Color Me Literate

I heard about a cute - albeit utopian - art project today while listening to NPR. Yes, that NPR, the liberal public radio station. Once in a while I'll admit to my guilty pleasures.

The project, called "There Is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World," is an entire used bookstore of over 20,000 books arranged solely by the color of their spines. The 16 volunteers worked for ten hours overnight to convert the store to a rainbow spectrum of literature. My favorite part of the interview was the artist's vision (and I'm paraphrasing) that he ' tries to take something very ordinary and put it out of its structure, to see it a different way.' How neat is that?

When I pictured the reds melting slowly into greys on my rainy drive home, I thought about where my book would fit in along the wall. The conclusion was that it must depend on when I wrote it. If I wrote the book today, I would color the spine the exact deep hue of confident blue that filled the sky at that 5:30-ish drivetime moment. If I had written it yesterday, it may have resided next to another pink bestseller. Without getting too philosophical, I wonder what color my book will be tomorrow. Right now, I'm hoping for red.