Color my world
Snow fell through the night here in New York, and lays "round about, deep and crisp and even" this morning, except where folks have been shoveling. There is no wind; tree branches are limned in white. Cars parked along the street have been half-buried by the combined efforts of the heavens and the plows. The light, in a still-cloudy sky, is a chilly white that reminds me of my first winter in Chicago, and of photographs of Le Corbusier's Maison LaRoche-Jeanneret.
I moved to Chicago in 1981, to escape an increasingly difficult New York life. I'd had two long hospital stays after my car accident in Los Angeles, and was so discouraged by the difficulties of building a post-Manhattan Transfer life there that I had moved back east. The difficulties were not eased, however. As the leaving-the-group legal agreement dragged on, as lawyers batted at each other, I was broke and waitressing in a restaurant that had my records on the jukebox. I did not have the emotional or spiritual wherewithal to handle it. So, when I visited my dad in Chicago, and people were nice to me there, I packed and moved. My first apartment in that city had pretty leaded-glass windows that faced east toward Lake Michigan. I could see a tiny sliver of the lake between buildings, and it was beautiful, constantly changing with the light. If I shortened my gaze and looked down rather than out, I could see the windows of a small flower shop that had a red neon sign: "Flowers".
That winter was so very cold, and lead mullions so far from effective at keeping out the wind, that the water in my toilet bowl grew a glaze of ice. When the super came up to tape plastic sheeting over my windows, the plastic billowed like sails. Snow fell often, turning the world white - except for that red neon sign. "Flowers" would not be daunted, not even when the shop window completely frosted over. I clung to a hope of spring.
Almost a decade later, I had a gig in Paris, and made, with my architect then-husband, a pilgrimage to Le Corbusier's Maison La Roche. I had seen it, and virtually all of Le Corbu's work, in a set of books my ex treasured beyond all his other possessions. The photographs in the books were in black and white, and so that is how I thought of the designs, black and white, mostly white. A pure white, not tinted with anything that would warm it up. And when we came to it and entered, the house looked as I expected. White exterior. White foyer with a black and white tile floor.
Then we climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor, came around a corner to the landing, and were suddenly confronted by a blue wall. It was so unexpected, and such a merry blue, that I started to laugh out loud. As we continued through the house, almost nothing was as I had imagined it would be. In the little kitchen, there was a well-worn comfy chair. In the gallery room there was a pinkish brown sweep of a wall defining a staircase. Everywhere I looked, I saw swashes of color, and the house's merriment continuing to bubble. It is now twenty years later, and I am laughing as I write. Oh, such a blue can never be forgotten!
Still, sometimes I have to remember to remember that, on this cold white day (and any cold white day in my heart), there is, right now, peeking through a keyhole in the clouds, a laughing blue. And under the snow, "Flowers".