Rebooting Blues

Franz Marc, The Blue Fox

Is the blue fox anything like the black dog? As I get ready to close this blog (although not to delete it) and embark on a successor, I've been trying to arrive at a name that will be just right. I decided it ought to have "blue" in the title, for multiple reasons. It is a beloved hue, that of sea and sky, and it also denotes melancholia, which seems to me the paradigmatic mental disorder.

For Novalis and the German Romantics, the "blue flower" also symbolized the unattainable object of the poetic quest. I thought about simply naming the new blog "The Blue Flower," but that is a bit, well, flowery, not to mention the fact that several blogs--most of them defunct by now of course--have borne that title already (as did Penelope Fitzgerald's wondrous historical novel about Novalis's short life). So I thought about "The Blue Blossom" or "The Blue Bloom," but these were either too alliterative or too, well, "blooey."

I love both the color and the word "ultramarine" ("beyond the sea"), but a long-dead blog already bears that title. Similarly "lapis lazuli," but that would be a bit baffling. "The Blue Book" or "The Blue Blog" would be nicely whimsical, but little more, and are probably already taken too. I considered "bolt from the blue," but it seemed trite; "the blue bulletin" seemed flat. "The blue bulb" carries the intriguing double meaning, both botanical and incandescent, but somehow didn't seem to flow.

So I thought about borrowing a blue phrase from Emily Dickinson, my poetic ideal. Her poems famously mention "my blue peninsula" as well as "a slash of blue," but believe it or not, now-expired blogs have used those titles also. Other instances include "breadths of blue," "withes of supple blue," and "inns of molten blue." Finally appeared the blue example that struck Goldilocks as being just right:

The Brain -- is wider than the Sky --
For -- put them side by side --
The one the other will contain
With ease -- and You -- beside --

The Brain is deeper than the sea --
For -- hold them -- Blue to Blue --
The one the other will absorb --
As Sponges -- Buckets -- do --

The Brain is just the weight of God --
For -- Heft them -- Pound for Pound --
And they will differ -- if they do --
As Syllable from Sound --

Blue to Blue--that's it, reflecting the refracting contributions of psychiatry and poetry, and without the stiff quasi-professional patina of Ars Psychiatrica. Blue to Blue juxtaposes brain and Earth, the vastness of the one rivaling the enormity of the other. Other areas of medicine deal merely with the humdrum body, while psychiatry confronts the universe of consciousness. "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, if it were not that I have bad dreams," Hamlet said. Poetry at its best acts as a rupture in reality, swinging open a portal onto the void.

As subtitle I'm thinking of "Psychology, Speculation, and Sea Change" (I'm a sucker for sibilants). According to Ariel:

Full fathom five thy father lies.
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

This summons another fascination, that of self-transformation, by self and of self by the sea of media and molecular influences we swim in. What about ourselves can be changed? How and how much? Should we change or merely accept?

The new blog's content will probably be similar to this, although with more emphasis on poetry (perhaps even--groan--some of my own). Under construction.

Addendum: Yes, others came to mind--"Blue Lagoon," "Baby Blue," "Blue Devil," and "Blue's Clues"--but, alas, all already used. "Cyanotic" might still be available, come to think of it.