Grey Areas

“The color of truth is grey.” -Andre Gide

To thrive in England, you must learn to love grey, in all its 50-plus shades; pigeon feather grey, granite grey, murky grey, battleship grey, storm cloud grey, misty grey (almost white), smokey grey (almost brown), slate grey (almost blue), drystone wall grey, gun metal grey, lichen grey, greyhound grey, pencil lead grey, tin pie plate grey, pussy willow grey.

It’s easy to disparage this poor neutral tone (glum grey, spider-spit grey, spirit-sapping grey, dishwater grey), so I compiled a list of all the fun, beautiful and interesting things in nature that sport the hue: seawater gray, beach stone grey, gritstone grey, Tufted Titmouse grey, Sandhill Crane grey, Mourning Dove grey, Canada Goose grey, Harp Seal grey, Gray Wolf grey, Humpback Whale grey, Gray Fox grey, Koala Bear grey (how could you not love this one?), Gray Squirrel grey, Bull Shark grey, Bottlenose Dolphin grey, African Elephant grey, heron grey, Harpy Eagle grey and Gray Four-eyed Opossum grey (yes, it’s a real species).

⬆️And my fave, Herdwick Sheep gray ⬇️

I find that if I name the grey, it becomes more palatable. Oh, it’s a donkey-grey day. Every grey has its day!

An intermediate color between black and white, grey is the transition between two non-colors. In the world of shades, grey is the peacekeeper... always neutral. Neither stark white nor imposing black, gray is the ultimate negotiator.

Morally ambiguous and impartial, gray is the color of complexity–everything that falls in between absolutes.

Gray is the color of intellect and of compromise. It’s a diplomatic color, negotiating all the distance between black and white. We typically consider gray to be conservative, elegant, cool, and a bit mysterious.

It’s not a color of extremes, but rather of middle ground, of reasonable agreement.

A grey area is a realm of uncertainty that is caught between two opposing views.

This feels like an important landscape to inhabit politically, at least occasionally. Perhaps this is what French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Andre Gide meant when he said, “The color of truth is gray.”

“Gray is great. People think gray is a neutral, but I think it’s such a moody, intense, dramatic and sexy color. It’s very sleek.” -Bryan Batt, American actor

Many artists are devoted to greys. Leonardo da Vinci said, “A gray day provides the best light,” and French symbolist painter Odilon Redon called grey, “the soul of all color.”

In many cultures, grey is the color most commonly associated with elders because of its association with grey hair; it symbolizes the wisdom and dignity that come with experience and age.

The New York Times is sometimes called The Grey Lady because of its long history and esteemed position in American journalism.

When wondering which grey/gray to use, just remember this helpful tip: Europe=grEy, America=grAy.... and for the Canadians, grEHy. (For consistency, I’ve used the European spelling in this post simply because that’s where I’m currently writing from.)

Earl Grey, my tea of choice, is reputedly named for Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, British Prime Minister in the 1830s.

In an attempt to find the goodness in grey, this blog post materialized out of the murky depths. I’ve discovered that a state of grey has its greytness.

What’s grey and not important?

An irrelephant

Why does Karl Marx hate Earl Grey?

Because all proper tea is theft.

And finally, graytfully, a song about grey by the greytest band to ever emerge from my home town in California: