Clever blog name, isn't it? I feel like I should explain it, which involves a bit of talking about myself. It's really just three aspects of me, lain in lovely alliteration.
I am bright. No, really, I'm rather quite clever. I've accumulated hundreds of college course credits scattered across a half-dozen disciplines. I figure things out on my own. And let's call it what it is, they don't let dumb kids into Columbia. I'll refrain from getting too deep into this one, it simply doesn't do to be a braggart. You can judge my wit or lack thereof on your own.
I am, very much, and in several senses, blue. The most obvious sense in our hyper-partisan world is to call me a liberal - and in that sense, you can attach the bright part to this, too. In the words of the inimitable Molly Ivins, fish gotta swim, hearts gotta bleed. That's me. I'm not the type that believes in equality of outcome, just opportunity. I believe it's not enough to just wait for the tide to raise all boats, sometimes you gotta dig a few of the boats up out of the muck and shove 'em out to see and even then you may have to pull them back in, put them in dry dock, fix them, and push them back out again - because they're boats, and that's what you have to do with them. Likewise, people are not clean easily dealt with things. In a rising tide, left to their own devices, most will drown - because they don't know how to swim. You don't just let people drown any more than you just let boats sink. Fukuyama must be right. At the end of history, liberalism must win. If it does not, then we are willfully sacrificing the hopes and dreams of all mankind to whatever victor would claim them as its spoils.
Blue can also mean puritanical (and on some issues I am in fact a moral absolutist), profane or risque (ask me about the contra-bass some time), or melancholy - and that I am in spades. Having come thus far, everything that has gone on these last thirty years has left my whole being tinged over with something resembling a certain sadness, a resignation to all that is and shall be. It's the Moynihan quote on being Irish - but I'd add on to that. If the world is going to break my heart, if I know that now at the onset, then what difference does it all make? May as well I dance all the faster, sing all the louder, fight all the harder. If my heart shall break, then at least let it break spent, with nothing left within.
As to the last term of the three, well, I took the alternate spelling because the traditional one was taken. I do still think of myself as a boy, yes, even at thirty, and yes this is in no small part bound up with my sexual identity moreso than with my age. No, it is not because I consider myself the stereotypical "gay boi" - nothing could be much further from the truth. For this to make sense, we have to go down a bit of a deep rabbit hole, one that will be flagged when explored in future postings. For as dominant and domineering as I can come across professionally and academically, for as much in my politics and prose as I am a man of wide vision and booming voice, in my closest most intimate relationships, this all turns to submission. I have no real desire to be the "man of the house", even if I'm doing stereotypically male things (like owning the damn thing). I am unlikely to see myself and loathe to want to be the "important one" in the relationship. To me, this context is the one where I no longer need to be out in front, no longer need to be the avenging hero, but can just be my man's boy, with nothing more important to do than keep him happy. It is all the same strength and will - just a radically different manifestation of it.
So here has been your intro. You now have a little bit of a handle on who I am. On this and on all other posts comment and question as you will - some I'll answer, some I won't. All I ask is you enjoy you time with one bright blue boi, and re-share that far and wide.
