Lately I’ve had a love affair with the color gray.
It’s like black but more interesting. It’s wolves, whales and windy days. It’s skyscrapers and storms, newsprint and concrete, sweatpants and sacks of thunder. It’s the color of Charlotte Bronte’s eyes and Morrissey’s soul. It’s a tone in transition, darkness striving to be light.
It is an Ansel Adams photo.
This has been driving my best friend crazy. “What is it with you and stupid, gloomy gray everywhere?”
“I think gray is cozy.”
“It is cozy — but for a mushroom soup, not for you,” she said. “Now stop it.”
I’m not sure if color dictates one’s mood or if it’s the other way around, but there has to be something to it. Because I’ve been feeling sulky and a little overcast lately, which is either the cause or the effect of all this gray.
Maybe that’s why Pantone — the authority on color — annually makes a hue forecast for the coming year. Because color is supposed to motivate, inspire, inject energy into your days.
For 2012, they chose Tangerine Tango. They suggest buying tangerine clothes, painting an accent wall tangerine or pulling together some tangerine accessories.
This is what Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, said about the color in a press release: “Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy.”
Oh, please. I think it looks like a blushing construction barrel, an overripe pumpkin, a forgotten pair of stripper panties. It is for people who can’t quite commit to either red or orange.
But, then again, I’m not the authority on color. I wear gray, remember?
My best friend, on the other hand, is totally a chartreuse person.
She was completely swayed to the chartreuse side after seeing Angelina Jolie’s interview on “60 Minutes.”
At that point, my friend declared chartreuse to be a way of life.
“This color is perfection,” she said. “It’s like dollar bills dipped in gold. It’s unconventional. It startles. It’s murky. It is a sticky swamp. It is a city bathed in dirty lights. I love it.”
So my best friend gave me some homework. My task now is to come up with a new color for 2012. Not gray. And not beige either — I already tried that. (“Beige is so 2005,” my friend said. “Somebody needs to alert the desert tortoise.”)
I definitely can’t choose tangerine tango. (Honestly, I don’t know if I could ever be tangerine tango.)
Yellow is too sunny and cloying.
Red is too stoplight.
Teal looks like every Palm Springs pool.
Purple is for unicorns.
But maybe, just maybe, I could step out of my gray shell and get comfortable settling into a deep, satisfying green.
It’s the essence of growth. The color of emeralds and unraveling leaves and mossy hillsides after a rain. The color of go, go, go and full speed ahead — exactly what I anticipate for the year in front of me.
So what’s your color of 2012?