What Color is “Almost Blue”? [ Listening Notes]
Now your eyes are red from crying
Almost blue
I was sitting in my college dorm, the rain outside scattering and blending with the soft drum brushes and Chet Baker’s gritty, breathy voice, sighing alongside the trumpet. Everything in this song is so tender it hurts, just so beautifully solemn. The drum felt like the swish of a passerby’s rainboots outside the door, the piano like raindrops falling from the roof, and the trumpet like the soft wind that howls quietly against your ear. It was April, but it was so cold.
I found this in my notes, I had written it that evening, at 6:39 PM. It read:
“You are the real thing
And maybe that’s enough
You are something I can reach out and touch, you are there
And maybe that’s enough.”
I think, that was my answer to the lyrics:
Almost blue
Almost touching
It will almost do.
There is a part of me that’s always true
Almost touching
It will almost do.
There is a part of me that’s always true
Strangely, I wasn’t feeling pure, simple sadness, and it confused me because I felt exactly what it meant to be almost blue. So then I asked myself: what color is almost blue, and what does it feel like?
Is it a violet, slowly diffusing into blue as your eyes redden, as that ache gathers in your throat?
Maybe it is a color that can’t be defined.
Maybe “almost blue” is the feeling of almost being able to grasp this longing and sorrow for a person, but not being able to show the colors to them. So you have to find a replacement body to be almost them, almost blue. It is like torture not being able to even feel blue because the feeling is for a different person, a different longing. There is no release, no space for the things you want to say.
Maybe “almost blue” is the refusal to accept that the end is near, that maybe your story has already concluded, because a fairytale ending can’t be tragic.
Maybe “almost blue” is the quiet melancholy, the color not taking form, emotions not yet consolidated into a single shade of blue.
Maybe “almost blue” is the faded memory of the original color, where now everything and everyone is just more diluted as you search for that feeling again and again.
Maybe “almost blue” is the mourning of a love that was never fully there, where the what ifs mask the pain of waiting.
Flirting with this disaster became me
It named me as the fool who only aimed to be
It named me as the fool who only aimed to be