I’ve been thinking about the story of the tower of Babel. It’s a short tale in the Bible (Genesis 11:1-9) which tells of a time when all humanity spoke one language. In the story, it doesn’t end well. The people came together to build a city and a tower which would reach to heaven, but God intervened and garbled their speech, and they scattered across the world, having lost the gift of universal understanding.
The tale brings up more questions than it solves, but the ones I’ve fixated on are: 1) What would it feel like if humans had a universal form of communication? And 2) Would anything in our troubled world change? As I wondered about this, I recalled a concept for a short story I had a while ago and resurrected it. I won’t share the outline with you, but the concept is this:
Some outside factor affects all humans on Earth and now everyone’s skin changes color according to their emotions. It’s like a chameleon or an octopus, except that instead of reacting to outside conditions or an effort to attract a mate, the shifting colors map the interior landscape of a person’s feelings. Not only are people constantly telegraphing their emotions to others, but a quick look in the mirror teaches them a lot about what is really going on in their own hearts and souls. And the information is universal — the color of anger is consistent across the world, as is fear, joy and affection, etc.
The challenge with this literary device (well, one challenge) is to decide the color of specific emotions. Complicated people have complex feelings. Like the octopus, different colors can intermingle, and depth and shade make statements as well. But for the story to work, I need a basic lexicon.
On reflection, I’ve found our English language ambivalent about what colors represent emotions. For example, red can indicate anger but also love. Yellow can show the optimism of a sunny disposition and also describe fear or cowardice. It may take time for people to figure out what the colors mean, but, as the author, I need to be clear about what I want the colors to convey. To find this out, I’ve been trying to sit with what I’m feeling in the present moment and see those colors. It’s an interesting exercise which makes me pay close attention to my interior landscape!
So far, this is what I have:
- Anger- deep red
- Fear- white
- Curiosity- Peacock blue and a bit metallic
- Care/empathy- rich green like grass
- Love- purple (maybe a unique mix of red and blue depending on who it’s directed towards)
- Desire- magenta
- Joy- yellow/gold
- Embarrassment- dark orange
- Depression- fog gray
What do you think? Does this color to emotion scheme make sense to you?
One last question: I have an idea of where I want this story to go, but what do you think might happen if every person in the world showed on the outside what they truly feel inside? More or less empathy? More or less violence? I’d love to hear about your thoughts, and maybe even the color of the emotion you feel when thinking about it!