For Blue, art was ongoing. It was as much about the way the artist projected her voice when she yelled at her neighbor to turn down his music, or grumbled into her coffee in the morning, as it was about what she did onstage. Real art couldn’t stop and start any more than life could. So either I was that little girl apologizing on Blue’s answering machine, or I was the artist who knew how to sing from a place so low it made her gut shake. I could be either. But I couldn’t be both.
