An Interview with Amy Key, Author of ARRANGEMENTS IN BLUE: NOTES ON LOVING AND LIVING ALONE

The Joni Mitchell album Blue resonates throughout Arrangements in Blue as a touchstone - Mitchell’s songs run parallel to your own life experiences of romance, solitude, and the will to write about your family and friends candidly. Why is Joni such a powerful artist for you, and how is your book in concert with Mitchell’s music?

I think it’s in part because I encountered Joni’s music and Blue at such a formative age. A time when all my independent ideas about the world and my dreams for myself began to take shape. Joni was a truly adult musician to be a fan of, listening to her was evidence I was edging out of teenage fandom and getting beyond (though I love it!) pop music. Joni describes how when she wrote Blue she felt like she had ‘no secrets from the world’ – was utterly ‘without defenses’. I like to think of my book as infused by, rather than about Blue. I took a lyric from each song as a jumping off point to explore different aspects of making a meaningful life – from ideas of home, family and self-love, to intimacy, travel, sex, grief and friendship. In this way I collaborated with Joni’s music and lyrics, made something new that grew out of my relationship with them.

The opening Dedication page of Arrangements in Blue reads, “This book is for anyone who needs a love story of being alone.” We’re at a time worldwide in which we’re all emerging from startling solitude: sheltering in place during a pandemic, nesting inside social media, reconfigurations of how we work, play, celebrate, even date. What did writing this book teach you about solitude, and what lessons can we apply to our present moment?

Writing the book made me newly appreciate some aspects of living and making a life alone. It made me slow down and consider all the ways in which pleasure, security, fun, comfort and peace can be found in solitude. But alongside that I found a different appreciation of togetherness, perhaps became more intentional and discerning in how I spend time with others. I think is there’s any lesson we can all attempt to learn it is to appreciate what is unique about our conditions at any way time, not to dismiss or deny longing for something different, but to try to enjoy solitude and enjoy togetherness in the moment, rather than allowing our hankering for things to be another way to intrude.

You speak so artfully about how you design your home: “Creation of my private domestic space is a kind of romance: aesthetically speaking, I wear my heart on my sleeve. Minimalism disturbs me, leaves me guessing: what does this sparse person love, and who? I layer colour, texture, pattern and, like loading a plate at a buffet, I’m not too worried about what goes with what.” What’s inspired you of late in designing your home? What is your space looking like these days, and what within it has felt most romantic to you?

Thank you! I recently visited Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex, UK. It was the home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and it was almost overwhelming in how it moved and inspired me. The house – its walls, its furniture, its textiles were all hand-painted, hand-printed, hand-stenciled by its inhabitants. The result is something both joyful and tranquil, elegant and homely. I immediately returned home to paint my bedside table, to loosen myself from a fear of being amateurish, or getting it wrong and just play. In terms of what feels most romantic about my home, it’s definitely how cozy I make it. A bunch of cheap supermarket flowers shared between vases throughout my flat, lots of blankets and cushions, warm and inviting lighting with candles and lamps.

There’s a beautiful line in the book in which you write, “When we affirm ourselves, we are borrowing the voice of a friend to help us believe in our worth.” On the verge of publishing a memoir, are you finding affirmation in the act of having written this book? How do you feel about your voice possibly being one that helps the reader believe in their own worth?

This is the thing I hope for most. It feels vulnerable and scary to talk about life without romantic love at its center because it’s something that has made me feel ashamed and lonely throughout my life. I thought there was something wrong with me. I don’t think that now and more than that I’ve come to think it would be good for everyone to knock romantic love off its perch – to question its place at the center of experience. I hope readers of the book who share my experience – and those you don’t but do relate to the idea of living with the absence of something deeply desired – feel accompanied by the book in future. And perhaps that might make them feel emboldened, more hopeful and ideally, more loved.