I’ve been falling in love with a shade of blue that I can’t stop running into. It’s been following me everywhere, like my angel numbers or The Grudge, but every time I see it feels like the first. It’s a blue the color of snow melt — sort of a PANTONE 13-1420 or what Benjamin Moore calls “Whispering Spring,” and I think it might be the most romantic color we have.
We’ve decided unanimously, perhaps irreversibly, that today is red, and I would never deny us all the things that come with it — roses and cheeks smudged with lipstick — but I want to propose that red needs to be tempered, balanced. The volatility innate in scarlet and crimson needs the calming effects of my blue. It’s simple color theory, like putting green concealer on a zit or using purple shampoo on white hair.
Red shouts, my blue whispers. Red means passion, my blue is intimacy. The color of a Tiffany’s box or the ceiling of the Great Hall at Grand Central, it evokes a sense of conspiracy and closeness, like anyone seeing the color must first be granted access, and is thus uniquely privileged in doing so. It’s just between us, me and you and the blue. It’s the color of linings and interiors, and it’s the color of shells. It’s a robin’s egg, encasing something incomparably vulnerable with such delicacy and ephemerality, made to be opened once ready and not a moment before, and only by the thing that it shrouds.
In turn, I think any clothes in this color project this amazing Trojan horse effect of jaw-dropping beauty and the most intense sex appeal, too. No matter how modest the hemline or how opaque the fabric, my blue’s associations trigger an almost Pavlovian response. We’re seeing something meant to be secret or personal, something that belongs only to the wearer, and it’s very special that they’re letting us.
If I were going out with the love of my life tonight instead of doing what I am doing which is going kickboxing with my roommates (maybe the only thing just as good), I’d be wearing my blue. Like this:
Mr. Larkin Babette Skirt (the entire collection they launched today moved me to near tears)
My Most Perfect Love Songs
There’s so much wrapped up in being wrapped up in somebody else — insecurity, resentment, desperation, personally speaking. And maybe this is the stuff of great art, and why so many love songs vibrate with a sense of melancholy, if not in lyrics than in tone. “I Can’t Help Falling In ___” and “To Make You Feel My ___” are undeniably beautiful, but if you choose them at karaoke you’re a narc. Elvis sings like he wants you to make a blood oath if you haven’t already.
In contrast, I’m loving love songs that sound more like initials carved into trees — less serious, but still forever. Love songs that start at a hundred and stay plateaued there until they fade out, maybe after a triumphant key change. Love songs with no “but,” just “you’re so pretty and we have such a great time it’s so awesome!!!”
Here’s my syllabus:
Too Late To Turn Back Now by Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose
This is the song that birthed a movement for me. It came while I was sitting with my friend at a bar unpacking the same months-old breakups, respectively, and the strings that open the first verse slapped me right in my woebegone face. It’s physically impossible not to sway your head from side to side and blush. And I love the way he says “little woman.”
Your Smiling Face by James Taylor
This song is so explicit in its unabashed effusiveness that it verges on mathematical. If X then Y, where X = I see your smiling face and Y = I’ve got to smile myself because I love you. Next question!
More by Bobby Darin
Like in elementary school when I told my brother “I hate you times infinity” to really get in front of hatred bidding war Bobby Darin made this the best love song ever by declaring “more than the greatest love the world has known” in the opening line. Case closed. Also this is what I mean when I talk about a deeply powerful key change.
You Make Loving Fun by Fleetwood Mac
“Sweet wonderful you / You make me happy with the things you do.” Sexy but in a really cool and neutered-ly innocent way.
For Once in My Life by Stevie Wonder
The sound of walking down the street shooting finger guns and blowing kisses to everyone you pass. “This is MINE! You can’t take it!!”