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I was feeling blue yesterday. I don’t understand why. I had a good cardio workout and was feeling good. But I could feel a funk settling in on me. It wasn’t a paralyzing fetal position depression, as I’ve had just a few times.

But I forced myself to get up and move about. That seemed to help a bit.

I was curious where the expression ‘feeling blue’ originated. I ended up down a road I didn’t know existed.

Blue has several meanings as a hard-working adjective: blue moon, blue Monday, blue blood, blue-collar worker.

It has long been associated with royalty. Then it was strongly associated with navy uniforms.

Some psychologists claim blue is hard-wired into our psyche.

I’ll limit my curiosity about blue to the art world: Its history, chemistry, and symbolism.

The earliest forms of blue pigment came from semi-precious limestone rock. The Silk Road was the route through which the pigment spread around the world for 6,000 years. It was used in Tutankhamen’s headdress.

Early mankind had no access to blue because it doesn’t exist in the soil. Thus, it came to be regarded as mystical because of its rarity.

Egyptian blue was developed about 4,500 years ago. When the Roman Empire declined, the colour temporarily vanished from cultural use

Ultramarine blue was popular during the Italian Renaissance, particularly in Western art. At times, it was worth more than gold. Christian iconography used blue as a sacred colour, again for its rarity. One shade was called ‘Marian Blue’ for the Virgin Mary.

Indigo was the next blue to come onto the scene. It caused small wars and skirmishes. Issac Newton, in 1672, published indigo in his colour spectrum. In 1913, the blue was extracted from the indigo plant. This was just in time to colour our blue jeans.

Picasso had a ‘blue period in the early 1900s, often using Prussian blue. His paintings often reflected his period of depression.

Yes, this is the beginning of the connection between blue and the funk I recently experienced.

Please give this a bit of a think. Are there moods you have that you describe with a colour? Do these moods last only momentarily, or do they seem to settle in for quite a while? How do you move out of and past these negative moods?

Please comment: Send me an email with your bit of a think. I am curious about your thoughts.

Photo by Antoine Rault on Unsplash

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