Today we are showcasing guest writer Roger Higgins. Roger lives in Australia, and drops by once a year (or so) to share a Thursday session and some fine words!
In the seven-colour scientific spectrum, lilac doesn’t
actually exist. So let’s assume, for the sake of an assumption, that lilac is
the collaborative offspring of a honey bee and interior designer of the late Paleolithic
era. After all, lilac has been around for quite a while, as a flower and a
colour, even though it is not on the colour spectrum officially.
Lilac appears
as highlights on the roof and walls of Chauvet caves in France, where the first
evidence of abstract creative art is to be found. The honey bee we can quickly dispense with –
a bee is a bee is a bee. It is the interior designer who is really interesting.
I suspect he (gotta be a “he”) was not too expert at hunting mammoths or wild
cats, as was assigned other tasks as a young man. I believe his name was Gavin.
Gavin’s job was to manage colour – from
the deep red of uncooked mammoth steaks, to the incandescent orange of the
fire, the tawny brown of the loin cloths, the blue reflected in small
waterholes, all the way to lilac, which he learned not to over-do – just a few
streaks around the fingers of the ochre hand print on the wall, and around the
eyes of the two-dimensional ox that he drew in the sleeping alcove. Gavin liked
lilac, which he saw in the lupines and the delicate namesake flower which grew
at the base of the scree slops of the hills that sheltered the encampment. But the tribe has no use for cut flowers in
the cave. Lilac became Gavin’s signature, mixed from some deep purple and white
clays in the stream bed to create the colour of the flowers, and to unburden
the somber, smoke-stained interiors. And
so interior design theme colours were born, and in some studios in NYC and
Paris, there is a style that is immediately recognized by professional designers
– it is called the Gavinesque.
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