Some great advice I’ve gotten for when things feel like they’re spiraling out of control, one coping mechanism is to narrow your focus to the point you feel you can handle things. For example, with…(gesturing vaguely), I find myself capable of focusing on the cat napping on my lap and not much more. Narrowing the scope of life to the closest, most mundane, most normal things as possible has been my lifeline lately, and I’ve found no better literary reminder of that lifeline than Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car, a graphic novel stuffed with vignettes each highlighting the power of the ordinary.
Per Bolton’s author’s note, there’s not anything specifically autobiographical in Blue Sky; it’s not a memoir. But that feeling of authenticity comes across in every page in sometimes big but usually small ways. From grief over a lost loved one to a personal connection to a clip in a YouTube compilation video to a silent treatment in a furniture store, these little independent moments are strung together like pearls on a string.
Each of the stories is only a few pages long, and both text and pictures are spare. It’s a testament to Bolton’s skill, then, that each manages to include such depth. Within a handful of panels, a simplistic figure on the page becomes a person we might have run into at a party or sat next to on the bus, or it could feel like some manifestation of a moment that has lingered despite the reader never telling family or friends about it.
There’s a paradox in writing, an inverse relationship between generalizations and specificity. New writers and creatives often fall into the trap of trying to broaden the scope of their work to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, not understanding that doing so strips every ounce of soul from the thing they’re making. Conversely, telling a specific story with specific details makes it feel real, and even if someone hasn’t had that precise thing happen to them, they’re bound to have had something close enough for that written moment to resonate with them. I don’t know what it’s like seeing my father in his unspoken prime on an internet video, but I do know what it’s like for a parent to stay mum about something that may be both a source of pride and regret. I’ve never side-swiped anyone, but I know what it’s like to keep a detail to myself to make “our” “how we met” story better. And reading Blue Sky was a reminder that I’m not the only one who sometimes both takes for granted and gets swept up in the marvel that we are alive.
I read Blue Sky, and then I immediately turned around and demanded my partner read it. When he was done, I read it again. It’s short. That’s something you can do, that kind of reading and recommending and rereading, all within the span of a weekend afternoon. Just like you can take a bus ride that ends up changing the way you view the world, or fall in love and it’s magical but only for a few days. Blue Sky is a reminder of that, and in that reminder is the truth that there are hundreds of those kinds of moments that happen all around us all the time, and instead of being overwhelming like…(gestures vaguely), it’s really kind of remarkable. And it is, it really is.
Ring Reads 