Eva Colombo, All these colours must be there
 
Eva Colombo, All these colours must be there
The red curtain of my bedroom is still grey. It is early, it is too early. Out of the window an autumnal day isn’t begun yet. It isn’t worth keeping the eyes open, colours are still asleep. Soon my curtain will become red, I will open my eyes and autumn will torment me with its colours that are beautiful, unbearably beautiful. And I will rather sink into the ground rather than feel myself obliged to look at them because autumnal colours have the unbearable intensity of something that is about to die but doesn’t want to die…at least not before having impressed indelibly its beauty on the eyes of whom dares to look at it while it is dying. Autumn will pass, I’m telling myself, winter will turn off autumnal colours and it will be allowed me a truce. But it will be a very short truce, I know: by the middle of winter I will feel again the warmth of those colours…yes, it will happen in this way. Trampling the darkened ground, leaning my hands against benumbed tree trunks, looking at the livid sky I will feel the warmth of those colors…and I will know that they are still there, somewhere around me. I will know that all these colours must be there and I will always long for them.
“Must there be all these colours / without names without sound?” ( Jimi Hendrix, Love or confusion )
But now my red curtain is still grey, my eyes are still closed and Hendrix’s lyrics are creeping into the shadow of my eyelids. Truthful, I must be truthful to myself: I know that some colours are sunk, yes, many years ago and I’ve been unable to find out them again because I don’t remember them, my eyes are unable to remember them. It is a remorse of sorts, a strange remorse: I know that some colours once existed, I know that I loved them…I miss them, I do miss them. And yet I don’t remember that colours, with open eyes I would be unable to recognize them. But maybe with closed eyes…Groupies and Other Electric Ladies by Baron Wolman: photographs that are grey like my red curtain is now, like the shadow of my eyelids. Photographs shot long time ago, an abyss of time…I stare at this abyss with my closed eyes, and I see. I see the colours that I’ve been unable to find out again sunk into this abyss, those colours that I still love so much. I want make these colours emerge again, I want feel their warmth again…at least until this cold autumnal night lasts, at least until my red curtain is still grey.
Karen Seltenrich’s hair. It should have been red – fire as the hair of the marquis Luisa Casati Stampa portrayed by Augustus Edwin John, that very marquis Casati whom the poet Gabriele d’Annunzio called Coré ( appellation of Persephone, the Mistress of the Underworld ) because of her passion for occultism. And the red – fire of that hair ( Karen’s hair, Coré’s hair ) it is the same which I have seen at sunset sparkling into a puddle: I’ve seen it for a moment just before it sunk into the ground, just before the ground lovingly occulted it rescuing it from the chilly eye of an autumnal night’s sky.
Lacy’s feather boa. Those feathers should have been as warm brown as the feathers of the fan that Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Monna Vanna holds in her left hand, that very Monna Vanna whom the poet Dante Alighieri called Primavera ( Spring ). A Spring who, in Rossetti’s portrait, waves the air in front of her with an autumnal leaves coloured fan to remind everyone who looks at her that she is stronger than autumn: she has the power to bring to life again what has been killed by the autumnal cold air. A Spring who looks over that fan with light eyes and into this look there is the certainty that at dawn the sky will light up. Lacy’s light eyes look at us through feathers that should have been as warm brown as the leaves which are challenging right now the nocturnal cold wind clung desperately to the branches, Lacy’s light eyes through the brown feathers are the sky which at dawn will light up giving to the bare branches the certainty that the spring will give back to them what autumnal cold air has stolen.
Mercy Fontenot’s rose. That rose which hangs from Mercy’s sash should have been as pale as the flowers slipped into the sash of the priestess who traces on the ground The Magic Circle in John William Waterhouse painting, that touching pallor of the flowers which don’t want to die during a cold autumnal night. And those sashes should have been as bright as the horizon at sunset… when the horizon hugs the ground trying to infuse into it the warmth of the sun hoping to prevent the cold autumnal night from killing autumnal flowers, not yet.
Sanchez twins mirror. If the green and azure eyes of Laura and Lynn would look down into the mirror that they hold in hand instead of staring at us, surely that mirror would become as green and azure as the water stroked by the pitiful look of the two nymphs portrayed in John William Waterhouse’s Nymphs finding the head of Orpheus. The cut – off Orpheus’s head still sings while floating on that water which is azure as the cold of an autumnal night and green as the roots of the flowers which in spring will blossom again, will always blossom.
I open my eyes. The sun has turned on the red of my curtain, an autumnal day is just begun. And all these colours must be there, always.