Thunder & Lightning (Black & Mauve), 2008

I think the weather may have finally broken. After an oppressive buildup of hazy heat & humidity, we had torrential downpours last night with violent (or in this case, violet) thunder & lightning. I could feel the concussions from the thunder resonating in my chest as if I were standing next to the speakers at a rock concert. (Canned Heat, 1969, it was some mid-sized venue on Long Island…) In fact, they were so intense that car alarms were going off all over the neighborhood. Despite all of the noise & commotion occurring directly overhead, the air at ground level was oddly still & calm ~ there was none of the high wind one usually expects with this type of summer storm. When the raindrops finally came plunging down they were perfectly vertical, like millions of watery plumb lines. I stood there on the porch looking into the deluge, searching for the photograph I suspected was somewhere in all that falling water, listening to the liquid white noise of countless raindrops striking pavement & wondered if this was in any way like the monsoon rains of southern Asia.

The beautiful wisteria-purple hue is the result of a lightning flash at the exact moment I snapped the photo, illuminating the black void of the night sky & back lighting the raindrops. Technically it's the shade known as mauve. I'm serious… You can do a match here. It's a somewhat nostalgic color that is most often associated with the last decade of the Nineteenth century, homosexuality & decadence. The sharp-tongued & famously litigious painter James McNeill Whistler (who was not a homosexual & always insisted that most of Oscar Wilde's best lines were lifted from him) said of the color:

"Mauve is just pink trying to be purple."

I say there is no harm in having aspirations.