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Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Love and Making a Life

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There is a moment in the text where Key discusses her expectations of vacationing as a twenty-something. The glamour she assumed it would bestow, transforming her into a more sophisticated, confident self. But no matter how often she traveled, or where, she always brought the self she was with her. She writes about wanting “the kind of travel I thought went hand in hand with romantic love,” which entailed “staged photos at sunset…hot tubs…to suddenly look chic in a wide-brimmed straw hat.” In other words, luxury was firmly attached to Key’s fantasies of romantic love. “I ached,” she writes, “for the status of relationship that a luxurious holiday would make obvious.” There absolutely is something inherently luxurious about romantic love. Someone outside of yourself appreciating things about you that only another person would notice. Showering you with something beyond kindness. Desiring not only sexual intimacy, but your mere proximity because it comforts them. These are all things that can turn a person into a work of art. Imagine the Mona Lisa coming to life, and holding memories in her mind of the millions who have admired her over the years. We hold ourselves differently when secure in the knowledge of being thoroughly appreciated. This is likely the reason those who are attached get chatted up more often than when they were single. They exude the confidence of the wanted.

When I am cooking, I sing a line from Joni’s ‘My Old Man’ to myself, ‘the bed’s too big, the frying pan’s too wide’. That’s what the couple sharing the pillow brought to mind: they seemed like the kind of couple who’d never spent a night apart. I love my empty bed; it never feels too big for me. And I’ve slept alone for so many years that I find it hard to share a bed these days. The frying pan on the other hand. The frying pan has an altogether different intimate energy. Perhaps it’s because people so often fry eggs for someone they love. And to eat eggs together suggests a synchronised hunger, suggests sleeping and waking together, and says please linger, please stay. Perhaps it’s the sweet balance of ‘you cook and I’ll wash up’, how the pan moves from one person’s job to another, and the ordinariness of that joint endeavour. Anahit Behrooz: There’s a really interesting tension in Arrangements in Blue between a yearning for romantic love and a decentring of it. Why was it so important to remain in this irreconcilable state? AK: Yeah. I think there is always a gap between what you want for yourself and what you intend, and I feel a lot more committed to working against that. In my twenties and early thirties, I wasn’t asking myself what I really wanted; I was just responding to what other people wanted from me.Arrangements in Blue” had everything to be a book I loved: Joni Mitchell’s Blue, one of the formative albums of my life, analyzed through the eyes of a woman’s life, each chapter a theme (grief, love, home life, vacations). In Arrangements in Blue Amy Key finds a language, searing in its depth and honesty, for desire, shame, grief and, crucially, for compassion. Kayo Chingonyi, A Blood Condition

key's prose is luminous and poetic throughout the book, but it particularly shines in the later chapters. i loved the "crazy" chapter detailing her experiences with men which lasted months and years but never fell under the placeholder of "partner/boyfriend" and found it very relatable. key's candour about these relationships (because yes! you are allowed to call them relationships) is so refreshing - i often feel women are pressured into diminishing the impact of the people who treat us badly, especially if this happens outside the limits of a clearly defined romantic partnership. her description of caring for her friend and mentor roddy lumsden through his illness and eventually mourning him after his death is painfully honest but shot through with such tenderness that i nearly cried listening to it. and the final chapter is a beautiful end to the book, with such warm and hopeful reflections on human connection and care outside and within romantic love. Amy Key—a writer “of rare and strange magic” ( Guardian)—probes the art of living without romance in this soul-stirring debut.Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue- an album that shaped Key's expectations of love - as her guide, she examines the unexpected life she has created for herself. Building a home, travelling alone, choosing whether to be a mother, recognising her own milestones, learning the limits of self-care and the expansive potential of self-friendship, Key uncovers the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed. Like the beloved songs and poems that pepper it, Arrangements in Blue transforms the hyper-personal into a tender, universal portrait of fashioning a life on your own terms. Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - an album that shaped Key's expectations of love - as her guide, she examines the unexpected life she has created for herself. Building a home, travelling alone, choosing whether to be a mother, recognising her own milestones, learning the limits of self-care and the expansive potential of self-friendship, Key uncovers the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed.

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