Being a writer colours have never played a conscious role in my work. But I recall a story of a blind man telling someone he knew what scarlet looked liked and when they asked him what he said that it looked like trumpets sound.
Descriptions are my life and different people’s experience of life only adds to our knowledge of what it means to be alive. We are often wrapped up in our own existence so much we exclude others but their experience informs us, artists since time immemorial have been the conduit through which those different experiences have been put in front of the world.
And we play with the senses because sometimes in turning a corner there is more relevance than going straight on. So Elephants are not grey, or muddy red or silver wet from a river. They are not scarlet from the hacking of poachers. They are us. Born into a world that is turned against them. Magisterial and dying; slowly facing extinction at the hands of an animal that in its time will also face extinction.
They are the colour of life. A nation in mourning. A friend going into oblivion to prepare our way.
And we? We are blind to everything except their last trumpeting.