The Wit’s Guide to Blue

Or, strategic ambluguity

Da ba dee da ba di

Back when I aspired to be one of the Sad Young Literary Men, I cultivated a small collection of books on the general topic of melancholia. So much less pharmaceutical than depression! The NYRB reissue of Richard Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy is there, as is Rick Moody’s The Black Veil and John Bentley Mays’ In the Jaws of the Black Dogs. And then I picked up an elegant edition of what seemed like the perfect addition to this sad sagging shelf: On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry by William Gass.

“Clara’s blue eyes were as innocent as if they had entered their sockets a half-hour ago.”
— Ben Hecht

Against Happiness against Against Depression!

So you can imagine my surprise when I realized how dirty the book was! Gass lists all of the uses of blue, the movies, pencils, moons, dahlias, laws, balls, and beards, noting that this “random set of meanings has softly gathered around the word the way lint collects.” But he defaults to a blue streak of gorgeously constructed sentences such as “I should like to suggest that at least on the face of it a stroke by stroke story of copulation is exactly as absurd as a chew by chew account of the consumption of a chicken’s wing” and also “There are a number of difficulties with dirty words, the first of which is that there aren’t nearly enough of them; the second is that the people who use them are normally numskulls and prudes; the third is that in general they’re not at all sexy, and the main reason for this is that no one loves them enough.” And so a blue problem has a blue solution: Set the sad young literary men to work sexing up the blue vocabulary. Then, give them all blue ribbons.

“I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies.”
— Brendan Gill

Never mess with the strategic ambiguity (ambluguity) of blue. When Eiffel 65 released the song I’m Blue in 1999, it was universally hailed as the pinnacle of eurodance. But when Bebe Rexha and David Guetta updated the song in 2023 as I’m Good (Blue), it was more like I’m Blue (Mouthbreather Remix). There’s a fine blue line between clever and stupid, and to be clear, both of these songs are stupid. Only one is blue.

“Your eyes shine like the pants of my blue serge suit.”
— Groucho Marx

Blue’s Clues was a popular children’s show in the 1990s brought to my attention by its inclusion in Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point. The point was that Sesame Street was tired and Blue’s Clues was wired, I think? Today, Bluey is some sort of Australian children’s show that people who cohabitate with infants talk about incessantly. What I am about to propose to you is this: They are the same show. This is a perfect example of a theory too good to test. And if you sputter that of course they are not, I would chuckle to myself, raise one eyebrow, and murmur, “Aren’t they, though?”

“You don’t have to travel around the world to understand that the sky is blue everywhere.”
— Goethe

Ultimately, so many things have been blue for so long that the colour means everything to no one and vice versa. And if a Canadian looks long enough at colour, they see you. And thus the quotation I found this week that has aged the most peculiarly, almost like a blue cheese:

“Whenever you catch yourself thinking that women are saints and angels, be sure you take a blue pill.”
— Norman Douglas

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“The Earth is blue like an orange.”
— Paul Elúard

I like the pattern of toggling between the ineffable and the effable, so let’s try not to eff it up next week.

I guess that’s why they call it Issue 316 of Get Wit Quick. If you order your steak blue, be prepared to chew. The newsletter mascot is an Edmontonian magpie named Magnus after the magician in Robertson Davies’ Deptford Trilogy. The title font is Vulf Sans, the official typeface of the band Vulfpeck. The book was Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Enough taps on the ❤️ might turn it blue?

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All my GWQ VIPs get just a little bit more each week in a special segment we’re definitively calling Quip Service. Theme music TBA. This week:

Two things to say about polyamory.
OK, fine, three things!