Almost Blue - Softcover

If you listen carefully, you can almost hear him taking a breath and opening his mouth to sing the first A in Almost. It sounds so tight it seems more like a long O. Al–most–blue . . . with two pauses. He takes two breaths. You just know—you can tell—that his eyes are closed.

That’s why I like "Almost Blue;" you have to sing it with your eyes closed.

My eyes are closed even when I’m not singing. I’m blind. I’ve been blind since I was born. I’ve never seen colors or light or movement of any kind. I listen.

I scan the silence around me the way an electronic scanner sweeps the airwaves for sounds and voices, tuning automatically into any and all frequencies. I know how to use both my scanners perfectly, the internal one that I’ve had in my head for the past twenty-five years, ever since I was born, and the electric one in my room next to my stereo. If I had any friends, I know they’d call me Scanner. I’d like that.

But I don’t have any friends. It’s my own fault. I just don’t understand them. They talk about things that have nothing to do with me, they use words like lucid, opaque, luminous, invisible. Like in the bedtime story that my parents used to tell me when I was little to help me fall asleep—there was a beautiful princess whose skin was so clear it seemed transparent. I spent many sleepless nights wondering about that word before I understood that transparent means you can see into it.

For me, it means that you can poke your fingers through it.

Colors, too, have different meanings for me. Colors have a voice, colors make sounds, just like other things, so that I can distinguish between them. Identify them. Understand them. Azure, for example, with that z in the middle, is the color of zabaglione, zebras, and zinnias. Vases, violins, and vixen are all violet; a loud yell is always yellow. I can’t imagine black but I know it is the color of barrenness, of bleakness, the black hole of emptiness.

But it’s not just a question of alliteration. Some colors signify the very idea that they contain. For the sound of the idea inside them. Green, with that harsh r sound that scratches and flares its way out of the middle of the word, is the color of something that scathes and burns, like the sun. But blue, on the other hand, is the color of beauty. For example, for me, a pretty girl might have blonde hair, but a truly beautiful girl would be barefoot, brave, and have blue hair.

Some colors even have shapes. Something large and round is definitely red. But shapes aren’t as interesting; I don’t understand them. To understand them, you have to touch them, and I don’t like touching things or people. Besides, you can only touch things that are nearby. By listening and imagining I can travel further. I like sounds better.

That’s why I use my scanner. Every night I go up to my room in the attic and put on Chet Baker. I always put on the same record because I like the sound of his trumpet, all those deep, precise p sounds. I like the way he sings slowly, the way his voice seems to come from a place somewhere behind his throat. You can tell it’s hard for him to find his voice and that to find it he has to close his eyes and concentrate really hard. "Almost Blue" is my favorite song. I always play it first, even though it’s the last track on the record. I wait all day for that moment at night when the trumpet, the bass, the piano, and his voice come together and fill the emptiness inside my head.

Then I turn on the scanner and listen to the city.

I’ve never seen Bologna, but I know it well, even if it’s probably my own imaginary Bologna. It’s a big city: almost three hours.

I know that, because once I tuned to the CB radio of a truck and followed it for the whole time it was within the range of my scanner. The truck driver never stopped talking on it, from the moment he first appeared on the scanner until he disappeared. He talked his way across the city.