Green, green

[shewhomust]

Today's offering from the estimable Quotation of the Day mailing list:

Alexander Scriabin was synaesthetic, which meant his brain made connections between things that the majority of people do not believe to be fundamentally connected. Synaesthesia can take several forms (people can see colors in pain, or in letters or the alphabet); Scriabin "saw" music and "heard" colors. The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius had the same gift. "What color would you like your stove, Mr. Sibelius?" he was once asked. "F Major," he said vaguely. So it was duly painted green."

- Victoria Finlay, from Color: A Natural History of the Palette

One of my favourite pieces of Alan Moore's minor work is In Blackest Night, in which a recruiter for the Green Lantern Corps is faced with the challenge of interpreting the Corps' emblem and ethos to the inhabitant of a lightless, sightless world where neither 'green' nor 'lantern' has any meaning. Inspired, she asks "What sort of pitch sounds soothing and restful to you?", and rapidly composes an aural version of the famous oath:

In loudest din or hush profound
My ears catch evil's slightest sound.
Let those who toll out evil's knell
Beware my power: the F-sharp bell!

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Have you read Victoria Finlay's book? I love it - both the style and the subject matter. I'm currently engaged in reading it aloud for a friend who has physical problems with reading herself, and I'm finding it a very rewarding way to read it.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

No, this was the first I knew of it - but I like the turn of her phrase!

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

It's a history of pigments, a travelogue, and a memoir all rolled into an idiosyncratic whole.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love this sort of thing.

Nine