- Halla: Like the elation of dancing to exhaustion and the warmth of close bodies on a crisp night.
- Dimenoir: Like the fading memory of a dream and bittersweet reminiscences.
- Inflaur: Like the compulsion to pick at blisters and the guilty pleasures found in an unjust world.
- Psinreka: Like novel sensations and the fleeting satisfaction of solutions.
- Gallentia: Like an uncanny presence and unshakable thoughts of unanswered questions.
- Iskandalia: Like the awe of collective greatness and the validation in unexpected gestures of love.
Wrote these on the flight home from San Francisco, inspired by the colors in A Voyage to Arcturus which I started reading on the flight. The names were free associated and I tried not to overthink them.
And here are several more contributed by Rook, of Beneath Foreign Planets:
7. Pinznot: A writhing, squamous colour that stings the eyes. Like struggling to sleep only to find your pillow is filled with screeching, glowing worms.
8. Ablanense: A neutral tone like a slow, smokey exhale after waking at sunset. Some call it pastel dimenoir.
9. Prostklint: A hard, inscrutable and disquieting colour. Like waiting for your turn on the dentist's chair or the operating table. Like tight fitting braces, a coffin opening by itself, a pill just too large to swallow.
10. Krinderblesse: Like throwing a book onto a bonfire, the thrill of a toppling statue, the feel of a party just before a fight breaks out.
I really need to read that! I think I first encountered ulfire and jale in Carcossa of all things. It's such a cool idea. The descriptions above are really apt - describing the color in terms of how it makes you feel made instant sense to me, the same way red might make you feel charged up or angry and blue and green might make you feel cool or calm. Good stuff!
ReplyDeleteWhat you're saying about red or blue or green is exactly the idea, glad you liked it :).
DeleteInteresting thought experiment!
ReplyDeleteThe book does that with the three original colors it invents, and I really liked that idea, vs. say Discworld's octarine which just describes it as something between green and purple (or at least that's my understanding but admittedly I have not read those books).
DeleteAny attempt to describe them visually is inevitably going to fail because you're trying to describe something beyond experience and arguably impossible, but by describing them in a more holistic experiential sense, like a feeling, you can potentially evoke the intended effect even if it can't possibly be perceived (or conceived).
As you say, an impossible exercise - but always interesting to see what people try to translate into these impossible colours, from experience to inexperiencable visuals.
DeleteWonder why we don't see more impossible sounds, or smells, or tastes - maybe we're a visual species, maybe the range of sounds and smells and so on is simply wider.
Ya that's a good question. My inclination is in part as you say because we are a more visual species, but also I think maybe because vision can be more easily categorized or quantified in a general sense. Like with vision you have ROYGBIV of the EM spectrum, or RGB or CYMK or things like that, and there isn't necessarily as straightforward an equivalent for sounds or smells (although I guess there is for taste wrt taste buds). All of that is overly reductive from a cog neuro perspective anyway, but at least it's something to work with.
DeleteSome more colours! I thought of these in the car;
ReplyDeleteBeaufoy's Bhuart: A dark and uneasy colour; like a slow backward slide, spilt ink left to pool, the distant sound of a breaking plate. The colour was invented by an artist who found it difficult to source prostklint paint so mixed his own ersatz substitute.
Sky Bacchanal: A dizzying colour and unpleasantly surprising. Like a sudden onset sugar-rush or of unseen wings fluttering around your face. Like something hard turning to something soft unexpectedly; a brick turning to shredded paper in your hands - a skyscraper to falling rain.
These are both great!
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