The Red Whose Father is the Knife

Audio here

John Berger on Red:

Red is not usually innocent (look at this one). But the red you sent me is! It’s the red of childhood. A pretend red. Or the red of young eyelids shut tight– the red you saw when you did that.

As I look at it I wonder what will happen when it grows older. Maybe it won’t be red anymore at all. My guess is that maybe it will become black. Whereas this far-from-innocent red was maybe white when it was young! White with a touch of green like apple blossom when it unfolds. 

Now it’s the heaviest red in the world. No bird could fly near it.

Perhaps my favorite red is Caravaggio’s. He uses it in painting after painting. (The Death of the Virgin in the Louvre for example）.

The red by which you swear to love forever. The red whose father is the knife. The red which Naguib Mahfouz was thinking about in Cairo, when he wrote: “The beloved may absent herself from existence, but love does not.”

I want to see whether I can turn this heavy one into Caravaggion’s red. Look.. It’s not so heavy now. But it’s passionless. Perhaps no red can have that passion unless a body has been painted near it or inside it.

Could it be that red is the one colour that is continually asking for a body? Give my special love at this moment to Genevieve.

from “I send you this cadmium red”