Indigo
“Indigo [in the eighteenth century] . . . became an important commodity, especially in the district around Baton Rouge. This tropical plant, imported to Louisiana from the West Indies, produced a blue dye vital to the European textile industry. Durable cotton fabric colored witih this dye became extemely popular, and its descendant exists today in the denim of American blue jeans.”
—Bennet H. Wall, editor, Louisiana: A History, third edition, 1997.
Baton Rouge, or ‘Red Stick’
“Pierre Le Moyne, better known by his title Sieur d’Iberville . . . dreamed of founding a great French city on the lower reaches of the Mississippi River. In late February [1699] he decided to organize a group of about fifty men to locate the mouth of the river, go upstream, and scout the area. . . .
Initially they saw few Indians, but eventually they arrived at a relatively large settlement marked by a red pole (used by the Indians for ceremonial purposes). Iberville accordingly named the spot Baton Rouge, or “Red Stick,” because of it.”
—Bennet H. Wall, editor, Louisiana: A History, third edition, 1997.
das Existenzminimum
“The question of the minimum house is the question of the basic minimum of space, air, light, and heat which is necessary to man. . . . Man from a biological viewpoint needs improved conditions of ventilation and lighting and only a small quantity of living space, especially if this is organized in a technically correct manner.”
—Walter Gropius, Die Soziologische Grundlagen der Minimalwohnung in Die Wohnung f’r das Existenzminimum, 3rd edition, 1933.
The SunGold Market
“The SunGold Market into which he turned was a large, brilliantly lit place. All the fixtures were chromium and the floors and walls were lined with white tile. Colored spotlights played on the showcases and counters, heightening the natural hues of the different foods. The oranges were bathed in red, the lemons in yellow, the fish in pale green, the steaks in rose and the eggs in ivory.”
—Nathanael West, Homer Simpson visits the grocery store in The Day of the Locust, 1933. Not the Homer Simpson, but a Homer Simpson.
those blue and lavender nights
“It was one of those blue and lavender nights when the luminous color seems to have been blown over the scene with an air brush. Even the darkest shadows held some purple.”
—Nathaniel West, The Day of the Locust, 1933.
blaxploitation films.
“A term coined by Variety to describe a series of Hollywood genre films made in the early 1970s, featuring black performers, that were produced for a black audience.”
—American Cinema/American Culture, by John Belton, 1994.
film noir.
Literally meaning “black film,” film noir refers to a style or mode of filmmaking, which flourished between 1941 and 1958, that presents narratives involving crime or criminal actions in a manner that disturbs, disorients, or otherwise induces anxiety in the viewer.
—American Cinema/American Culture, by John Belton, 1994.
She used to let her golden hair fly free
“She used to let her golden hair fly free
For the wind to toy and tangle and molest;
Her eyes were brighter than the radiant west.
(Seldom they shine so now.)”
—Francis Petrarch (1304-1374), She Used to Let Her Golden Hair Fly Free.
a great void
“When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling, into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow; it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.”
—Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.
the violet light of the stars
“Everything is packed into a second which is either consummated or not consummated. The earth is not an arid plateau of health and comfort, but a great sprawling female with velvet torso that swells and heaves with ocean billows; she squirms beneath a diadem of sweat and anguish. Naked and sexed she rolls among the clouds in the violet light of the stars. . . . Love and hate, despair, pity, rage, disgust—what are these amidst the fornications of the planets? What is war, disease, cruelty, terror, when night presents the ecstasy of myriad blazing suns? What is this chaff we chew in our sleep if it is not the remembrance of fang-whorl and star cluster.”
—Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.