My New Lamp and Other Strange Things

White was never my favourite colour. I never liked to wear white clothes, I hated white furniture and white walls. I thought white was harsh, a (non)colour to hurt the eyes. A couple of years ago we bought some white furniture and it doesn't look bad at all. Last weekend a couple of rather good wall paiters painted our walls white. The rooms look larger and white doesn't hurt the eyes. I don't know where I got that from. Yesterday I finished a book on monochrome, dealing in black and white monochrome in contemporary art. Among other things it says that white is often linked to purity, blindness, death, open mind, silence and void. White canvas is a void, like a poet's sheet of white paper. White can be understood as sort of a visible silence. To take things even further, I bought a white standing lamp to read or paint by. The light of a white lamp in connection with the previously unopened new book or a sheet of fresh watercolour paper is ... what ... Before I start reading a book I know nothing about my expectations can be limitless. A sheet of white watercolour paper is like the poet's blank paper, it's full of potential. In actuality it contains nothing, while in potentiality it contains everything.

*

Nikoli nisem bila posebno navdušena nad belo barvo. Nisem marala belih oblačil, niti belega pohištva ali belih sten. Zdelo se mi je, da je bela preostra, da bolijo oči, če človek gleda vanjo. Pred nekaj leti sva kupila nekaj kosov belega pohištva, ki sploh ne izgleda slabo. Prejšnji konec tedna sta nama dva odlična pleskarja prepleskala stene belo. Sobe so videti večje in nič ne bolijo oči. Ne vem kje sem to slišala. Včeraj sem končala z branjem knjige, ki obravnava monokrom v sodobni umetnosti. Ukvarja se s črnim in belim monokromom. Pravi, da so asociacije, ki nam jih najpogosteje vzbudi bela, čistost, slepota, smrt, odprtost, tišina in praznina. Belo platno je praznina, kot pesnikov bel list papirja. Belo lahko razumemo kot vidno tišino. Če stvari še dodatno zakompliciram, sem kupila belo stoječo luč, ob katero bom lahko brala ali slikala. Svetloba bele luči v povezavi z novo, še neodprto knjigo ali svežo polo papirja za akvarel je ... kaj ... Preden začnem brati knjigo, o kateri ničesar ne vem, so lahko moja pričakovanja neskončna. Pola belega akvarelnega papirja je kot pesnikov bel list papirja, poln možnosti. V dejanskosti ne vsebuje ničesar, v območju potencialnosti a vse.