Blue

Some albums suit certain seasons. 

For twenty years now, October has been the month when I think, "I need to listen to Joni Mitchell's Blue." (Caveat: last October, experiencing the existential fear and angst of a brain tumor diagnosis and emergency neurosurgery in New Zealand, I wanted as much escapist pop as possible.)

I don't recall what circuitous route brought me to Blue, which singer-songwriters then in heavy rotation on my CD player kept citing it as an influence. I knew of Joni already by that point: I owned her arguably more "accessible" Ladies of the Canyon album, which included "Big Yellow Taxi," "Woodstock" (covered by Crosby, Stills, and Nash) and "The Circle Game" (which has always sounded like it belongs in a montage in a Lifetime movie). And it seemed like every newly-minted "lesbian" on campus could quote the chorus to the song "Both Sides Now" off Joni's Clouds album.

Something was different for me about Blue. I only know that when I first heard the opening lines to "All I Want," with the repetition of "traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling" like the momentum of new love itself, I simultaneously wondered why I hadn't always listened to it and felt as though I had always known it. (This would happen again a few years later, when I first heard Joan Armatrading, an introduction that was equally overdue.)

It's an album full of deep melancholy and longing. Say what you will about the cliche of associating such emotions with seasonal change/falling leaves/crisp New England weather: it holds true for me, as I've been reminded the past few days.


But there are different kinds of blues, and on a truly different "blue" note, I got out the navy and white Ferragamo spectator shoes on Tuesday and wore them for the first time since early May 2010 (they've been carefully boxed, because I knew they'd never survive the tropics). These are one of my favorite ever eBay purchases, not only because they make me feel like I could dance like Michael Jackson or that I belong in this scene, but because they were only $30 or something ridiculous:

I paired these with another great eBay purchase, my Marc Jacobs wool pinstripe pants with the hot pink piping (just visible in photo above).

To top it off (so to speak), I wore a shiny Thomas Pink shirt with cufflinks from IMOOI that I bought in April at the RISD Museum Store the day after my first post-radiation visit to my new oncologist. Sometimes you need a reward - and sometimes you just don't want to struggle with the cheap nylon versions of "silk knot" cufflinks.

While I'll never have a collection of shirts like Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan, ("covet," indeed! and Adler's belt!) these cufflinks brighten anything in French cuffs. Even melancholy me.