By The Landlord
“The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.” – Lao Tzu
"White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white." – Gilbert K. Chesterton
"White is the colour of decomposition. White is also no colour. White is nothing. In photography, the paper is white, next comes the light, which is also white, then the shadow is created, the apparition." – Dieter Appelt
At first I could only smell bleach. Blinking, I started to move towards a bright, white light, burning through a landscape of feathery mist. But then I glimpsed a small shape skipping across the snow, the surface crunchy and smooth like icing. The shape had ears and eyes. It blinked back at me and was a white rabbit. As my eyes adjusted I also noticed two distinct powdery white lines running across the landscape. “C’mon. Follow the lines,” said the rabbit. But as I moved towards him I heard a loud snorting sound and heavy, chalky, crunching steps. Out of the mist emerged a giant, white horse. Sat upon it was a knight, entirely dressed – yes – in white. “Don’t do it!” said the white knight. Behind him was a line of workers, all wearing white collars. “It doesn’t add up,” said the knight, glancing at documents. “This white paper is all whitewash.” And the lines led all the way to the White House.
And in the other direction I could see a long line of angels leading out a tumultuous choir. You can guess what colour they wore. One of them offered me a garment. “Put this on.” I recognised it from my childhood, as a former choirboy, as the item you’d place over a cassock. “Isn’t that surplice to requirements?” I asked, attempting a pallid joke. “No. Come join me,” said another mystery figure, dressed in the softest fabric, a veil over her head, covered in beautiful lilies, offering out a long, white elegant gloved hand. Was this woman in white suggesting a wedding? What should I do? Wave the white flag?
Who should I believe? What shade was right, when all was white? What colour was truth? And is it hard or soft, cruel or kind? It is this where, in fact, white lies?
The snowy landscape was becoming clearer now. On another side, amassed on a hill, was an infinite line of frightening figures. They were increasingly sickly, pale, ghostly. Many wore white hoods with eye holes. Some were so pale, and bleached as to be almost non-existent. “Beware the White Walkers,” said the knight. They were closing in.
And then it all began to blur again. The mist, the mass of snow, a swirl of white feathers turned into a storm of heat, and light, and white noise. And then I awoke. There’s only so long you should ever spend painting your bathroom white.
Of such things dreams are made. So then, my mind blanched in DIY task yesterday, and snowed under in divergent thought of associations, musing on this topic overnight after an unwise late-night snack of Wensleydale on white bloomer toast, the colour of this week’s topic is pretty clear, and all of its many cultural associations. From purity and cleanliness and innocence, to sickly, pale ghostliness and death, from white supremacists to white bread, the White Walkers of Game of Thrones to the Wilkie Collins novel of 1859, The Woman In White, from the white heat of technology of Harold Wilson’s era, from snow to chalk and milk, from the beluga whale to the dove to the polar bear, you can’t go wrong if in a song it is white.
Fishing for ideas … beluga whale
Do blondes, or indeed blonds have more fun? When I was younger I had bleached hair, and it certainly seemed to help attract the opposite sex more, at least on a superficial level. I was going for a look that was somewhere between Billy Idol and Christopher Lambert in the 1985 Luc Besson film, Subway. The result was neither of course, but it was fun while it lasted.
Blond ambition: Christopher Lambert with Isabelle Adjani in Subway (1985)
Despite her natural dark colour, Madonna meanwhile has spent the majority of her career as a blonde, aping film stars such as Marilyn Monroe.
Blanc expression: Madonna on her Blonde Ambition tour
Some people are obsessed with white. I have a friend who, I hasten to add, has no social prejudices, but likes to keep to a diet entirely composed of white food. So that means they must eat only white bread, cauliflower, milk, yoghurt, cottage cheese, white rice, potatoes, white sauce, chicken and white fish, cream and maybe custard, and no doubt white wine. Though of course the term white is indeed broad in that respect.
White is a colour not ideal to performing musicians, because frankly, it shoes up the sweat. Rock’n’roll is best served in black, no? Especially if you’ve ever been a punk or goth. But some can rarely been seen in anything but that colour. Beyoncé’s sister Solange loves a white outfit, and it certainly suits her. But the biggest fan of white is surely Jennifer Lopez, who not only wears it most of the time, but her rider is the stuff of legend. Absolutely everything must be of that hue. Obviously oodles of flowers – roses, lillies and so on, all in a pure white room, with white candles, white sofas, white table cloths, and perhaps even a huge litter of white puppies.
J-Lo - not a white walker, but definitely after a white rider
Then there’s that late-80s forbears to all the 90s boybands, the smooth New Edition:
Walk this way. New Edition.
John Lennon famously wore white when crossing the road on the Abbey Road album cover, but was often seen with Yoko in that colour in the 1970s, and it certainly made them standout in a messianic, mischievously popish sort of way.
Walking white through … John and Yoko
But perhaps the most memorable and striking band who liked the colour were that American collective The Polyphonic Spree, whose harmonious concept has a cultish look:
White floaters … The Polyphonic Spree. A bit of a cult look?
And of course actual White Walkers. Death becomes them.
White is a very poetic colour, used to capture contrasting associations. In Snow By Edward Thomas, a child’s innocence is shattered when they falsely perceive the purity of snowfall with death:
In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying: "Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast!"
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.
Meanwhile that fabulous Rasta poet from Birmingham, Benjamin Zephaniah, playfully uses the colour to invert all kinds of perceptions of race in the black-humoured White Comedy:
I waz whitemailed
By a white witch,
Wid white magic
An white lies,
Branded by a white sheep
I slaved as a whitesmith
Near a white spot
Where I suffered whitewater fever.
Whitelisted as a whiteleg
I waz in de white book
As a master of white art,
It waz like white death.
People called me white jack
Some hailed me as a white wog,
So I joined de white watch
Trained as a white guard
Lived off the white economy.
Caught and beaten by de whiteshirts
I waz condemned to a white mass,
Don’t worry,
I shall be writing to de Black House.
White of course is also a key tool in visual arts. It is used to beautifully stark effect in the fantastic 2001 film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, by Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, in a legendary tale of death and revenge:
But my favourite film with a white association is that satirical 1951 Ealing comedy The Man In The White Suit, in which Alec Guinness plays Sidney Stratton, a brilliant young research chemist who invents a material that repels all dirt and never wears out. It sounds ideal, but of course there are many vested interests in such a product can never exist. Stratton may be whiter than white, but unfortunately the rest of the world isn’t.
So then, it is time to dust off the chalk, clear the snow and wade into the world of white in songs. Pure of mind and with no doubt a clear vision and a keen ear, I’m delighted to welcome back this week’s man in a white suit, whether that be a bar overall, or something altogether smarter - the perceptive philipphilip99! Place your white songs in comments below before 11pm UK time on Monday, for playlists to be published on Wednesday, when, wherever you are in the world it will be all white in morning, or on the night.
Crumbling? Time to culturally get over the cliffs of Dover
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