About 6 years ago when we bought the house, we inherited a bunch of boring colored walls.... mostly with tan/beige. But my husband and I LOVE color. Since then, I've painted the kitchen a blue gray, the living room a magenta pink, the hallway a bright blue, the stairway became a piece of art (our first pandemic project) with brown ("havana coffee") treads, and balusters and risers in alternating colors of blue ("new age blue"), teal ("belle vista"), and purple ("romantic moment") and the bedroom, now, a deep purple. Since we spend so much more time in the band room, it was time to spruce it up. Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, we are about to receive a new piano from my in-laws, so it seemed like the perfect time to move some furniture around, clean, and paint.
I personally think we picked the most beautiful color, a fun olive-y green called "classic avocado." I went to Home Depot to get the paint, and the paint mixer guy also loved the color, commenting several times about how gorgeous this color was, and instead of applying a single dot of sample paint to the lid, he made a smiley face! About a week ago, I started painting the edging, and was immediately disappointed. Something about the color, or the paint viscosity, or the walls themselves made the color appear thin and ugly. All I could do was hope that after several coats, the color would be beautiful. Yesterday, I applied a third coat to the edging, and painted a whole wall with a roller brush, and finally, the beauty of color started to come through and it was delightful. It's going to be a lot of work, and several coats of paint, but I am hopeful that the end result will be gorgeous, and that the process will continue to delight me as the walls are transformed from boring to ugly to beautiful.
On a side note, I am also delighted by the names of colors. (for jeo-party, I delight in naming the teams different variations of blue and red. Cerulean and Scarlet. Blueberry Ale and Irish Red. Most recently, Baby Bah-lue-gah and Lava Lamp. Next week might be Sunrise Red and Midnight Blue). Naming colors reminds me of this scene in my favorite movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
CLEMENTINE: Might be the hair.
JOEL: What might?
CLEMENTINE: Changes a lot. That's why you might not recognize me. What color am I today? It's called Blue Ruin. The color. Snappy name, huh? This company makes a whole line of colors with equally snappy names. Red Menace, Yellow Fever, Green Revolution. That'd be a job, coming up with those names. How do you get a job like that?
JOEL: I don't really know how --
CLEMENTINE: Purple Haze, Pink Eraser.
JOEL: You think that could possibly be a full-time job? How many hair colors could there be? Fifty, tops?
CLEMENTINE: Somebody's got that job. Agent Orange! I came up with that one. Anyway, there are endless color possibilities and I'd be great at it.
JOEL: I'm sure you would.
CLEMENTINE: I've tried all their colors. I apply my personality in a paste.
JOEL: Oh, I doubt that's the case.
CLEMENTINE: Well, you don't know me, so... you don't know, do you?
JOEL: Sorry. I was just trying to be nice.
CLEMENTINE: Yeah, I got it.
I love that line "somebody's got that job" and I use it often when I think of cool things that must be jobs out there in the world. Naming paint colors, for one. Somebody's also got the job of adding the slang definitions meaning things like "the penis" or "to have sex with" to words in the OED. Somebody's got that job, but I'd be great at it. 😀
{spoiler alert}
I've also always loved that scene in general and have had to replay it several times after watching the end of the movie. When you first watch the movie, you are led to believe that this conversation is the first one these characters have ever had, because you are led to believe that they have just met. But by the middle/end of the movie, you learn that they have had their memories erased, and this scene, while taking place at the beginning of the movie, actually takes place way later in the sequence of events, after they've had an intense relationship, a terrible breakup, and their memories erased, so this is actually the second time they have "met". I've always been struck by how meaningful and powerful it was to see them drawn back together, "meeting" again, knowing what they no longer know (the history they have together), but seeing them bicker and banter and begin to fall in love all over again. Time Out magazine summarizes that the movie excels in "expressing the bewildering beauty and existential horror of being trapped inside one's own addled mind, and in allegorising the self-preserving amnesia of a broken but hopeful heart." Watching the movie a second, third, tenth time, you can also start to piece together the actual order of events by following things like Clementine's changing hair color. It was a sneaky clue given to you at the very beginning of the movie in this very scene. So delightful.
Ok, back to painting "Classic Avocado"!
With delight,
♥Jamie
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