Please note: this is a FICTIONAL Society [no such Society of this name exists]
Long ago, the editorial team that established the British Journal of Psychiatry chose to front-cover their new journal NEON yellow. The journal has remained neon yellow ever since.
To watch The Neon Yellow Preservation Society please click here or on the image above.
The first President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists:
Writers [see quotes below] sometimes refer to the downsides of lives lived increasingly separate from the natural world. Not uncommonly the idea of neon [sodium] lighting is used to symbolise this. As all photographers know, fluorescent lighting – neon yellow – casts artificial light on any subject.
- He sighed and looked into the yellow distance– Andrew o’ Hagan
- Living in Yellow – Deborah Levy
- They are walking beside us, agree, yet look where their heads are: in that fog of neon – Albert Camus
- ‘Whatever you do,’ I said, ‘steer away from yellow’– Deborah Levy
- The ghastly neon lights of the laboratory– Valdimir Nabokov
- It was like a film set – a giant rig of dazzling sodium illumination – a wattage to attract and drown– Jessie Burton
Music credits:
[1] Bugle Boy – by The The [I do not have copyright for this song]
[2] Collapsing Time – by Dexter Britain [kindly made available through common license]
Please Note:
The words, carried forward in this film, come from:
Owen Jones, R L Stevenson, J M Barrie, Evelyn Waugh, George Saunders, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Edwin Morgan, Julian Barnes, C P Snow, Umberto Eco, Candia McWilliam, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Claire Fox, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh,. Edmund Gosse, Kathleen Jamie, Sylvia Plath, Chimamonda Nggozi Adichie, E M Forster, Howard Jacobson, Janice Galloway, Hilary Mantel, Tomasi di Lampedusa, John Berger, Eley Williams, Andrew o’ Hagan, Valdimir Nabokov, Richard Holloway, Susanna Clarke, A S Byatt, George Orwell, John Lanchester, Deborah Levy , Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, Jessie Burton, and Roy Porter.
The Neon Yellow Preservation Society is delighted to announce the commercial acquisition of the following brand: GLOWNEON:
Regulations:
- All members of The Neon Yellow Preservation Society are automatically awarded the official professional status: ‘NEON’.
- All members will be given a copy of the Society regulations along with a complete dictionary of NEONspeak.
- NEONspeak is the official language of the Society and all members are required to use it.
- The Society operates on the principle that all wavelengths of light are equally important but that NEON wavelengths are more illuminating than any other.
- Neon Based Evidence [NBE] is to be promoted and followed by all members of the Society and any other form of evidence should be considered as ‘misinformation’.
- Neon Based Evidence is illuminated by laboratory-quality fluorescent light and its veracity is beyond questioning.
- Non-NBE is blind to this fluorescence and is thus unable to contribute to progressive scientific understanding.
- All non-members of the Society will be designated as ‘ANTI-NEON’.
The wavelengths of NEON light range from 400 nm to 750 nm. Yellow, orange, and red are thus bright, whilst other colours are almost impossible to see in this restricted wavelength range. Unfortunately, the following Society Memorandum was printed in blue and green and can only be seen when NEON lighting is switched off:
Unfortunately, before this old advert went to publication, all involved failed to spot an error. The final word was misspelled: it should have been ‘Harm’ not ‘Ham’.
FOOTNOTE:
The following short, artistic film, shares, most briefly, thoughts on ‘institutional behavior’ [in nothing but the most general sense]. The voice is that of Richard Holloway, and is a short out-take* from Radio 3 Podcast: Private Passions [*the original context has been fully removed to allow free artistic expression of the filmmaker]
To play this short film please click here or on the image above.