PLEASANTVILLE

Ndumiso Ncgobo does not see colour, and it’s OK

IFIRST heard the song Dream in Color from Regina Belle’s Passion album some 23 years ago. That’s no typo in the word “color”. Americans have a hatehate relationship with the letter “u”. After reading an American, I always imagine a pile of unused “u”s staring morosely at the author. But I digress. Since hearing that song, I have pondered whether I also dream in colour. I have come to the inconclusive deduction that I probably do — but that I don’t remember the colours.

It occurs to me that I do not have the same relationship with colour that normal people do. It is very common for Mrs N and I to be driving from a social gathering, skinnering about some individual or another, when:

“Just how loud was Judith’s friend?” The only colour I’m aware of that makes me happy is the colour of beer “Which one?” “The one wearing a lavender top and a short turquoise skirt.”

At this point my eyes glaze over and my brain takes on cement connotations. After 15 years, the missus has learnt that I have a pathological incapacity to remember colours, so she often apologises and tries to use some different descriptor, such as Judith’s friend’s irritating, raspy voice.

I’m reliably told that different colours evoke specific emotions in people. I must be an unimaginative moron because I’m not consciously aware of feeling different based on the colours I’m seeing. The only colour I’m aware of that makes me happy is the colour of beer. But I’m certain that even if they dyed my Hansa Pilsner blue, I’d guzzle it at the same rate.

And it wouldn’t catapult me into a “blue” mood. Feeling blue. What is that about? Who decided to pick on the colour blue and ascribed melancholy to it? For me, blue is as lonely and sad as Hillary Clinton is warm and charming.

Apparently, the origin of the term “Blue Monday” is some pseudo-scientific study that determined that the third Monday in January of every year is the most depressing day of the year. For me, that makes just as much sense as claiming that people who engage in nookie on the second Wednesday of April are more likely to conceive girls who will grow a moustache later on in life.

And it still doesn’t explain why the colour blue is associated with depression.

I can’t think of colours more contentious than black and white, due in no small part to racial tensions. Maybe it’s because, as the more pedantic among us are likely to point out hysterically, scientifically speaking white is simply the presence of all the colours of the electromagnetic spectrum while black is the absence of all colours.

Whatever, the real reason, I am reminded of a scene from a Hollywood flick, Boomerang. The character played by Martin Lawrence, a hectic race conspiracy theorist, breaks down just how racist the game of pool is. He asks why it is that the white ball is used to wipe all the differently coloured balls off the table and how, as soon as the black ball is sunk, “the game is over!”.

I performed a cursory scan of what all the colours are supposed to represent. Red is supposed to be the colour of energy and passion — especially sexual passion. I’m guessing that this means there are more nocturnal exertions per capita in Liverpool and Manchester than there are in “pure” Madrid then, innit? And one can only imagine what sordid business goes down between Santa and his elves as they go around delivering Yuletide treasures and whatnot.

Orange is apparently the colour of social communication and optimism. This would make our Department of Correctional Services the most sadistic department in the country. I doubt Oscar is walking around feeling all that communicative and optimistic about Kgosi Mampuru.

As for pink, the purported colour of “unconditional love and nurturing”: sigh. It makes the colour-coding orgy we impart upon our newborns seem even more cruel.

What if a little girl is not so keen on this “nurturing” business and would rather spend her life in the blue corner, guzzling beer, destroying pristine coastlines on quad bikes or whatever the hell the “brooding and morose” bunch in the blue tribe do with their lives?

Perhaps the only colour whose popular “personality” I can identify with is grey.

Like most products of our schooling system, I spent 12 years wearing those dull, drab, grey shorts and pants. I was a generally lively and imaginative child, but as soon as I put on those grey pants my brain was only capable of disgorging the most insipid, dull thoughts.

When we weren’t wearing our greys, we were forced to wear those khaki shorts the colour of cardboard, which inspired thoughts the colour of cardboard. Then again, that might have had to do with being fed a curriculum in which I was regaled with riveting facts such as that the Khoikhoi gave away their livestock in exchange for trinkets. I guess this is why we’ve produced matriculants who become Prasa engineers who lack the imagination to figure out that a tall train can’t go through a short tunnel. Cardboard-coloured thoughts.

But what do I know? I’m the same guy who admitted in the first paragraph that he may not even dream in colour. Take the opinions of a man who possibly dreams in greyscale with a pinch of salt. E-mail lifestyle@sundaytimes.co.za On Twitter @NdumisoNgcobo

In those grey pants, my brain was only capable of the most insipid thoughts