Symphony of Secrets

In the chapters written from Josephine’s perspective, Slocumb describes how Josephine experiences the world, for she describes music using colors. For instance, she describes part of a song that Delaney’s band plays as “the green with the star” (147). Delaney notes that she has green leaves in her hair when she says this. She also experiences music as textures. One example of this is when she describes music by stating that the “blue willow was gritty and sandy” (407). Organizing colors in relation to one another calms her during her panic attacks. At the beginning of her breakdown in Ditmars & Ross, she simply lists the colors orange, black, and green. However, when Delaney gives her music, she adds prepositional phrases: “orange is in the black and green” (197). Adding this grammatical structure helps her to regain a sense of peace and control.

Josephine believes that music should have many different colors in it. She thinks that people “love music because it has all colors” (449). Furthermore, she composes operas about the colored rings of the Olympic flag. When Delaney takes her to the Olympic Games, she is inspired by the “five interlocking colored rings—blue, yellow, black, green, and red—symbolizing the five contents on a white field” (416).