Magic Lantern
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Kati Davis Bluets Passage
"One of the men asks, Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don't get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don't get to choose." Although it is only on the fifth page, this particular passage immediately stuck out to me while reading Bluets. To be honest, I'm having some difficulty interpreting the meaning behind Bluets (but then again, that may be the point Maggie Nelson is trying to make: human beings have this ridiculous, innate desire to construct meaning in everything we come across, even things like color. But I digress.) The speaker begins the book with the sentence "Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color," and she goes on to justify this love and her desire to express it in writing to a group of men during a job interview. Her claim "We don't get to choose what or whom we love" seems to be referring to more than just the color blue, and we find out throughout the course of the book that she had recently been cheated on by a personwith whom we presume she was in love before (and even after) they broke her heart. The speaker spends most of the book focusing on the color blue, describing and personifying and exploring it in depth, but she also will occasionally speak to and about her former lover directly (ex. p. 4 - "Above all, I want to stop missing you.") This is what leads me to believe that her fixation on the color blue is both an analogy and a distraction for her as she processes the grief following her lover's betrayal. The speaker may recognize that the relationship was unhealthy and that she should have moved on from it by now, but she epitomizes the lack of power humans have over their hearts' decisions with the phrase "We just don't get to choose."
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ReplyDeleteNelson is unique; she is her own individual. While she is quite unique in the way that she analyzes blue, her life, and her relationships, she acknowledges that she is similar to many other adults: "It does not really bother me that half the adults in the Western world also love blue," pointing out her similarity with the rest of the adult world, "or that every dozen years or so someone feels compelled to write a book about it." Nelson acknowledges the fact that she is not the only one to think of this idea to analyze and reflect on the color blue. She does not pretend that this was her idea and that she is some great artist for writing this book, instead she states, "I feel confident enough of the specificity and strength of my relation to it to share." She takes the honest truth and counters it with her confidence, stating why she is different from the rest. Nelson claims that she has a different perspective and explanation for the color blue. I like what Nelson does here because of the bluntness and honesty that she offers. I want to use this in my piece about accents because, frankly, many people comment on the nuances in accents, in particular the New York accent. I want to acknowledge this point, yet also state that how my perspective on accents is different because I have shifted from one accent to another. I have experienced two different sides, giving me insight into two different worlds. As Nelson is confident in her "strength of [her] relation to [blue]", I feel confident in my strength of my relation to the New York Accent; I want to use her form to strengthen my piece.
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