There was nothing. And there was everything. And I can’t explain what that means.
Snippets, snapshots. Nothing every stayed. Everything always changes, but nothing really does. Because I’m still trapped in four walls, and the ghost in Jarman’s Blue is still trapped dying to a drip. (drip, drip). And even as I push and push, I’m still trapped within these four blue walls. Trapped inside the four walls of the screen, of the blue, of my apartment that’s painted blue. And he’s trapped, tethered to a line that he can’t escape from. You can’t just walk out with a drip. No, you have to watch bodies die, and I have to watch minds die.
Does the blue change? Sometimes it feels like it changes. Do the days change? They bleed together. Me in my chair on my computer, he in his room watching the sickness eat away.
And it’s an endless see of blue. The words sound blue and the whispers appear like ghosts in the corner of my eye. whispering. warning. threatening.
threatening the coming of fate. Fate that never stops coming, that never ends. Endless fate upon fate. We can’t escape fate. We can’t escape death. I can’t escape these four walls.
Endlessly trapped in a cycle, doomed to repeat day after day with no clear end. Cycles mean routine, and that’s good. Routine is good, it’s grounding. Routines mean nothing change, mean that we always do the same thing. We never change. I want to change. He wants to change.
and it glitches. It cuts. Reality fractures. I fracture. I’m not sure what is real anymore. Is the blue above me, is it below me? Is it all around? It’s got all blurry around the edges now. Life. The blue. Everything.
I know I feel blue after. I feel crawling down my back and arms. I feel the whispers that echoed behind the words of the narrator. And everything is blue. My black coffee table is tinted blue by the crystal blue sky outside.
I feel weird. Everything feels weird. But that’s life. Blue is life. It’s snippets, snatches. Only the interesting bits, because not everything can be interesting. Only the bits that feel like drowning. Drowning in death. Drowning in fate. In blue. Blue is his life, though I’m not sure who he is. Because he’s Jarman, but he’s not. Because no poetry is every truly just us. It’s a section of us, a fragment. Like the fragmented sections of Blue.
I feel as though I have no right to talk about it. Like I have no knowledge, no superiority to discuss the bits and pieces through it all. But I feel it. I feel it seeped into my bones, vibrating against my rib cage. Everyone can feel it. Can feel it through the screen.
And through headphones. Listen to it through headphones. Feel the whispers ripple through your body. Let your mind float while your body is still tethered to a screen.
Because Blue is floating. Floating through life, through his life. Blue is coping. With feeling trapped and isolated. With the creeping of death around the corner. Blue is everything, but it’s also nothing.
Gender & Sexuality in Film 
Love this response! I felt similarly in regards to the sense of displacement after watching the film. There is a very hypnotic and hazy quality to it. I wonder if that’s what Jarmann intended, which really would sadden me if it was. There’s so much pain in the film it makes me afraid of getting older
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The intensity that you experienced from the film echoes through your writing and is very palpable. I was fascinated and almost hypnotized by your writing, just as I was fascinated and nearly hypnotized by the hues of blue and nearly disjointed dialogue of the film. I can resonate with the deep feelings brought up by this film, the feeling of disorientation, and fear of aging. This film is very scary when you think of it as someone’s existence. You did a very good job of verbalizing those fears in your train of thought.
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