Red plus Blue but not Green
The brain is the greatest inventor you'll ever know. Guess what? You have one!
I will save us.
Making noises in the head hall, kicking at the air, echoing the thought calls of our ancestors.
I will set us free.
Knocking over those precious end tables with ornate vases teetering, scuffing and scratching and tearing up the linoleum of our impacted thought kitchen.
I will invent the world.
What you thought you knew, what the law implies must be—that’s all out the window.
For I am brain, the magnificent beast inside this stolen shell skull. The broken bone of our exuberant youth. The fallen tree in our existence yard. There is wisdom amongst us now.
Let me save you—us—in this our perplexed stall and confusion.
Red plus blue but not green.
I am brain and I will lead the way.
Red, I see you there. In the swathe of your spectrum with the blush of your rage rushing. I interpret your anger and your passion and jot down your grievances in my little book. With your blaze of insolence and sweep of blood to the chin of the day, I clock in and punch it at around 255.
The color wheel spins.
I wave and slot you in—first position.
Sit still. Lay in wait. You will be joined to marry to your fate, momentarily. Once I invent it.
Once I save us from this riddle.
Once I build a bridge between. A never seen. A whole new architecture. A movement made from imagined light beams.
Red plus blue but not green.
You are red and you are magnificent. I shall make of you a thing, but not of your own existence. From you and to you, away and now here, I shall add and subtract and create and now see.
Don’t panic! I will save the day.
I will save us from this uncertainty, this confusion, this awkward introduction between you and your mutual. Applying the brakes of fear, red-eyed and shot, scrambling to the math of it as I encounter the next to apply to your heat.
What are you? What will you become?
Not green.
Fear not, for I am the all-powerful brain, holder of the sweet things and more, bringer of the fruitful, portrayer and soothsayer of ideas.
You are the left hand seeking out the right, to shake and hold and steady. All present all correct. I will assess. I will make. I will invent all.
This is red meets blue but not green.
Nothing more nothing than more of nothing and here it is, now go.
Blue, I feel you. I see you. I call your number to the floor with red. Rushing toward the cone of my eyeball scouts to seep and ooze and deliver a lick of peace, serenity, and calm to this scene. Soothing in your presence, you radiate and shimmer toward the red letter of this day, your tranquil sea splashing against the burning ember of a heart seeking solace.
The peace of you, Blue, is a fitting piece of this conundrum of a puzzle—I slot you into the third position.
I will make this connection. I will plug this gap.
Mellow in your quiet demeanor, I absorb the serene acquiescence of this moment and feel your quiet kiss as it whispers to my brain brow. The outcome of this meeting, this counsel, this therapy nipping at toes—a question. Where have you been? What have you seen? Where are you going? Who are you taking with you?
The answer. It is written in the face of the sea, the skin of the sky, the eyes of quiet in the melancholy song. It is held in the blood of a cherry, the pride of a bird breast, the laugh of a rose opening to truth.
Red plus blue but not green.
The answer. What is the answer?!
Turning to abacus and calculator and slide and the sound of wood on string and pressings of buttons. Some impossible sum resisting all workings. Frustration twanging on nerves.
Between first and third is the nothingness. The impossible. The non-existent thing that some say must be green. The answer has no answer and yet…
I will save us! I must. I will. I do.
I am the all-powerful, all-knowing mind force, squeezer of the reds and blues—the fruits of distraction. All the juices that are not green. The space between—the gap of nothing. I am brain, the creator of creations, the joiner of the world, the stitcher, the baker, the doer, the done.
I calm you down, I hype you up, I agitate your edges.
I regulate your beat in the throb of unknown atmospheres.
All is silence. All is cacophony. All is nothing.
I am the greatest inventor you will ever know. I pull from the clouds and the shapes and tone of things to come. I inspire with my imagination to believe that it is so, and so it is. We share this power—my power—to create from the atoms of the stars the colors we know that do not exist.
Nothing exists until I make it so.
Until we all agree on it.
Until the moment is reached and we name it.
When you have nothing. When you sit between the problem and the solution and cannot find the bridge.
Think Purple.
From the ingredients, from the ask, from the hint at, from the nothing there, the panic and the fret.
Think Purple.
From the temptation and the shadow and the whisper and the movement of the moment. In the moment, the second of the meeting and the clashing and sweet collision of the red with the blue but not green. Color in the answer. See the outline, fill in the unknown, reach into it and pull from it a plum.
Make it Purple.
Your brain will save you—I have, I will, I do. If the thing does not exist. If it has no life before this day. If we are confused and scared at the nothingness of this future, remember this: Red plus blue but not green.
Today, I gave you purple from the nothing of impossible.
Tomorrow let’s build a world.
Watch the Video about the themes in this post 👇
This week’s amends…
"I’m very solitary, that’s all… I can’t dismiss it. Inside, I’m very much in communication with a lot of people and things who absolutely don’t know I’m in communication with them."
– Jean-Luc Godard
On Rotation: “(Get A) Grip [on Yourself” by The Stranglers
Who misses cassettes? Me. I have a large chunk of my teenage memory tied up in making mixtapes and recording music off the tele (from Countdown, which Australians will know). I also used to record radio programs. Weirdly, I rarely recorded myself and I’m not sure why. My favorite brand of cassette to record on was BASF, and sorting the page of tape designs at tapedeck.org to BASF brought flashes of recognition as I saw the ones I most commonly bought during my generation of recording.
Here’s a screenshot of BASF, but enter your fav and take a walk down memory lane.
Via Austin Kleon’s newsletter
Magic.
Related, and also magic.
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple