“But I’m quite sure that you’ll tell me | Just how I should feel today” ~ Lyrics to “Blue Monday,” by New Order

“Lake Superior, Sketch XLVII” (c1923, oil on panel)
by Lawren Harris

                   

“Blue Monday: Rain, debt and divorce make it worst day of the year” ~ From The Daily Mail (1/5/2014)

I had no idea this was a thing, an actual thing that people write about and talk about. Who knew?

“Bylot Island Sketch” (c1930, oil)
by Lawren Harris

Tidbits I picked up from various sites:

• In 2005, British academic Cliff Arnall claimed that Blue Monday, the third Monday of January, could be the most depressing day of the year, as anxieties replace holiday cheer and winter drags on.
• Cliff Arnall began calculating the happiest and gloomiest days of the year back in 2005 while working as a professor at Cardiff University in Wales.Arnall devised a Blue Monday formula that calculates factors such as weather, debt, time passed since Christmas, failed New Year’s resolutions, low motivation and the need to take action.While there is no scientific support for Arnall’s theory, some might find the formula 1/8W+(D-d)3/8xTQMxNA itself too depressing even to contemplate.
• He [Arnall] calculated the date using a variety of factors including weather conditions, debt levels, failed New Year’s resolutions and the number of days that had elapsed since the end of the Christmas holidays.But over the past three years, researchers analysed more than 2million tweets posted by Britons in January looking for negative language and phrases indicating a drop in mood.They found that today, there will be nearly five times the average number of tweets relating to guilt, as people abandon their promises to pursue a healthier lifestyle.The analysis, by drinks company Upbeat, also found complaints about the weather will be six times higher than usual – and men will feel more miserable than women.

  

  “Lake and Mountains” (1928)
  by Lawren Harris

  Today has also been dubbed Divorce Monday by legal experts. It is the most popular day of the year for starting divorce proceedings. And January is the busiest divorce month, with twice as many divorces being filed as the second most popular month September.

• Based on a number of factors, such as weather and post-holidays blues, it’s been suggested that the most depressing day of the year falls on the Monday of the last full week in January.The Calgary Counselling Centre is marking the day by offering a list of ways to beat the doldrums and make this particular Monday a little less blue.”As the holidays come to a close, the post-holiday stress is setting in. A combination of cold weather, bills piling up, returning to work and failed New Year’s resolutions, this time of year can be a challenge for many,” said the centre’s Tara Linsley.Although the science behind declaring Blue Monday the saddest day of the year is questionable, for many the blues they feel this time of year is real and is based on, among other factors, the long stretch of short winter days most Canadians have experienced up to this point, registered psychologist Trang Le told the CBC.”People tend to feel less energetic, less motivated and maybe a little more down than usual,” Le said, adding that as many as 10 per cent of Canadians may be affected by the resulting Seasonal Affective Disorder.

  

  “From the North Shore, Lake Superior” (1923 or 27, oil on canvas)
  by Lawren Harris

• There is even a website: BlueMonday, which I had a helluva time navigating and couldn’t for the life of me see the point.
• I found three Blue Monday songs, one by Fats Domino, which, when I listened to it,I recognized immediately; another is by New Order, and sounded way too lively to be blue Monday; the one I’m including here by Flunk is a remake of the New Order song, but I prefer it to the original.

It just seems like a bizarre marketing gimmick, somehow. And even the stories about it don’t mesh: The Daily Mail story cited January 6 as being Blue Monday, while others pinned it on the 20th. A certain day of the year? Really? Oddly enough, it’s been the only day in the last two weeks that I haven’t been weepy. Go figure.

So anyway, happy(?) Blue Monday.

More later. Peace.

Flunk’s “Blue Monday”

                    

Blue Monday

Blue of the heaps of beads poured into her breasts

and clacking together in her elbows;

blue of the silk

that covers lily-town at night;

blue of her teeth

that bite cold toast

and shatter on the streets;

blue of the dyed flower petals with gold stamens

hanging like tongues

over the fence of her dress

at the opera/opals clasped under her lips

and the moon breaking over her head a

gush of blood-red lizards.

Blue Monday. Monday at 3:00 and

Monday at 5. Monday at 7:30 and

Monday at 10:00. Monday passed under the rippling

California fountain. Monday alone

a shark in the cold blue waters.

                     You are dead: wound round like a paisley shawl.

                     I cannot shake you out of the sheets. Your name

                     is still wedged in every corner of the sofa.

                     Monday is the first of the week,

                     and I think of you all week.

                     I beg Monday not to come

                     so that I will not think of you

                     all week.

You paint my body blue. On the balcony

in the softy muddy night, you paint me

with bat wings and the crystal

the crystal

the crystal

the crystal in your arm cuts away

the night, folds back ebony whale skin

and my face, the blue of new rifles,

and my neck, the blue of Egypt,

and my breasts, the blue of sand,

and my arms, bass-blue,

and my stomach, arsenic;

there is electricity dripping from me like cream;

there is love dripping from me I cannot use—like acacia or

jacaranda—fallen blue and gold flowers, crushed into the street.

                         Love passed me in a blue business suit

                         and fedora.

                         His glass cane, hollow and filled with

                         sharks and whales …

                         He wore black

                         patent leather shoes

                         and had a mustache. His hair was so black

                         it was almost blue.

                         “Love,” I said.

                         “I beg your pardon,” he said.

                         “Mr. Love,” I said.

                         “I beg your pardon,” he said.

                         So I saw there was no use bothering him on the street

                         Love passed me on the street in a blue

                         business suit. He was a banker

                         I could tell.

So blue trains rush by in my sleep.

Blue herons fly overhead.

Blue paint cracks in my

arteries and sends titanium

floating into my bones.

Blue liquid pours down

my poisoned throat and blue veins

rip open my breast. Blue daggers tip

and are juggled on my palms.

Blue death lives in my fingernails.

If I could sing one last song

with water bubbling through my lips

I would sing with my throat torn open,

the blue jugular spouting that black shadow pulse,

and on my lips

I would balance volcanic rock

emptied out of my veins. At last

my children strained out

of my body. At last my blood

solidified and tumbling into the ocean.

It is blue.

It is blue.

It is blue.

~ Diane Wakoski

Advertisement