Cerulean blue
December 7th, 2004It was important to me, at a young age, to have a favorite color. Like most young children, I labored under the belief that I was unique. As such, I found unsatisfying the idea that my favorite color was primary, and shared by millions of other children. If someone else liked “blue,” and I did not like that someone else, it created cognitive dissonance.
Moreover, I felt that having a broadly defined color, say “red” was completely unsatisfactory. I might, for example (and this is marginally true) adore the red of a variety of chili peppers, but despise the red of most tomatoes. “Red” conveyed far too broad a category.
Luckily, when I was eight or nine, I got to see the Imax film To Fly at the National Air and Space Museum. I have no doubt that I was affected by the visceral thrill of flight provided by the film, and by the fact that I was already on a high by being at NASM, one of my favorite places in the world at the time. But that experience defined for me my favorite color: cerulean blue.
Cerulean blue, throughout its range, remains one of my favorite colors, especially when imbued with a certain level of luminosity. The ceiling (cielo?) of The Venetian Resort still takes my breath away. But over time, I realize that I have few favorites. I have things I like to do, objects that make me happy, but the context means that color is only an ingredient that can be mixed in many ways. I like certain blue skies, but I wouldn’t want a jacket of the same color, I don’t think. And in that, I think I am probably exactly like most other people.
April 4th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
Dude, cerulean blue was MY favorite color too! I always had to have that crayon and I hated to let other people use it… Anyway…
December 5th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
[...] Anyway, the contrast was obvious on the trip. Regular readers will recall that I am a fan of cerulean blue. At the museum, we walked by the Yves Klein’s Blue Monochrome, which is, um, kinda abstract. But it’s a good blue. On the other hand, they have just repainted the doors in the building where we live. They used to be a deep green: not exactly radical, but acceptable. They are now roughly the color pictured here, or about #8D8D77, though a photograph cannot do the color justice. One of the other inmates referred to it as “somewhere between pea green and bilious.” [...]