Flying in a blue dream (II)

The last time artists participating in the ROY G BIV photo challenge went searching for the 'I' (indigo), most of us were rather stymied. Thinking that at the very least I could pin down the color using a variety of art supplies labeled as 'indigo', I opted to create a handful of cubes with indigo-colored materials—watercolors, pencils, sequins, marbled paper, string. But I still came away feeling that I didn't really have a true grasp of exactly what indigo is.

It turns out that Isaac Newton is to blame for its inclusion in the rainbow moniker, but I was interested to come across a passage in an 1869 publication that listed a string of people who contested Newton's definition of indigo. While Newton placed indigo beween blue & violet on the color wheel, one of the professors cited believed it to be in the cyan-blue region that sits between blue & green; others compared it to Prussian blue or ultramarine. Perhaps one difficulty in pinpointing/defining indigo stems from the fact that, in its dry lump form, it possesses a violet aspect, yet a greenish one when transformed into a powder or dissolved. Personally, I've always associated it with a warm midnight blue.

 

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Now, as promised, I'll see if I can explain the title from two posts ago. I had originally meant to include a video of Joe Satriani's Flying in a Blue Dream as a sort of footnote to my blues for June's ROY G BIV challenge, but forgot. So then I thought I'd add it to my return journey photos, taken from the plane—more blue, plus the obvious flying theme. But the explanation became such a digression that in the end I decided to simply save the video and make it the centerpiece of 'INDIGO'.

It's one of my favorite songs of Joe's and, though it was first released twenty-four years ago, he still plays it at nearly every concert. I was thrilled that it kicked off the one my daughter & I saw in northern Italy two summers ago, and was played third when he came to Florence this past May. The song is in part inspired by childhood dreams he had about flying over the world. Even though, like nearly all of his music, Flying in a Blue Dream doesn't have lyrics, I think it does a beautiful job of summoning up an ethereal sense of wonder & delight. And surely some of those blues in the video are indigo (whichever version of the color you subscribe to)...

 

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Another exciting—and unexpected (there was no prior publicity)—discovery the night of Joe's appearance in Florence was Oli Brown, whose band played a few songs before Joe took the stage. Oli is a young Brit with a jazzy-bluesy-rock-y sound, and I can't imagine a better opener for Joe Satriani. Here's a video from the European tour he did as the opener for Joe (+ a little more blue)...

 

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Technically, I haven't fulfilled the requirements of the ROY G BIV challenge (as the images are supposed to be your own photos), but visiting family & more travels mean that I will likely not have a chance to play around with indigo much this week/end. But who knows? Maybe my fifteen-month-old niece will be interested in hanging out in the studio when she wakes from her nap momentarily...

 

 ~ Wherever you are, here's hoping the music is good! ~