Joni Mitchell: ”Blue”
(via henhenstoll)
Holly: Listen. You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Fred: The mean reds? You mean like the blues?
Holly: No. The blues are because you’re getting fat or because it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
A friend once wrote in an email, “If you ever call me and say, ‘I’ve listened to Joni Mitchell’s Blue 50 times today,’ I’ll know you’re about to commit suicide.” I answered him, “You’d better throw a party. Blue uplifts me. It never makes me suicidal. Worry if I get the mean reds and I’m nowhere near Tiffany’s.”
It was strange reading your post this evening, because all day long I’d been thinking of blues and smiling over them. Blue is sky, and the Irving Berlin standard “Blue skies smiling at me….” Blue is Miles Davis chasing down the voodoo in Kind of Blue. It’s Picasso strumming a guitar through a blue period on his way to bursting with cubist creativity. It’s me standing on White Beach in Okinawa, laughing with friends, smoking reefer and wondering whether the water could get any bluer. It’s Tommy Holcomb’s unclouded eyes. Blue is wonder and delight.
You never give me the mean reds, and if I am blue in your absence, it is only a temporary sadness I know will be replaced by an explosion of color and creativity when we are together. Blue is the muse saying everything must be transparent and understood before art brings it into existence.
Blue, here is a shell for you
Inside you’ll hear a sigh
A foggy lullaby
There is your song from me….
