mind blown

[realthog]

I just a few minutes ago started reading Alan Lightman's book Time Travel & Papa Joe's Pipe: Essays on the Human Side of Science (1984), and came across this:

Some years ago an old friend mesmerized me after dinner with his collection of paintings and illustrations by Maxfield Parrish. Parrish used a tedious and time-consuming technique called glazing, in which the artist begins with a white background and then adds successive layers of pure color, clear varnish, color, varnish, and so on -- the aim being to mix light instead of pigment. Each stage of this procedure is methodical and familiar, but the final colors, fashioned from light that has shone down through the layers and reflected out again, are unlike any colors of this world.

This is why scientists write essays. It's why publishers publish them (I think more rarely these days than in 1984). It's why yours truly reads them. But, most of all, what Parrish was doing and Lightman was describing is one of those reasons why people like me write fantasy stories: to show light in colors that are "unlike any colors of this world".

Even if Lightman had filled the rest of the book with selected extracts from the Old Omsk Telephone Directory, Time Travel & Papa Joe's Pipe would have been worth the purchase price for this half-paragraph alone.
 

Comments

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Were you really listening to Rainbow Rising, or was that just a joke?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Were you really listening to Rainbow Rising, or was that just a joke?"

Why should it have been a joke?

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Painting with light? Rainbows?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I assure you that, had I been trying to make such a joke, I'd have claimed to be listening to the ISB's The 5000 Spirits, or The Layers of the Onion. So there!

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

If it had been me, it would have been Rainbow. As you know, my sense of humour tends to be more bludgeon than scalpel.

[quilterbear.livejournal.com]

I love, love, LOVE Maxfield Parrish's art, and it was great to read about it. I know it wasn't the real focus of what you were saying, but I found it fascinating. I did like what you said, "But, most of all, what Parrish was doing and Lightman was describing is one of those reasons why people like me write fantasy stories: to show light in colors that are 'unlike any colors of this world'". Brilliant!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I love Parrish's art too, K. I thought Lightman's description of it was wonderful.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

Beautiful! Thanks for posting this, Paul.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thought you might like it, J!