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Colour Psychology > Biography
An Alternative Perspective
Once upon a time, long ago, there lived a little girl in the northern
region of England known today as Cumbria. This little girl saw the
colours of the "host of golden daffodils" and the bluebell-carpeted
woods in springtime, saw the rich red and purple, and the yellow
mellow fruitfulness all around her later in the year, and she marvelled.
Her spirits lifted and her soul sang.
But as she looked around at the many people who came and went every
day in her home, she pondered: "Mummy" she asked, "why
is that lady dressed in brown and grey?" "Why is everyone
wearing black this evening - I thought we were having a party?"
"Why do some of our honoured guests not like the bedrooms we
have given them - why do they all want the other ones?" Her
mother sighed, "I don't know, little one," she said, "but
we must learn from this and colour the bedrooms, and our whole house,
in ways that they all love."
When the little girl grew up, she went to live in the city. Everywhere
she looked was grey and she longed for the beauty of her native
landscape. Grey streets, grey buildings, grey skies - she remembered
that under grey winter skies at home there remained a myriad of
subtle colours - evergreen trees, a robin's breast, so many browns
in the sleeping earth. She did love the city, as it was full of
wonderful people and great excitement - yet here too the colours
people chose were drab. Nowhere she looked did she ever see any
of the citizens not wearing black. Was there some secret magic hidden
in this darkness? Their homes were the colours of the dairy - but
without the golden-brown cows or the rich yellow butter and cheese,
just milk and cream.
Then she travelled to a distant Island, where she stayed for two
years. Here the people's skin was rich, very dark and golden, and
their clothes were all colourful. They laughed and sang all day.
There was music everywhere and the millions of glorious blue and
green colours in the ocean and the pinks and reds of the flowers
- bougainvillea and hibiscus - were always there, with little variation
through the yearly cycle. They made her soul sing again. She saw
the connections between colour and music.
Still she asked everyone she met, "Why? How?" She knew,
from the depth of her heart, that colour made her soul sing, that
beautiful colour was the key to joy and beauty, to clear expression,
to harmonious lives, but no one could tell her how, or why. She
wanted to share the joy and make other souls sing. "I will
have to go to School again," she resolved. She asked the Schools:
"Can you teach me?"
"No," said the first School, "we can teach you the
mechanical processes of mixing colours, the art of proportion and
use of space. The teachers at the School on the other side of the
Divide can teach you the physical processes in your brain. But none
of us can teach you how to make souls sing, because every soul sings
a different song."
"Do you know how to make souls sing?" she begged of the
other School. "No" they replied, "every soul sings
a different song." "But there must be melodies we can
learn that create these songs!" she declared. They shook their
heads. "But what about connections?" she asked. "We
do not see connections - we are scientists and they are artists;
there are no connections between us."
She spent many years searching, studying the works of the doctors
- Dr Freud and Dr Jung, Dr Luscher and Dr Newton - and the philosophers,
Aristotle and Goethe, and many other great minds.
One day, she travelled to an even more distant Land and there she
met the Wise Lady. "Do you know the secret of how to make souls
sing?" she asked. "Yes my child." answered the Wise
Lady, "I know the secret, but I cannot share it with you -
you must find it for yourself." "Where will I find it?"
"It is there, inside you, but you will need to learn the art
of the artists and the science of the scientists and make the connections
yourself. The melodies you seek are in the connections."
"May I sit at your feet?" she asked the Wise Lady. "Oh
yes my child; work with me and you will find the harmony of colours,
and understand how my forbears in the City of Angels were able to
make souls sing."
The young woman worked with the Wise Lady and her soul sang. She
walked the shoreline of the mighty Pacific Ocean, delighting in
the millions of colours - in the pebbles, the wild shore plants,
the shells, the water; she wandered in the valleys, losing count
of the number of greens in the grass, of how many purples, reds,
blues, pinks, yellows she could find in the wild flowers. She noticed
that the green of the stems and leaves of every single flower were
exactly the right shade to enhance the colours of the petals. She
watched how living creatures responded to light and shade - to colours.
