The color BLUE in casual conversation with the OCEAN and the SKY
list of characters in order of appearance
BLUE the color blue as a middle-aged talk show host
OCEAN the ocean as themselves
SKY the sky as themselves
[scene sets in a popular talkshow, the lighting is dim and intimate, the audience is sitting in gloomy darkness, the brightest lights are focused on the center of the stage, three comfy seats accommodate the host and the two guests, who have already taken their place, the cameras roll, the director signals the host, they are ready, the camera zooms in, 3, 2, 1, aaaaaand action]
BLUE Hello and welcome! Thanks for tuning in again, I am your host tonight, as usual. Interesting story to start off the show; I met with a fortune teller last week and they told me that the majority of humanity states, when asked, that I am their favorite color. [a bit louder and over-acted, impersonating Sally Field {1}] They like me, they really, really like me!
[dramatic pause] But who knows if this is even true?
Still, I am simply everywhere—for instance in the OCEAN and the SKY, and that’s why I invited them today, [sneaky pause] to talk about myself. Let me introduce them. The OCEAN is a vast and melancholic yet underestimated entity, a misunderstood liquid body that in all attempts can never be measured fully in how much space they occupy. Welcome OCEAN.
OCEAN [nods, and tries their best to form a reserved but friendly smile] Thanks for having me!
BLUE And my second guest is an undefined and transparent, yet ever-present entity, a gas vital to the earth’s survival, but is never credited enough. Is it the ether? Is it the atmosphere? Is it heaven? [points towards SKY] No, it is the SKY! Welcome.
SKY [attempts to bow as it is a common gesture among gases] I’m vegan, ha ha! {2}
BLUE [a little irritated, tries not to laugh] O-okay, thanks for letting us know.
I am very exited to chat with you tonight and I have a tickling urge to know something! You are both metaphorically overused in poetry. What is your opinion on that?
OCEAN [grumpy and seemingly entangled in confusing thoughts] Yeah… well… I hate it! I mean, what is so interesting about me? It feels like everyone knows me, even though not everyone has seen me. To me it seems very intrusive to assume anything about me, right?
SKY [speaking with a childish smirk on their face] I have to be honest with you BLUE, I kind of like it. I feel—how do humans call it?—kinda famous! I love that humans are able to project their thoughts into me! But also, I believe that they only like me, when I am blue. But then, they say [forms quotation marks while speaking] »I am feeling blue« when they are down, but I am so clearly not down, have you ever looked down at me?!
OCEAN [proudly] Well, I never did!
SKY [kind of over it] Ugh, I just don’t get humans.
BLUE Mhm, humans, am I right? [thought pause] I also really don’t get the »I am feeling blue«-thing. Because of this I became the color associated with depression and sadness. [ironically] Thank you so much.
I consist of many many shades and inherit so many meanings, as do both of you, but how is it that we are still always stereotyped? The German poet Kurt Marti writes, that one can get happily drunk of the blue color of the sky. {3} Isn’t that weird? And why is it, that the blue sky is associated with happiness, but feeling blue means being depressed?
SKY To be honest, I don’t get it. I think, people just like to stare at me a lot. I think this is kind of rude, staring at me like that, but it seems to help them think, and then they associate their thoughts with what they see at the time they were thinking them.
[pauses to sort their thoughts] Like, how come, humans need to label things? Why do they have to assign meaning to a color? I think that is not helpful at all—putting things into perfectly sorted categories that everything and everyone has to adjust to. Because of that I feel only valuable to humans when I am blue.
OCEAN Oh yeah, but isn’t that adorable? Humans assigning value to us or trying to recognize patterns in us?
BLUE Oh yeah! Speaking of that, what is your favorite cloud formation, SKY?
SKY I personally like producing cirrocumulus. {4} Humans sometimes call them »sheep clouds« and they tend to see shapes in them! It almost feels like I am drawing for them! Sometimes I sneak some shapes in there, that communicate the meaning of life. But I don’t think they ever get it… Well, some of them do, but no-one else believes them.
