Mechanisms of Blue

Day Heisinger-Nixon

 

To consider Derek Jarman’s Blue.
To consider the single, monochromic slide of the film, the narration emanating from
a sick, blue life.
To consider the medication Jarman takes to disrupt the red illness of his body.
To consider the blue film the medication leaves on his vision, its ever-encroaching
fade to black.
To consider the boys of his life, every boy, red and blue, their ever-encroaching
fade to black.
To consider David. Howard. Graham. Terry. Paul.
To consider an aesthetic gratitude for the blue fade to black.
To consider a gratitude for the blue, not for its trajectory, nor its history, but for its
immediacy.
To consider the youtube video responding to Maggie Nelson’s Bluets—how it
offers a testament to counterblue: one blue boat and one red balanced 
together on a blue wave in the bay.
To consider your un-dilated right pupil (centered in a blue iris), your dilated left
(centered in another), the red, raynaudic blotches on your hands
and throat.
To consider the red lip you wear only once, and then promptly forget for other
vices.
To consider the narration emanating from your sick, blue life.
To consider the in-immediacy of your sick, blue life, a bushel of cornflowers in a
vase under a saffron shaft of light on your desk.
To consider a conflation of blues.
To consider blue’s relative acuity, its chronicality.
To consider acyanoblepsia: the non-perception of blue. 
To consider the figure-8 brace you try on in order to keep your shoulders in their
sockets.
To consider its resemblance to a sports bra under your thin mock neck top.
To consider the ways you live out your gender through the blue film of your illness.
To consider the reverse.
To consider the twin stars of illness and gender shining their blue light along the
round contour of one another.
To consider gender’s weird assemblage of language and body.
To consider its ineffability.
To consider the impossibility of translating one’s gender through the constantly
failing systems of language and body.
To consider your gratitude for a blue impossibility.
To consider gratitude despite.
To consider gratitude because, a bushel of cornflowers backlit by a wet sky in the
window.