word doc on my computer
Think first of the feeling of being at the center of a color; it's a room full of light, and the edges dissolve. When you look into a can of paint you see how it will spread. It contains a potential world. The skin of a world.
To care about a color is to admit that our environment affects us. We dog through the streets, turning up our collars against the dripping eaves, rowing our way against the stares of grimy loafers hunching below awnings. But when we have the opportunity to dictate a space, we think of every small way it might change us. This is too blue; i'll get sad. Yellow? Yellow will make me crazy!
To care about paint is also to admit that we can be fooled by our vision. We rarely buy a gallon based only on a sample; we know that when spread, the color will seem to change.
Paint is a symbol for change:
When I want to paint a room it is because I do not like it as it is.
When I want to paint a room, I think I have the agency to affect it.
it is a symbol of completion: the last step in the construction job.
Even if I paint a room the EXACT hue/tone/binder/consist of the previous job, the very act of painting it is...
+ an act of covering over
+ an act of love--I literally pet, smother, caress the walls with the roller.
+ an act of hate--I want the old walls to dissolve. I think I know better.
+ AN ACT OF POSSESSION: I make the room my own (esp when i move into a new apartment).
Why does paint have the reputation of a woman's domain?
+ "ladies like decorating" -- we don't build the houses, we make them inhabitable (we cover our husband's failures; we brocade the poor quality pillows his salary can afford)
+ think of french gendering of terms: what is flat is female, what juts out is male. This is the soft caress, the unsubstantial flatness that can only be permeated.
+ we are the ones who are stuck here. we are the ones who will suffer in these rooms.
I watch the faces of the people on the street and on the trains and I wonder what their rooms look like. When I wonder about their rooms, about their houses, I visualize first a sort of quality of light; a quality of color on the walls the light reflects from. A man with a warm face, is his room a burnt sienna, an orange honeyed with light? Do you live in a white square? Do you die there? The colors are so much of what matters.
To care about a color is to admit that our environment affects us. We dog through the streets, turning up our collars against the dripping eaves, rowing our way against the stares of grimy loafers hunching below awnings. But when we have the opportunity to dictate a space, we think of every small way it might change us. This is too blue; i'll get sad. Yellow? Yellow will make me crazy!
To care about paint is also to admit that we can be fooled by our vision. We rarely buy a gallon based only on a sample; we know that when spread, the color will seem to change.
Paint is a symbol for change:
When I want to paint a room it is because I do not like it as it is.
When I want to paint a room, I think I have the agency to affect it.
it is a symbol of completion: the last step in the construction job.
Even if I paint a room the EXACT hue/tone/binder/consist of the previous job, the very act of painting it is...
+ an act of covering over
+ an act of love--I literally pet, smother, caress the walls with the roller.
+ an act of hate--I want the old walls to dissolve. I think I know better.
+ AN ACT OF POSSESSION: I make the room my own (esp when i move into a new apartment).
Why does paint have the reputation of a woman's domain?
+ "ladies like decorating" -- we don't build the houses, we make them inhabitable (we cover our husband's failures; we brocade the poor quality pillows his salary can afford)
+ think of french gendering of terms: what is flat is female, what juts out is male. This is the soft caress, the unsubstantial flatness that can only be permeated.
+ we are the ones who are stuck here. we are the ones who will suffer in these rooms.
I watch the faces of the people on the street and on the trains and I wonder what their rooms look like. When I wonder about their rooms, about their houses, I visualize first a sort of quality of light; a quality of color on the walls the light reflects from. A man with a warm face, is his room a burnt sienna, an orange honeyed with light? Do you live in a white square? Do you die there? The colors are so much of what matters.
posted by AQ at 15:33
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