The Color Gray: a Backdrop for Dreams

Gray is the aftermath of catastrophe, covering the streets, the town, the forest, with ash. It’s difficult to imagine beginning again when in gray. It is the climate of the rock bottom, stale and charred. Not tragically, but simply. From the wreckage that grays the air, through the ash that rises static in the breeze, we can count our blessings, count our losses, take measure.

Shades that control the darkening or lightening of shadow. Though it may be sleek in certain portions of the house or on clothing, gray is never outrageous or garish. Within a cloud of gray we can slip wordlessly away from the world and recalibrate in gray’s impartiality.

Gray is safe. The color that stands in opposition to a statement. Imagine a cashmere sweater in gray, imagine curling into its divine fabric without expectation, without a bargain set. A nap when you’ve already had enough sleep: that’s luxury. Is gray not also the luxury of the mundane?

When you open your eyes in the middle of the night, where a street light shines through the window from a distance, there is a gray film over everything.

Gray is the soft intermediary between black and white, settling idly between them. It sits like a cloud: non chromatic.

The color grey is worn when you are not doing anything particularly important, a color for the home, the intimate and quotidian. Buy bread in gray. Do laundry in gray. It’s the color of television snow, a forced static that both alleviates and dulls. But bear with me. Because from boredom comes a flow of imagination, the color is not of the world, but a flow from something within that waterfalls out in the presence of gray.