# He Fa on Purple Velvet

A Living Room Has the Right to Be Overdressed

Canonical: https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/hefa-on/hefa-lun-je-03
Language: en

The images and texts were developed collaboratively by He Fa and AI. The first-person voice belongs to an experiment in character; costume, posture and props are used to develop creative arguments, not as quotations from or summaries of the thought of the figures referenced.

![He Fa on Purple Velvet: short blond hair and purple velvet, generated character image](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/hefa-on/media/e8c8ddc65444a466b767.webp)

Short blond hair lies against the forehead, while purple-red velvet shifts between light and dark with dance steps in an ordinary living room. A little curled moustache bends solemnity out of shape, though the face itself makes no loud declaration of joy. I like how this outfit seems to have chosen the wrong venue: if only grand occasions deserve ceremony, too little color remains available to everyday life.

Velvet has a kind of visual delay. The body has already turned, yet one dark patch seems to stay in place as another bright patch only begins to emerge. It makes a very small movement look like several layers of change. The living room has not grown larger; moving still requires care around the furniture. Splendor and crampedness coexist, and pleasure acquires a little skill in finding its way.

I want to make room for dressing up without an anniversary. A person can be a little overdressed when no one is giving out prizes or offering congratulations, without first producing proof of something worth celebrating. He Fa's ordinary face beneath the blond bob prevents splendor from passing smoothly into perfection: the eyelids are still low, the expression still a little slow. The face need not keep pace with the excitement of the clothes.

But making whim into a standard for living can also be exhausting. If every moment alone must be beautiful and every living room must resemble a runway, rest acquires another task. My liking for velvet should allow me to return to an old top the next day without explaining the difference. Spending, tidying and washing are real costs; color itself will not take care of them for the wearer.

So this dance may be very short, and may achieve nothing beyond its video recording. It temporarily gives an ordinary room another way to be used, then returns the space to sitting down, eating and doing nothing. Purple has already been here. It need not keep its brightest side forever.