Blue is an enigmatic colour speaking of mood, nobility and expensive Renaissance pigments.
It also gives its name to one of music’s most enduring and loved genres, “the blues’, originally an antidote to the heart-rending, chronic horror of American slavery, now a salve for sorrow and feeling shitty.
It got me wondering why ‘blue’ started being a byword for sadness and depression (Beyond Blue); when its various hues: cobalt, ultramarine, turquoise, indigo, Prussian, azure border on the sublime in appearance and their velvety sound off the tongue.
“Blue speaks of the morning, of the sky and of the sea.”
That simple phrase in Richard Flanagan’s mesmerising Gould’s Book of Fish, so elegant in its simplicity and truth, was the catalyst for this post.
That’s blue’s majesty – it can envelop us in deep melancholy and simultaneously soothe us with sublime meaning and aural and visual beauty.