She visited huge canyons, whose rocks rose up to the sky, and marvelled
at the myriad of colours in each layer of their formation.
The Wise Lady took her to big buildings, to help people there who
wanted to sell more of their goods and wanted to impress their customers;
sometimes they wanted to dress all their workers in the same colour.
The Wise Lady and the young woman found the best colours for them
to do all of those things. "Will their souls sing?" she
would ask. "Oh yes - but they do not know that that is what
we are giving them."
When the time came for the young woman to return to her native
land, the Wise Lady gave her a beautiful glass that made everything
bigger and clearer, as she reminded her always to look very closely.
Then she went on:
"My child, you must remember many things and do not be discouraged:
Remember that the song of the daffodil does not harmonise with the
chrysanthemum's melody - these golden songs are different; the swallow
does not sing with the robin and a babbling brook cannot live with
ice. Be prepared to find many people in the world who think their
souls cannot sing and devote themselves to numbers. Do not talk
to them of the beauty of colour, but of its power to influence their
customers. There are those who see the power of colour to expose
the truth and they are afraid of it; they tell themselves that black
and grey are perfect colours for everything. Do not try to change
them, or you will frighten them even more; some of those people
will come to you of their own accord and ask you to help them to
find the song in their souls - only then should you offer them your
skill. There are those who are not comfortable if they cannot have
scientific, rational explanations for everything. Make sure that
you have made your connections well and understood the scientists'
wisdom.
Still some of them will not believe you, the ones who must always
look to other people's opinions. Take your connections to the leaders
of the Science Schools and tell them about them. Ask them to test
your connections rigorously and be prepared for them to dismiss
them. If that happens, you will know that your connections are not
complete and you must go away and work on them until they pass muster
with the most sceptical scientists. Only when you have the support
of the most eminent scientists in their field will these people
trust you.
Remember, you were not put on this earth to direct the path that
another should take. You are not here to convert the world and impose
your views on others. You might find that only one person ever truly
asks you for your skill. Be vigilant that you do not become bossy
and try to bully others into adopting what you see as the route
to harmony and joy. All you can do is show them the effects that
their colour choices will have, but you must let them make their
own decisions, from the information you have given them. You are
here to find your own soul's song and to guide and support anyone
else who asks for a helping hand; at the same time, you must constantly
seek guidance from others who are further along the same path. You
must never think you can stop learning.
If you remember all of this, you will be in a position to create
harmony in the world. Where there is the stress and strain of clashing
colours and conflicting messages, you will be able to bring order
and clarity. If you do as I do, and work with the people in the
big buildings, you will indirectly make many souls sing."
So the woman, no longer young, returned to her native land and
worked on her connections. She explored the mysteries of the printing
process, the dyeing process, the use of light colours - red, green
and blue - and she learned the strict science of colour. Many came
and asked her to help them to make their souls sing and her knowledge
grew, as she learned to use her beautiful glass to recognise and
interpret the myriad of colours in their eyes, the links between
eastern and western philosophies, the universal delight in some
colour combinations, the unpredictable nature of individual colours
and the invalidity of many colour myths. She understood how colour
behaves completely differently in all the different ways that humanity
tries to harness it in order to recreate Nature's bountiful gift.
After many years, she took her connections to the leaders of the
Science Schools. They welcomed her and willingly tested her connections
- and found that those connections held true under the scrutiny
of their most brilliant minds.
Meanwhile, a new creature had been born - it was called CAD. It
had a child, called CADCAM. Art and Science began to reunite as
they both greeted this wondrous new creature and adopted it; the
Divide began to disappear. The woman realised that she too must
adopt this new creature and she asked the Science teachers if her
connections could be made into a tool that would help artists to
use science, and still make souls sing. "Yes!" they said.
They were true to their word.
Another new creature had also been born; this one was called The
Internet. It had huge tentacles and it was possible for it to touch
millions of people, right across the world, in seconds.
Suddenly, in the middle of this scientific explosion, the people
in the big buildings began to talk about the need to make their
workers' souls sing. They recognised that lives must consist of
more than just numbers, more than scientific rationalisation. They
began to search for harmony and balance.
The woman was happy and her soul sang.
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