One day I woke up longing for blue. I was searching for it endlessly. After awhile I understood that I needed to see it again. I had to capture it, make it mine, and dissect it. I had to discover blue in all shapes and forms. To that extent I’ve started working on a project, one in which I pay homage to the color blue in all its glory.
“1. Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color. Suppose I were to speak this as though it were a confession; suppose I shredded my napkin as we spoke. It began slowly. An appreciation, an affinity. Then, one day, it became more serious. Then (looking into an empty teacup, its bottom stained with thin brown excrement coiled into the shape of a seahorse) it became somehow personal.”
— Maggie Nelson, Bluets
“6. The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love’s primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless. I returned there yesterday and stood again upon the mountain.”
— Maggie Nelson, Bluets
“36. Goethe describes blue as a lively color, but one devoid of gladness. ‘It may be said to disturb rather than enliven.’ Is to be in love with blue, then, to be in love with a disturbance? And what kind of madness is it anyway, to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back?”
— Maggie Nelson, Bluets
