Wednesday, April 05, 2006
The blue of distance
posted by John Davies at 9:15 PM
The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water, the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.
For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains. "Longing," says the poet Robert Hass, "because desire is full of endless distances." Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world.
 Rebecca Solnit is a wonderful writer, as amply demonstrated by this extract from A Field Guide to Getting Lost. When people ask me I always give blue as my favourite colour; though I haven't yet been able to explain quite why. It's not just about football - it's certainly not about politics. Writing like this digs far deeper into the psyche, is vastly suggestive. And so tonight I'm absorbed in wondering what it means for me to be enthralled by the blue of distance.
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john davies
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