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The wrong picture confuses, the right picture helps
Even without being Derek Jarman, I can see how it would be almost irresistible to make a film after reading Wittgenstein's Remarks on Colour (1950—1951), because it is full of statements like this:
Would we say that my fictitious glass pane in the cinema gave the things behind it a white colouring?
There is gold paint, but Rembrandt didn't use it to paint a golden helmet.
Imagine we were told that a substance burns with a grey flame.
I doubt that Goethe's remarks about the characters of the colours could be of any use to a painter. They could hardly be any to a decorator.
What advantage would someone have over me who knew a direct route from blue to yellow?
There is no such thing as luminous grey. Is that part of the concept of grey, or part of the psychology, i.e. the natural history, of grey? And isn't it odd that I don't know?
Darkness is not called a colour.
The difference between black and, say, a dark violet is similar to the difference between the sound of a bass drum and the sound of a kettle-drum.
I treat colour concepts like the concepts of sensations.
Look at your room late in the evening when you can hardly distinguish between colours any longer; and now turn on the light and paint what you saw in the twilight.
Do I actually see the boy's hair blond in the photograph?! —Do I see it grey?
White cancels out all colors,—does red do this too?
We might say, the colour of the ghost is that which I must mix on the palette in order to paint it accurately. But how do we determine what the accurate picture is?
Why is green drowned in the black, while white isn't?
—But couldn't Martians say something like this? Somehow, by chance, the first humans they met were blind.
That's a fraction of the text I typed out for reference later. It's like a book of prompts. Next up: read Jarman's Chroma (1993), wait for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks to read them both, and then we watch Wittgenstein again. You can see, in this material, where some of the film came from. I want to know what else I've missed.
Would we say that my fictitious glass pane in the cinema gave the things behind it a white colouring?
There is gold paint, but Rembrandt didn't use it to paint a golden helmet.
Imagine we were told that a substance burns with a grey flame.
I doubt that Goethe's remarks about the characters of the colours could be of any use to a painter. They could hardly be any to a decorator.
What advantage would someone have over me who knew a direct route from blue to yellow?
There is no such thing as luminous grey. Is that part of the concept of grey, or part of the psychology, i.e. the natural history, of grey? And isn't it odd that I don't know?
Darkness is not called a colour.
The difference between black and, say, a dark violet is similar to the difference between the sound of a bass drum and the sound of a kettle-drum.
I treat colour concepts like the concepts of sensations.
Look at your room late in the evening when you can hardly distinguish between colours any longer; and now turn on the light and paint what you saw in the twilight.
Do I actually see the boy's hair blond in the photograph?! —Do I see it grey?
White cancels out all colors,—does red do this too?
We might say, the colour of the ghost is that which I must mix on the palette in order to paint it accurately. But how do we determine what the accurate picture is?
Why is green drowned in the black, while white isn't?
—But couldn't Martians say something like this? Somehow, by chance, the first humans they met were blind.
That's a fraction of the text I typed out for reference later. It's like a book of prompts. Next up: read Jarman's Chroma (1993), wait for
rushthatspeaks to read them both, and then we watch Wittgenstein again. You can see, in this material, where some of the film came from. I want to know what else I've missed.
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The remainder of this comment is censored.
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Just make sure to tell me what you find out . . .
The remainder of this comment is censored.
Fuck the Hays Code, I love you so.
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the sky in certain times and places, mostly in Ireland
a grey t-shirt on my girlfriend in high school, especially on one particular day
a similar t-shirt on her best friend, the one who wanted to watch us kissing
certain black and white photographs, particularly some shot and printed in the 1930s
...
But I'm sure he's talking about something more complicated.
I love the idea of a grey flame.
Darkness is not called a colour.
For some reason I'm thinking of Gene Wolfe's fuligin, the colour darker than black. I first read The Shadow of the Torturer at maybe twelve or thirteen years of age, and have ever since wanted a fuligin cloak.
The difference between black and, say, a dark violet is similar to the difference between the sound of a bass drum and the sound of a kettle-drum.
I can't help but think of Ask a Ninja, specifically the segment where the Ninja explains that we non-ninja viewers might think we have black clothes, but these are really only "very dark green or red" because the only _true_ black dye is found "in the heart of a dragon," which ninja must kill in order to make their uniforms.
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What advantage would someone have over me who knew a direct route from blue to yellow?
I can imagine a map, or a poem, for this. Or an adventure.
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Yes. The last lines of the Tractatus are:
Meine Sätze erläutern dadurch, dass sie der, welcher mich versteht, am Ende als unsinnig erkennt, wenn er durch sie—auf ihnen—über sie hinausgestiegen ist. (Er muss sozusagen die Leiter wegwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr hinaufgestiegen ist.)
Er muss diese Sätze überwinden, dann sieht er die Welt richtig.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)
He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
(trans. C.K. Ogden, 1922)
He died right before it would really have been possible, but I think Zen would have made sense to Wittgenstein.
I can imagine a map, or a poem, for this. Or an adventure.
I think that would be wonderful.
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I don't know anyone who agrees with Wittgeinstein about grey, including me! I have seen many luminous grey things, such as skies and seas and movies. Seriously, I wonder whether it had to do with synaesthesia, which is suggested by his comparison of colors and sounds or colors and sensations. Snarkily, one of my favorite biographical facts about him is that he loved Technicolor musicals.