BLUE [laughing] That’s genius!
Thinking about you, OCEAN, you take up 71% of the earths surface, still humans seem to have intimacy issues with you, right? As if they wouldn’t know you!
OCEAN Yes! [giggles nervously, sighs, becomes kinda sad] I… I don’t know why though. I feel Rebecca Solnit didn’t even try to get to know me when she wrote »A Short History of Silence.« There, she states, that the unheard are [forms quotation marks] »hidden« underneath the surface of the [forms quotation marks] »ocean of silence« or something like that. {5} I guess, I understand that way of thinking, but it makes me sad to know that I am seen as a body full of suppressed voices. But I do like her using me as metaphor in feminist literature…
SKY [interrupts, loudly] SMASH THE PATRIARCHY!
[OCEAN seems startled by the loudness of SKY’s voice]
BLUE [tries (not very successfully) to calm the situation] I wouldn’t go that far! It is not all bad, right? I mean some standards are good to have, so everyone is clear on what role to fulfill in their life?
OCEAN You are just saying that, because you are nowadays associated with masculinity, {6} which basically means winning the gender-power-lottery!
SKY [laughs] Yeah, and then imagine BLUE being white too! [impersonating Chandler {7}] Could you be more privileged?
[OCEAN and SKY burst into laughter, BLUE displays their resting bitch face]
BLUE Come on, you have to admit, that smashing the patriarchy will just add to more violence and disruption in the world that humans encounter today, right?
SKY I have the immediate urge to quote Audre Lorde now, and say that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house! {8}
OCEAN I agree! I am wondering… BLUE, as a talk show host, should you even have an opinion?
BLUE [answers maybe a bit too fast and rehearsed, not showing remorse or reflection] You are right, of course, the patriarchy is the root of all evil. [quickly changes the topic] But poets never explicitly write about it, no? However they kind of love to use the phrase »where the sky touches the ocean.« What do you think about that? I mean do you even touch? Ever?
OCEAN [feels uncomfortable] Isn’t that a very personal question?
SKY Come on, OCEAN, don’t be like that! [short pause to rolls eyes at OCEAN] I can explain that… remember the scene in the Bible where God creates Eve out of Adam’s rib? It says »she shall be called Woman, for she was taken out of Man«{9} I guess it is an analogy that you can transfer to the two of us.
BLUE But, wait a second, isn’t that quote kind of weird? And also, that does not really answer my question… does it?
SKY Exactly…
BLUE [hesitantly] Erm… Ok, I think this will remain a myth then… [gets an idea, continues in a sneaky tone] Maybe you can tell me something about your origin story; who existed first?
SKY [annoyed] Can I quote the Bible again? It says; [impersonates a preacher] »God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky.« {10} So if you believe in the words of the Bible, I was clearly created first!
Because then, in the Bible, God continues to create land and gather the waters which he then calls »Seas.« [triumphantly] So I was first! I win!
OCEAN Ugh, of course you are quoting the Bible again, SKY, but only when it suits your interests. I don’t believe in this fairytale nonsense that humans made up. And also, if I did, I was already there from the beginning, I didn’t just start existing when God named me, right?
SKY [obviously enjoys sharing gossip] Oh that reminds me; BLUE, did you know, that in some cultures they don’t even have a name for you? And scientist believe that humans were not able to see you until modern times, because they did not find any proof of them using the name BLUE? {11}
OCEAN Oh yeah true, like, for example Homer describes me as »wine-dark« in the Odyssey! {11}
BLUE [confused] Really? [sad pause] Thats news to me… in my memory I always existed… I cannot think of times, I wasn’t there. [seems to become smaller every second] weird… [entangled thoughts are shaping in their mind] So… were humans unable to see me, because they did not have a name for me, or could they really not see me at all, or did I not even exist at all??
[OCEAN and SKY look at each other, they are now both a bit uncomfortable for sharing such distressing news and remain silent]
BLUE [starts to tear up a little, but still tries to keep it together] I don’t know what to think about humanity anymore… [sobs, tries to form a friendly smile, but they just looks creepy, like a kid hiding their braces, BLUE looks directly into the camera] We will be right back, after this!
