I Want to Invent this Colour

^Samsung Smartphone Homescreen

by Shumon Basar

I want to invent this colour. Lord knows all and he knows I'm trying. Ideally it would *just* happen, but not just like *Just Jared*. You see, I dreamt a dream in which I manage to index every colour I've ever seen -- acknowledged and not -- and from this archive that, as far as humans know, does not exist in time and in space, I concoct a single colour. It remains unnamed. Partly because I shun the pseudo poetics of 'Evening Lilac Shade' or 'Jam Surprise,' affronts to colour’s innate gaiety. And do not get me started on their numeric counterparts. Faceless strings of digits the spawn of industrialization. Soon comes the day, once again, when we name people, your children of the future, after strings of numbers. The ones their skin most closely resembles. I want to invent a colour that started in that dream -- and when you see it you will struggle to describe it too. I am not so immodest as to want to invent a new way of seeing. I leave that to the boys and girls of Silicon Valley and Seoul. I am writing to my old schoolteacher, Ms. Elceedee, a dowager now dwindling into senescence, who taunted me and told me I'd amount to nothing on this earth. I am writing to tell her about the colour I plan on inventing, most magnificent, beyond the limited scope of her punitive imagination, and that of my own heart's sight. The hues will erupt in unison. Swans will bow. Mountains blush. Search engines will wither. Prisoners will find peace. The only oversight in this otherwise most formidable plan is not knowing its fucking name. A name that people -- cultured, svelte, caring, fans of yoga -- can drop into their polite dinner conversations in and around the topics of sky, coats, skin, sex, simulations and vacation. I'm going to invent this amazing fucking colour bitch -- and by bitch I do not mean you, or any woman. I apologize, but, I just heard the phrase on a YouTube video that's been trending rather well of late. The sound was so crisp. It boomed from this TV, the size of a small state or large child, which, when switched on by retina eye recognition + NSA verification, the screen lit up in an array of colours only ever cited by the lucky few who venture North to the Aurora Borealis. That impossibly smooth landscape of vaporous colour bleeding seamlessly into each other. Perfect gradients. Cries and whispers. This colour, which cannot remain so doggedly without moniker forever, dear Lord, this colour is the one I want to invent.

Shumon Basar is a writer currently working on a book with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist entitled The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, which will be published by Penguin in March 2015.