Nur Ein XVI - Blue

[WreckdoMelle]

Blue - Brown Word and the Big Whine

Liner notes

Well I'm not sure I've met the challenge to bring my A-game on this - songs like this while simple are very hard for me to pull off well but it just wasn't physically, musically, or emotionally possible this time. The subject of loss has personally struck home with me, with the passing of my uncle, who I loved very much, on June 25. I wrote this song specifically about losing him, but wanted to extend it so that anyone who'd lost a friend might relate. And he was a friend to me, as well as my mom's brother. I think the lyrics can mostly be universal about all the things that start happening when grief strikes, the stunned and stunted feelings, the wishing more had been done, the desire to remember things as they had been and not how they turned out. I didn't cover anger here so much, it just isn't the space for that, but I wanted to express the many confusing aspects of grappling with sudden loss, as I had stuff to get off my own chest, and I had seen many expressions of grief surrounding the passing of the influential Song Fighter Blue, and maybe folks who are feeling his loss, or the loss of someone else they cared about, can find something here that they relate to. Best wishes all who are working through grief. And all who are not.

V1:
Well I heard the news
And it knocked me down cold
Never in a million years
Not with crystal ball foretold
I'm wandering dumbstruck
As the memories flood in
Inundating my heart
I'm riding high then drowning

Ch:
Blue - was the color of your eyes
Now it's the color of a long goodbye
The blue that runs into the cracks
Hard to believe you're never coming back
May your memory never fade
Keep on turning towards those better days
And if there's anyone waiting at the end
I hope that you're there my lovely friend

V2:
All this time you had been there
I turn and then you're gone
Unreality creeps in
Sun will set, return with dawn
I'm a thousand miles away
Couldn't have reached you so it seems
We're eternity apart
Chasm between life and dream

Middle:
The words come now but thin and cheap
Something to fill the emptiness
Something was off when last I saw you
Wish I'd really known how serious
But mustn't dwell on last rough years
Whenever we regale your story
You were a man so full of life
Return you to those days of glory

Chorus.

[thelowestbitter]

Liner Notes

I wanted to finish with 8 songs so here's a low key shadow that is definitely not my "A Game", but in the limited time I had to write I'm pretty pleased with how it came out. See you next year!

The Lowest Bitter - Blue (shadow)

my eyes used to be blue
they faded now to grey
it happened oh so slow
it's gradual,
how you drift away
I kept putting it off
until it was too late
years since we last spoke
I never knew you; now I'll never know
I think your eyes were... brown?
it's gradual,
how you drift away
I kept putting it off
until it was too late
my eyes used to be blue
they faded now to grey
it happened oh so slow
my eyes used to be blue
my eyes used to be blue
my eyes used to be blue
it happened oh so slow

[owl]

Crown Shy

Liner notes

Spoiler

cucumber melon.jpg (47.64 KiB) Viewed 575 times

...This is also Sun-Ripened Raspbery erasure. One of my strongest Proustian sense memories from high school is the clouds of aggressively fruity Country Pear and Sun-Ripened Raspberry lotions from Bath and Body Works that would fill the classroom whenever my classmates decided they desperately needed to moisturize in the middle of math.

Anyway, fittingly for the 4th of July when I'm submitting this song, here's a song about that whole teenage experience of feeling ugly and feeling like you don't belong anywhere, amplified by all the complexities of growing up Chinese-American, with a visibly Chinese name, in a society dominated by white beauty ideals. I actually don't remember if my friend Yu-Tin specifically actually had blue contacts but I do remember a lot of my classmates having colored circle lenses, which make your eyes look weirdly huge and also have a certain creepy uncanny valley effect.

I did in fact once buy a pink lipstick in junior high after seeing it on Claudia Schiffer on a magazine cover and carefully researching the shade, only to discover that what looks great on a blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned German supermodel doesn't look quite the same on an awkward, gawky little Asian girl with braces. And don't get me started on the perm I got. Maybe a subject for another song #blunderyears

The samples are from a couple of nature documentaries about bowerbirds, which love the color blue and attract mates by collecting dozens of blue objects and carefully arranging them around their home.