[aaaand cut, camera zooms out, the whole studio is in the frame, BLUE is rushing off the stage crying, leaving their guests on the set in awkward silence]
{1} The famous words »You like me, you really like me!« are attributed to Sally Field’s 1985 Academy Award acceptance speech, when in fact she said, »I can’t deny the fact that you like me right now, you like me.« This phenomenon of false collective memory is called the Mandela Effect, and it is explained either by the event to have happened in a parallel universe, or through memory manipulation by aliens or governments, or our brain is simply playing a trick on us.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCnPEwvtwmY & https://dermandelaeffekt.de/
{2} Not a joke, just a fact; I borrowed those words from Bimini Bon Boulash, a drag queen from East London, who inspired the character of SKY. 2021 Bimini entered the werkroom of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK with the now famous words »I’m vegan, haha!«
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD5c3PabLvU
{3} Marti, Kurt. »blauer himmel« (1987) in Blaue Gedichte, Reclam. 2012:
glücklich
die ihr betrunken sein könnt
vom blau des himmels
möge der rauschtrank
nie mangeln
und süffig
ein leuchtvorrat
auch unter finstergewölk
aus schuh und angel
euch heben
trinkt blau
trinkt nicht kummer!
{4} Cirrocumuli are thin, white patches, fields, or layers of clouds with no shadow of their own, consisting of very small, granular, ribbed (small sheep clouds), or similar-looking cloud particles that are intergrown or isolated and arranged in a more or less regular fashion.
www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/clouds/high-clouds/cirrocumulus
{5} Solnit, Rebecca. »A Short History of Silence« in The Mother of All Questions. 2017. 18: »Silence is the ocean of the unsaid, the unspeakable, the repressed, the erased, the unheard. It surrounds the scattered islands made up of those allowed to speak and of what can be said and who listens. Silence occurs in many ways for many reasons; each of us has his or her own sea of unspoken words.«
{6} Before the 20th century, color was not associated with gender, babies simply wore white, since it is easy to bleach. In the beginning of the 20th century, the color blue was coined as feminine, being the color that Mary wore in Christian paintings, whereas the color pink was seen as masculine, being a relative to the color red, which was deemed as strong and powerful.
Ultimately the binary gender colors where switched and assigned the way we are used to them today. This is attributed to the rise of gender-specific advertisement 1940s and 50s and to the celebratory act of knowing a baby’s gender before birth in the 80s.
www.genderspectrum.weebly.com/the-history-of-pink-and-blue.html
{7} Chandler Bings is one of the main characters from the TV show »friends,« who impersonates a privileged white male with self-depricating humor. His catchphrase on the show is, »Could you be more [insert word]« with a strong emphasis on the word »be.«
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqyBtWIZTkI
{8} Lorde, Audre. »The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.« (1984) in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. 2007. 110–114: »What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow parameters of change are possible and allowable. […] [Survival] is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.«
{9} The Holy Bible, NIV. Gen. 2:23-25: »The man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.«
{10} The Holy Bible, NIV. Gen. 1:6–10: »And God said, Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault sky. And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. And it was so. God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good.«
{11} Humans are capable of seeing around 1 million colors. But until the 1800s there is no real evidence of humans perceiving the color blue. In the Odyssey the ocean is describes in strange hues, but never with the word blue.
In 2006 Jules Davidoff conducted a study with the Himba tribe of Namibia. In their language there is no word for blue and no real distinction between green and blue. He showed them, 11 green squares and one blue square. The Himba tribe struggled to tell which square was a different color. But they have lots more words for green than the English language does. So Davidoff reversed the experiment and showed 11 squares of one green and one of a different shade to English speakers, who could barely spot the difference. The Himba tribe on the other hand could spot the odd square immediately.
www.sciencealert.com/humans-didn-t-see-the-colour-blue-until-modern-times-evidence-science
