The crazy colors tend to wash out so quick. Basically, it ensures

On Color, Impermanence, and the Wild Spirit of Creation

When Alison Mosshart said, “The crazy colors tend to wash out so quick. Basically, it ensures that you never wash your hair, so it starts to do some cool stuff,” she was speaking of hair dye, yes — but beneath her words lies a deeper parable about life, art, and the fleeting beauty of imperfection. Her statement, wrapped in humor and rebellion, captures the spirit of one who embraces transience rather than fears it. The “crazy colors”, bright and untamed, symbolize the bold experiments of the soul — those choices that defy conformity, that express individuality, that dare to stand vivid against a world that prefers gray.

In the surface sense, Mosshart — the fiery frontwoman of The Kills and The Dead Weather — was reflecting on the nature of self-expression. To dye one’s hair in wild colors is to wear one’s personality on the outside, to say to the world: I am not afraid to be seen. Yet even this defiance bows to time, for color fades, and no shade — no matter how electric — lasts forever. But Mosshart’s wit turns this truth on its head. Rather than lament the fading, she celebrates the process — the way imperfection, neglect, and natural decay create new forms of beauty. The unwashed hair, left to its own devices, becomes art in itself — spontaneous, textured, unpredictable. It is a metaphor for life lived beyond control.

To the ancients, this idea was not foreign. The Japanese spoke of wabi-sabi — the art of finding beauty in impermanence and imperfection. A cracked teacup, a faded painting, or a weathered stone was not seen as ruined, but as enriched by time. Likewise, Mosshart’s “crazy colors” are most beautiful not in their perfection, but in their fading — when they blur and blend into strange new tones, when they tell a story of living rather than just existing. For to cling to perfection is to resist life’s natural flow; to let go is to witness its deeper artistry.

This philosophy can be seen throughout art and history. Consider Michelangelo’s frescoes, once bright with color, now dimmed by centuries of candle smoke and dust. Or the ancient sculptures of Greece, whose once-painted surfaces are now bare marble. In their fading, they have not lost their beauty — they have transcended it. They remind us, as Mosshart does, that life’s most “cool stuff” happens not in the moments of control, but in the aftermath — when we let go, when time and chance do their work.

In another sense, Mosshart’s quote speaks to the creative soul itself. The artist begins with intensity — the “crazy colors” of inspiration, the bright rush of creation. But those colors cannot stay forever; passion, too, fades if we try to preserve it too tightly. The true artist, like Mosshart, knows that letting things evolve naturally — letting the work, the self, the world “do some cool stuff” on its own — is part of the process. To hold on too tightly is to stifle; to let go is to create space for transformation. Every act of art, every song, every risk we take is a dye that will eventually fade — but what remains after is richer, subtler, more authentic.

There is also rebellion in her words — the refusal to conform. “Never wash your hair,” she says, half in jest, but with a deeper defiance beneath it. In a culture obsessed with polish and presentation, she praises the raw, the wild, the undone. Her philosophy is one of authenticity — that beauty is not found in the flawless, but in the lived-in, the spontaneous, the unapologetically real. To let your hair fade and tangle is to let life show itself as it truly is — messy, dynamic, alive. It is an act of artistic and spiritual honesty, a rejection of the sterile perfection that modern society idolizes.

The lesson, then, is simple yet profound: embrace the impermanent, the unpolished, the evolving. Let your colors — literal or metaphorical — fade, mix, and change. Do not fear the loss of vibrancy, for in that fading lies growth and discovery. Creativity, identity, even joy — they are not fixed, but fluid. The one who clings too tightly to the past’s brightness will never see the strange new hues the present can bring. Let your life “do some cool stuff” — let it surprise you, let it break its own patterns.

Thus, in the words of Alison Mosshart, we find a hymn to freedom. Life, like hair dyed in wild shades, will always change — the colors will bleed, fade, and blur. But it is in that fading that we find our truest selves, the beauty that cannot be planned or painted by design. So live boldly. Be vivid. And when the color begins to wash away, do not mourn it — smile, and watch what cool new forms of beauty arise when you simply let time, and life, do their art.