From one point of view, these adornments are better than feathers. Individual birds of paradise have no option over the shape and color of their plumes. They have to display with what their genes have given them. Bowerbirds, however, can choose.

If you could look like anyone
Who would you choose?
I'd be Claudia Schiffer on the cover of Vogue in 1992

Yu-Tin breezes into the bathroom
In a Sun-Ripened Raspberry cloud
Silver nails and a tan from the summer
And she's bleached her hair to golden brown
Prying open her eye in the mirror
Circle lens balanced on her finger
She blinks it in and wipes her tears away

And then her eyes are blue
Her eyes are blue
Like the sky, blue
She smiles
They're so blue

Blue is his favorite color. Bottle tops nicked from a nearby campsite are his proudest possessions. He has an eye for detail, too, placing them precisely for maximum visual impact.

I just want to be an all-American, corn-fed, apple pie girl
Milk-pale skin, calling my parents by their first names, hair that holds a curl
Prying open my eyes in the mirror
Trying to make them just a little bit bigger
Trying out names that sound a little bit whiter
Wishing my eyes were blue

Like the sky is blue
I wish my eyes were blue
All the pretty things are blue
I wish my eyes were blue

Like the sea is blue (Linger on, your pale blue eyes)
I wish my eyes could be blue
All the pretty things are blue (Linger on, your pale blue eyes)
I wish my eyes were blue

[Pigfarmer Jr]

Blue
Pigfarmer Jr

Blue is the color on my mind
Soon we will all run out of time
Few are the true friends we can find
From the way our friends in common talk about you

The skies are hidden by the gray
Hiding, the sun won't shine today
And I hear all the words they say
I feel like this because of the way they talk about you

And the colors don't look the same
When I hear them say your name
And the whiskey and the river both run dry

Blue is the color on my mind
Soon we will all run out of time
Few are the true friends we can find
From the way our friends in common talk about you
From the way our friends in common talk about you

[Adam!]

Blue
by Max Bombast

(All right now!)

You lied to me right to my face
You said you'd leave the trees and rivers in their place
You clear cut for a buck
A thousand-year-old grove
You dug up the earth's blood
Until the tailings overflowed

Our children won't remember
When the waters here where blue
You destroyed the splendor
And pretended there was nothing we could do

You filled the sky with the smoke of forest fires
You can't deny that it made your profits higher
You sent in your thugs with their clubs
To shut down all dissent
You took all the lands from their hands and
Burned them down without consent

Our children won't remember
When the sky above was blue
It stays red forever if we all believe there's nothing we can do

It's getting hotter
It's got me feeling blue
Can't drink the water
It's got me feeling blue
Our sons and daughters
Won't have the world we knew
Until we recognize that
We can't just do nothing anymore

This pale blue dot
The only world we'll know
It's all we got
Won't find another home
If you don't stop
Keeping the status quo
That's why we're taught
We can do nothing

It's getting hotter
It's got me feeling blue
Can't drink the water
It's got me feeling blue
Our sons and daughters
Won't have the world we knew
Until we recognize that
We can't just do nothing anymore

[crumpart]

Blue, Hot Pink Halo

Spoiler

The third in my Three Colours Blue Nur Ein Trilogy. The first was about Lapis Lazuli, the second was about Ultramarine, and this one is about Phthalocyanine Blue, one of the most useful and ubiquitous blue pigments ever developed.

This song is also a bit about the star Sirius.

***

I’m caught adrift
Lost out at sea and the
Tides are turning
I don’t know where I’ll land

I feel your pull
You overwhelm
You stare me down
I take the helm

I’m caught adrift
Lost out at sea and the
Tides are turning
I don’t know where I’ll land

I catch your eye
A single light
Minute and far away
I see you
Phthalocyanine Blue

I see you rise
You set sail upon my shore
You trace the sky
I watch you soar

I’m caught adrift
Lost out at sea and the
Tides are turning
I don’t know where I’ll land

I catch your eye
A single light
Minute and far away
I see you
Phthalocyanine Blue

We rise we fall
We move
We synthesise
So close, so far apart
Blue shifts, blue skies

I’m caught adrift
Lost out at sea and the
Tides are turning
I don’t know where I’ll land

I catch your eye
A single light
Minute and far away
I see you
Phthalocyanine Blue