and Europe show that blue is the colour most commonly associated with harmony, faithfulness, confidence, distance, infinity, the imagination, cold, and sometimes with sadness.[5] In U.S. and European public opinion polls it is overwhelmingly the most popular colour, chosen by almost half of both men and women as their favourite colour.[5]"
When I was heading across the Sahara in late 1988, we stopped in a village at an oasis in south central Algeria for a few days. At the time, Director Bernardo Bertolucci was filming The Sheltering Sky starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich there. They had hired about 50 or so Tuareg men to storm down the side of a dune from a fort. I believe they were riding camels or horses. Can't remember now which. At any rate, I will never forget how the sun reflected off the sand, bouncing off of every surface it touched except, it seemed, the Tuareg clothing. Their clothing is dyed with indigo, an indigo stains everything it touches. Their cheeks just in front of their ears were darker, more blue than the rest of their skin...their arms, around their necks. It was the reverse of a sunburn. It was an indigo-burn, and it was beautiful.
Some days I find the memory of a Berber/Tuareg blue outlined against a clear sky popping into my head at the oddest moments. On November 12th, it was a tweet from National Public Radio. Who would have ever thought that a social media tool utilizing less than 144 characters sending out an image of a bird, beetle, butterfly, and eyeball from a story published via a radio show would have brought back a memory of light and color from over twenty-five years ago?
This, my friends, is what technology and creativity and the mind gives you.
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