the memory of blue

I watched a movie about a blind man today and although they didn't say it in the film, I realized why in almost every movie ever made about blindness, people talk about the color blue.

It's because blue is the color of the sky, and blue is what we see when we look up, or out towards the horizon. It is the color of what lies beyond, of what can be and what is possible, further than the here and now. It is the color of the unknown future that we sense but are unable to understand except as the most inexplicable of sparks somewhere within ourselves. And because blue is so large, so vast and so wide, it encompasses what we know, what we do not know and what we do not yet know.

In 1993, Derek Jarman made a film entitled "Blue", in which he talked - among other things - about his life and approaching death. At the time he made the film, he was blind and dying of AIDS-related complications. Blue was the last color he saw. He talked about images and how the visual and the concept of meaning relate to each other.

Perhaps it is like a Rothko painting, how it washes over you, with that peculiar sense of suspension and falling forwards and backwards at the same time.

Blue is infinite. It goes on forever.