Fig 1: 1.1.21: St Mary’s Churchyard. Captured
with Sonar SX-70., J Sunderland 2021
Chronic Attentions of an Obsessed Mind Reading Maggie Nelson’s Bluets through a Polaroid Picture
J. E. Sunderland
N
elson is, undeniably, obsessed. Her Bluets1 are an ode to infatuation with a colour, a singular journey exploring this relationship with the metaphysical, through her own life and those of others who have pondered, fixated and realised their need to touch, embrace, absorb, b l u e. Nelson’s attentions in Bluets are surrounded with habitual practices, personal and abstract anecdotes, and questions around this seemingly primordial sentiment- something perhaps slightly sardonic considering the modernness of the word ‘blue’, compared to other primary colours which have a long established history, and contemporary considerations of its existence in the lives of humans- it was only about 6,000 years ago that blue started to become a colourant, that it ‘became’ a colour2, and only later still till it was named by the Egyptians, 14,000 years after the first cave paintings emerged3.
1 Maggie Nelson, Bluets (London: Wave Books, 2009). 2 https://www.dunnedwards.com/colors/specs/posts/color-blue-history [accessed 3 January 2021]. 3 David Alan Warburton, ‘Ancient Color Categories’, in Encyclopaedia of Color Science and Technology(New York: , 2014).
Similarly, the Polaroid ‘1.1.21: St Mary’s Churchyard’, taken by myself on the first day of the New Year, directs its attention towards something both abstract and very real, a metaphysical concept and physical truth that envelopes everyone in their entirety at some point. Much like blue, blueness, b l u e s: death, dying, the noth hh ing exists in two states, the real and the other, and this is why I direct your own attention to the two, to the interweaving relationship and divesting – something – that exists between Bluets and A Polaroid Picture: ‘1.1.21: St Mary’s Churchyard’. This little piece will tangle and untangle and likely blur your thoughts at parts, but will ultimately revel in the universal attention we pay to things and the things that are on the outside of our peripheral, waiting to be noticed, and how some of these are born (death, dying, nothing) and some are imbued later (blue, bluets, blueness). Where to begin? It can be safely assumed that the past year (2020), the global population has thought about one thing more than they may have before. The coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused an increased awareness and attentiveness to death, dying, the in between
FEATURE
grxmx magazine
19
