Ishihara
Like many of my songs, this one started its life on a Tuesday night at Vox Liminis’s ‘Unbound’ group, on the same spot where I recorded the live performance in this video (above). (I’m grateful to the You Pick Acoustic channel for featuring it this month.)
Vox is a Glasgow-based arts organisation that builds community through creative practices. We often work around a theme and, on this occasion, the theme was ‘colours’. Our discussions got me thinking about how colours are often associated with signs and symbols; e.g. red for ‘stop’ (and for passion or anger), green for ‘go’ (and for calm), amber for ‘proceed with caution’ (and look out for danger). And that led me to think about colour-blindness.
The Ishihara test, by the way, is the red-green colour vision test; hence the title.
In the song, colour-blindness serves as a metaphor for not being able to read signs and symbols and social and emotional cues in human communication. The song’s imagined protagonist is a man on the brink of a new relationship, but who fears he’ll fail to pick up on those signs and symbols and, as a result, may hurt the person he is beginning to love.
Lyrics
I wish it weren’t so
But there’s something you should know
We should stop before we go
This should stop before it grows
If your blood’s not red to me
Then I won't see you bleed, and
I won’t know what you need
I’m scared I won’t know what you need
There are things I do not see
Things right in front of me
Signs and symbols I can’t read
Kaleidoscopes confusing me
It’s only black and white I know
In monochrome; my soul
Don’t know what your signals show
But I know how this story goes
I think I’m colour-blind
I just can’t see the signs
Can’t read between the lines
I’m sorry for my staring eyes
As they fail to recognise
I wonder what I’m missing here
Because these clues aren’t coming clear
If I don’t see the deepest blue
How will I sound the depths of you?
Scared that I won’t comfort you
I’m scared that I won’t comfort you
I think I’m colour-blind…
My eyes can’t choose the red from green
My tongue tastes bitter same as sweet
My hand feels rough the same as smooth
My heart can’t tell the false from true
You say you see red, white and blue
But I’m missing every cue
I think I’m colour-blind…