Colorless, Soon

Returning to my hometown two summers ago, I embarked on an expedition to revisit my favorite spots from my childhood. Expecting a week of reminiscence, I was repeatedly reminded by the realities of gentrification that the town was no longer how I remembered it. The vibrant candy shop by the railroad tracks had been replaced by a commercial confectionary chain; my beloved make-your-own-pizza store torn down in favour of a boring old Dominos. Most disheartening of all, the bright blues, reds, greens, and yellows of life in the past had been flushed out by the whites and greys of consumerism.   

We have allowed our environment to be stripped of one of our most fundamental joys: colour. This farce of minimalism, posing as sophistication, has crept into every facet of daily life. Cars, clothes, houses, buildings, we have witnessed a leaching of colour across the board. What began in the early twenty-first century as experimentation in modernism has evolved into an unquestionable, unwavering cultural mandate.

I want to live in a world of grey

Of white and black and everything in between

I want my children to learn about the colour line,

To appreciate their renditions of Starry Night

In which the sky is grey and the stars are white

I want to surf a sea of grey to work

White walls to white walls,

Barren

Walk through any new housing project, and you'll find yourself in grayscale. Real estate agents assure us that neutral colors sell better, that bold choices limit our options, that safety lies in conformity. But we end up selling not just our homes, but our imagination, our willingness to stand out, and our creativity.

When houses dared to dream

In purples bold and forest green

Now, endless beige conformity

A prison built of Property

The auto industry best shows this surrender to drabness. In the 1950s, cars came in coral pinks, sunshine yellows, and turquoise blues that would make today's designers recoil. Now, surveys show that over 77% of new cars sold globally come in white, black, or grey. We've convinced ourselves that this is sophistication, that a world with muted colours is a luxurious one, that monochrome and grayscale are synonymous with elegance.

Showrooms filled with silver shades,

Telling me this is what we crave

“Resale value,” the suits whispering

The rainbow memories, slipping

Photographs fading in the sun

Even our clothing, once a primary means of self-expression, has succumbed to the grayscale revolution. Fast fashion chains fill their racks with "versatile basics" – an endless parade of black, white, and grey clothes that promise to never offend. They might not offend, but they will also never express. Instead, they give us one option: finding safety in conformity, and leaving individuality.

My closet echoes an empty cave

Once yellows and reds ablaze,

Now “practical” and “versatile”

Choices made for me, not by me

Colour bleeds from Earth to sky

We have witnessed the slow but deliberate leaching of colour and style from the world around us. We are, however, the lucky ones. Most of us have memories of vibrancy; memories that our children may never form. Even our childhood pleasures which we may look back on with varying degrees of nostalgia may be denied to the younger generation. Activities so elementary as colouring outside the lines with an assortment of waxy crayons or letting our imagination run wild with what few Lego bricks we had collected.

Children draw our world today,

Once beloved crayons stashed away

Grey and black and a drab blue

“More realistic,” people say