Watching a film earlier today with an additional audio descript soundtrack; my son asked me
What does blue look like if you can’t see?
A question that made me think, I asked him what he thinks of when he thinks of the colour blue, to me it is the sky, the sea and swimming pools.
But mum, what if you had never seen before? What would blue look like?
And so I decided to write this post, I couldn’t answer my sons questions; but I have told him I will, I just need to do a little research first !!
For as long as the written word has existed there have been ways of evoking images from it.
Abjectives, Verbs, Nouns, connotation, yet these all rely on you knowing what such objects look like. In my research of this subject I have found something, something that was buried at the back of my brain with all of my other Secondary Educational learnings; Pathetic fallacy – where the weather in the story or written word mirrors the emotion of the scene or the people in it. For example, when it is very hot the characters are agitated or when it is foggy, mystery is evoked. This is used to adds atmosphere to the writing and gives clues to the reader as to what is to come, especially if the weather is described before the event. Just as many horror movies occur on dark stormy nights.
Do you need to know what weather looks like to understand it?
No, as someone who enjoys every type of weather and the changing seasons this is one element of life that I can use my other senses to understand. Weather can be truly ‘FELT’ the hot sun on my skin, the drizzly rain, the north-easterly breeze. Fog comes with the additional sounds of fog horns (living on this coast these can be heard miles in land) Mist gives a dampness to the air that isn’t present when it rains, morning dew has a smell to it, a storm too can have its very own smell and it’s not just thunder that makes a noise.
Weather can’t explain colour or shape though, although it works very well for emotion.
So, I am back at the beginning.
How would you describe the colour blue? Without using the word, what does blue look like?
I have had sight and I have been fortunate to be able to see and remember colours, images, items.
Even though now my perception of colour is greatly altered, I can only really see the difference between orange and red when they are together and everything I see has a kind of haze or veil over it, so isn’t as vivid or true as it once were.
My hunt for answering my sons questions will continue, but for now; humour me?
Please reply to this blog post with your description of the colour blue.
No judgement will be passed, no humiliation with be sort. Just an intriguing mind looking for help.
Thank You x
