I proclaim purple as the best and most interesting color.
“…color is consciousness itself, color is feeling, … alive in time like the stickiness of honey or the gently rough lap of the cat, for color is connection. The deeds and sufferings of light, as Goethe says….”
— On Being Blue, William Gass
Purple is a secondary color, created by the combination of red and blue wavelengths, which our brain interprets as purple.
It doesn’t exist as a primary color. Purple is not one of the seven within the visible light spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Each color has its own corresponding wavelength. When these waves overlap, they create a new color. Sir Isaac Newton discovered that white light is a mix of all seven colors.
Purple is a rare color in nature. It also was a rare dye, difficult and expensive to make since it could only be extracted from a sea snail found on the shores of Tyre in Phoenicia (becoming known as Tyrian purple).
Only the very wealthy, like the Roman emperors, could afford it. So the color became known as imperial purple, associated with rarity, royalty, luxury, magic, mystery, godliness and spirituality.
What we know about the historical properties of a color can affect the qualities we associate with it.
Does my knowledge of the history of purple and its absence from the visible spectrum affect my liking of the color? No, because I liked it before I knew about all this. So I conclude that I have an affinity, a feeling for the color, for purpleness (as Goethe wrote) and it has an affinity for me—it resonates with my being.
It seems to me that a secondary color is a poetic color, an unreal color, since it must be created to exist. Like the word “poetry,” from the Greek term poiesis, which means “making.”
And purple may be in our future. Scientists have discovered that before green life evolved on Earth, early life consisted of purple bacteria, that thrived in infrared light. So in searching for life on exoplanets, we should consider looking for purple ones, ideally those with a red sun.
Purple violet mauve plum thistle orchid lavender Byzantium, a recently named dark purple. Electric purple is halfway between violet on the color wheel and electric magenta, it is the purest and brightest purple that it is possible to display on a computer screen; psychedelic purple is a neon fluorescent color produced by mixing fluorescent magenta and blue pigments. I like purple lipstick, eyeshadow, hair dye. I once tinted my hair pale purple. Only 2 flags contain purple. Galaxies with many new stars appear purple; summer twilights start violet, shade to purple…
I like the word crepuscular which means resembling or relating to twilight: the liminal time in fairytales when the veil between the worlds is thinnest and magic can pass through. Magic is purple’s past.
But I declare purple the color of the future too, and all who hope to find life on exoplanets should wear, celebrate and devote themselves to all things purple.