On Being Blue- William Gass
So blue, the word and the condition, the color and the act, contrive to contain one another, as if the bottle of the genii were its belly, the lamp's breath the smoke of the wraith. There is that lead-like look. There is the lead itself, and all those bluey hunters, thieves, those pigeon flyers who relieve roofs of the metal, and steal the pipes too. There's the blue pill that is the bullet's end, the nose, the plum, the blue whistler and there are all the bluish hues of death.
Is it the sight of death, the thought of dying? What sinks us to a deeper melancholy: sexual incompleteness or its spastic conclusion? What seems to line our life with satin? what brings the rouge to both our cheeks? Loneliness, emptiness, worthlessness, grief... each is an absence in us. We have no pain, but we have lost all pleasure, and the lip that meets our lip is always one half of our own.. Our state is exactly the name of precisely nothing, and out memories, with polite long faces, come to view us and to say to one another that we never looked better; that we seem at last at peace; that our passing was -- well-- sad--still-- doubtless for the best (all this in a whisper lest the dead should hear." Disappointment, constant loss, despair... a taste, a soft quality in the air, a color, a flutter: permanent in their passage. We were not up to it. We missed it . We could not retain it. It will never be back. Joy-breaking gloom continues to hammer. So it's true: Being without Being is blue.
Just as blue pigment spread on canvas may help a painter accurately represent nature or give to his work the aforesaid melancholy cast, enhance a pivotal pink patch, or signify the qualities of heavenly love, so our blue colors come in several shades and explanations. Both Christ and the Virgin wear mantles of blue because as the clouds depart the Truth appears. Many things are labeled blue, thought blue, made blue, merely because there's a spot of the color here and there somewhere on them like the bluecap salmon with its dotted head; or things are called blue carelessly because they are violet or purple or gray or even vaguely red, and that's close enough for the harassed eye, the way the brownish halo which surrounds the flame of a miner's safety lamp to warn of firedamp is said to be a bluecap too. Or they are misnamed for deeper reasons: in the ninth century, when the Scandinavians raided Africa and Spain, they carried off samples of the blue men who lived there all the way to Ireland, hence higger-blue is applied to an especially resinous darkness sometimes by those who are no longer Vikings. And Partridge reports the expression: the sky as blue as a razor. Fin an eye as blue as indecency itself, and indecency as blue as the smoke of battle, or a battle as blue as the loss of blood. We might remain with such wonders: as blue as.. as blue as... for good and forever.
Is it the sight of death, the thought of dying? What sinks us to a deeper melancholy: sexual incompleteness or its spastic conclusion? What seems to line our life with satin? what brings the rouge to both our cheeks? Loneliness, emptiness, worthlessness, grief... each is an absence in us. We have no pain, but we have lost all pleasure, and the lip that meets our lip is always one half of our own.. Our state is exactly the name of precisely nothing, and out memories, with polite long faces, come to view us and to say to one another that we never looked better; that we seem at last at peace; that our passing was -- well-- sad--still-- doubtless for the best (all this in a whisper lest the dead should hear." Disappointment, constant loss, despair... a taste, a soft quality in the air, a color, a flutter: permanent in their passage. We were not up to it. We missed it . We could not retain it. It will never be back. Joy-breaking gloom continues to hammer. So it's true: Being without Being is blue.
Just as blue pigment spread on canvas may help a painter accurately represent nature or give to his work the aforesaid melancholy cast, enhance a pivotal pink patch, or signify the qualities of heavenly love, so our blue colors come in several shades and explanations. Both Christ and the Virgin wear mantles of blue because as the clouds depart the Truth appears. Many things are labeled blue, thought blue, made blue, merely because there's a spot of the color here and there somewhere on them like the bluecap salmon with its dotted head; or things are called blue carelessly because they are violet or purple or gray or even vaguely red, and that's close enough for the harassed eye, the way the brownish halo which surrounds the flame of a miner's safety lamp to warn of firedamp is said to be a bluecap too. Or they are misnamed for deeper reasons: in the ninth century, when the Scandinavians raided Africa and Spain, they carried off samples of the blue men who lived there all the way to Ireland, hence higger-blue is applied to an especially resinous darkness sometimes by those who are no longer Vikings. And Partridge reports the expression: the sky as blue as a razor. Fin an eye as blue as indecency itself, and indecency as blue as the smoke of battle, or a battle as blue as the loss of blood. We might remain with such wonders: as blue as.. as blue as... for good and forever.