CASUAL COMMENTS

Evening Star, Issue 19782, 4 February 1928, Page 2

CASUAL COMMENTS

COLORS [By Leo Fanning.] Colors of gardens and deserts, colors of sea and sky, colors of people, animals, and birds, colors of national Mags, colors of food and drink —what leasts of countless colors for the world’s gaze! In most souls music makes more stir than color does, but critics are leaning on color to give their impressions of music. However, they do not venture further than the bare word “ color or “ colorful.” They do not write of a pink pianissimo or a darkdbrown bravura, or a dove-grey upper register.

Some scientists say that a peacock has no sense of color, and that all colors are as one, a kind of orange, to birds which are active by day. Is not that assertion nonsensical? Anybody who has ever seen a peacock strut with liis widespread flare of rainbow hues knows that the bird has a full sense of his color scheme, and a bursting pride of his brilliance. “ The wonderful evolution of plumage in many species of birds is evidence surely that they are probably more color-conscious _ than other creatures are. They think in colors, dream in colors, and the colors come. They woo in colors. “In the spring a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove!” What an old humbug Dame Nature would be if, after all the beautiful flashing of the suitor’s raiment, the hens saw them all simply as absurdities in orange!

It is an interval at tiro big picture theatre. The “ flapper’s ” heart has been wrought to the right wave-lengths of flutter by one of the all-super-star extra-ultra-dramas. The ruby of her cupid-bow lips has mingled glightly with the rich brown of chocolates, which she cheweth assiduously until she suddenly exclaims, “How corker!” A man with a magic lantern is spraying the plushy stage curtain with colors—many tones of violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. To the man it is just part of a job, at so much an hour—certain slides to move in and out and about. Probably he is bored, for he has been doing the same thing night after night for weeks. Yet it is like a colorful presentment of music or a wonderful poem of high romance. The flapper’s chocolate remains half-chewed; her soul has flown for a while to another world. Other souls have gone with her; the colors have somehow lifted the people out of themselves into forgotten fairylands of childhood’s day, when the world was young and real. B * * ¥ Perhaps similar colors in a sunset or in a glowing garden would not have put a spell on most of those people. The lovely little flapper might ejaculate “How stunning,” but she would not cease chewing the chocolate or the roast peanut. « * * v Has anybody written a book yet about colors of food? A well-known New Zealand journalist—now the editor of a city paper—used to wonder why there was no natural blue food. The Jblue cod is, of course, white under his rough skin (which is not blue), and the blueberry (if there is such a berry) is probably not blue at all. There is green food (such as greengages, loud cheese, and ripe game), yellow food, red food, white food, brown food—also burnt sienna, terracotta, amethyst, and lapis lazuli, but where does the blue abound ? Perhaps that is a wise precaution of Nature. Plenty of people are blue enough already without blue food to make life look more blotchy and mouldy. * * * * To some, meu the loveliest colors in the world are the V warm brbfvhst of roast beef and ale. The joy of others is in the pinkincss or rosiness of the undercut and the tawny tones of whisky. One way and another the colors cf food and drink give many thrills, and also some sadness. Is there any more depressing view than the pallor of an under-done pic? m * * * Women are doing their part in putting color into life. When this commentator was a small hoy, paleness was fashionable, and it was said that some girls ato raw starch to-drive the rose of health from their cheeks. The rose lias come into its own again and if Nature is niggardly with her pigment a little art can make up for the meanness. However, that kind of coloring is just a detail. Women s grand contribution to the world’s color is in her splendor of dress, which emphasises the drabness of men’s sacks and tubes of tweed. But why does not the gay color of women’s kilts glide into the stockings? How many more moons are the hues of the oyster, Ihe biscuit, and the sardine to persist? Womans meek acceptance of colorless stockings year after year is a big surprise to men. * ♦ ¥ * lu the sombre array of men’s dress—the same old soft felt hat (with the rare variation of the black bowler known as a “bun”), and the dun orreys and browns and nondescript tones of suits—the saddest spectacle is the outfit of the clergy. Why? Does not their black raiment suggest a perpetual state of mourning for the world s sms and a chronic pessimism? Of course the terrible blackness and gnmness are merely conventional, but why does not some high dignitary break away from the conventions and set a good example in an attire of inspiring colors? One feels sure that the curate’s_ chat in the street would go better with sky-blue than with the blackness of a coal pit. nr * * * The outward blackness of the clergy, in such queer contrast with the whiteness of their n essage to humanity, is a reminder of that appalling all-black uniform of New Zealand’s representative Rugby teams. When a tired journalist casually applied the term ah blacks” to our football braves, he wrought worse than he thought. There I are dear old ladies and gentlemen in the British Isles—plenty of them—who do not go to football grounds, but have a notion that New Zealand sends s, team of black men to the Mothei Country. •** * . . Who was the bright-minded ; being to whom black occurred as a fitting emblem of New Zealand—the isles of the fadeless forests, the sparkling ■waterfalls, the blue lakes, the sunnyskies? Why has New Zealand been so beefily sluggish and unimaginative as to retain that muddled person’s mistake? Or did a committee do it? The word black, too, sounds like a bleat of despair. The silver fern gleams on the black as the white skull and bones did on the pirates’ “Jolly Roger.” That fern looks like an electroplated skeleton of the real green frond. Is that blackness to be suffered for ever? Cannot somebody do something about it before the footballers take ship for South Africa? Are all the deputations dead? Doth the Government turn_a wall eye to the horror? Meanwhile the silly all-blackness has been copied by “ soccer ” teams, rowing crews, and other representatives of New Zealand. * * * ¥ Other colors have taken so much space that- there is only enoqgh_ left for a bare mention of “political color.” Anyhow, it is said that there is not: much political color ”ih _New Zealand these days. _ Also “ political color”—what there is of it—is ns vague as the color of music or * the fi&K fflf B&SPJU ■