He was wearing a unitard in ideal purple and I couldn't stop staring. Ever since listerine started advertising their new pruple listerine I have wanted nothing more than be the precise same shade of purple. Standing next to purple unitard man was a woman wearing a dress made out of playing cards but the next woman over, white unitard and swimming cap, was talking to Paul Mac. I stepped carefully down off the wooden pontoon and walked away. Paul Mac was the most famous in the room and if the past is anything to go by then he was in horrible danger of being mildly injured in an unlikely incident caused by me. He wasn't even wearing anything remotely interesting, except for sunglasses, at night. I walked carefully over to Spencer and Madam Squeeze, matching cowboy outfits, and watched the purple unitard man through the small gap in between their giant cowboy hats.
I once performed an awkward intellectual swan dive into purple, covering every spare space in daubed patches of mixed pigments trying to create the perfect purple. I interviewed everyone from colour consultants and historians to church curates in an attempt to understand the historical significance of the colour. Years later I sat spellbound while Tony Robinson smashed molluscs and watched it ferment into a stinking dye. He had a more difficult time than I did with my pots of blue and red pigments sitting precious as gemstones in neat rows on my studio floor. I had forgotten about that strange and experimental month until I found myself greedily eyeing advertisements for listerine. Tony Robison came closer than listerine did to my long forgotten ideal hue but it seems my personal ideal purple is subject to change.
Trotting home from the shops with my new bottle of ideal purple made me indescribably happy. The bottle was sitting on top of my other shopping (underpants and plums) inside a purple shopping bag. It took me two days to break the seal on the bottle. On the third day I scrubbed myself clean, washed my hair, brushed my teeth, climbed into my new purple underpants then ripped off the plastic seal and measured out the correct amount in a medicine glass. As I swished the strange burning but pleasantly minty liquid around my mouth I experienced the incredible sensation that if this is as good as it gets then I couldn't be happier.
I once performed an awkward intellectual swan dive into purple, covering every spare space in daubed patches of mixed pigments trying to create the perfect purple. I interviewed everyone from colour consultants and historians to church curates in an attempt to understand the historical significance of the colour. Years later I sat spellbound while Tony Robinson smashed molluscs and watched it ferment into a stinking dye. He had a more difficult time than I did with my pots of blue and red pigments sitting precious as gemstones in neat rows on my studio floor. I had forgotten about that strange and experimental month until I found myself greedily eyeing advertisements for listerine. Tony Robison came closer than listerine did to my long forgotten ideal hue but it seems my personal ideal purple is subject to change.
Trotting home from the shops with my new bottle of ideal purple made me indescribably happy. The bottle was sitting on top of my other shopping (underpants and plums) inside a purple shopping bag. It took me two days to break the seal on the bottle. On the third day I scrubbed myself clean, washed my hair, brushed my teeth, climbed into my new purple underpants then ripped off the plastic seal and measured out the correct amount in a medicine glass. As I swished the strange burning but pleasantly minty liquid around my mouth I experienced the incredible sensation that if this is as good as it gets then I couldn't be happier.
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