I'm sure that I'll make dozens of
playlists for Blue before I'm finished writing stories about her.
It's safe to say, I've never created a character I felt as much
kinship with as Blue. She does reflect me in many ways, but she is
very much not me, as well. I've been writing about her for so long
now, she feels like an old friend. I still write about her because I
guess I want to know how her life is going, sort of like checking in
on her from time to time.
This particular playlist is a favorite
of mine and it contains several songs that have made me think about
Blue for years, but didn't make it onto the Notorious Nelfkin Rebel
list for one reason or another. Let
Me Touch You for a While has
long been one of my favorites to listen to when I'm writing Blue. On
the other hand, I found some new tracks for this list, like Lost
Dog,
that I just adore. I hope y'all enjoy this playlist as much as I do.
- Rachel
1. Blessing – Maura O'Connell
“Life isn't
easy. No one ever said it was. But if you are lucky, you will love
and be loved.”
Notes: Blue is
a salt of the earth kind of gal. She comes from an agrarian culture
and is used to hard times. As such, it seemed right to include a
track like Blessing. She
can seem like a pessimistic character at times but she does believe
that most people are good and kind, and that if she keeps the faith
and works hard, she will be rewarded for her efforts.
2. Poor Man's House – Patty
Griffin
“It isn't that he isn't strong or
kind or clever. Your daddy's poor today and he will be poor forever.”
Notes: When I created Blue, I was
just coming to understand that I, as a poor, rural Appalachian, had a
unique experience compared to many other U.S. citizens. I knew that I
loved my family and our way of life and I was realizing that other
people looked down on us for a variety of things, from the way we
spoke to my parents' income. Blue and the nelfkins were my way of
writing about the oppression I felt as a poor Appalachian, which I
wasn't quite sure how to put into words otherwise. I'm glad for this,
because later in life, I have come to understand myself and Blue
better as a result. She and I both come from working class families,
and her father, like mine, was a hard worker who never could dig
himself out of the hole, no matter how he tried. I still have my dad,
unlike Blue, and he's still working hard and still firmly a member of
the lower class, like myself. This song, to me, is about that
struggle, and particularly what it is like from the perspective of a
child.
3. Dancing in the Dark – Ruth
Moody
“Man, I ain't getting nowhere. I'm
just living in a dump like this. There's something happening
somewhere. Baby, I just know that there is.”
Notes: I chose this cover because
Ruth Moody's version reminds me the most of Blue. I chose this song
in general because I like to portray Blue as a sort of cowgirl –
not the over the top, pink cowboy boots, paisley shirts kind of
cowgirl, but more like a sort of outlaw, like a Jesse James type.
There's a touch of romance to this song and it's not the only
“cowgirl Blue as a romantic” song on the list. Also, I feel like
this song is about trying hard to change your life, which Blue is
always working to do, and the desperation one can feel as a result.
4. One More Dollar – Gillian Welch
“One more dime to show for my day,
one more dollar and I'm on my way.”
Notes: This song is about leaving
home, to work picking fruit in this case, to make money to send back
to your family. Blue does exactly this, of course. Leaving home to
make money as a guide means that she travels far from her family and
works long, stressful hours to provide for the people she left
behind. As such, she's very familiar with saving her pennies and
hopefully one day making enough money to go back home and settle down
in comfort.
5. Miles to Go – Alison Krauss &
Union Station
“It's feeling longer now than it ever
has before. Another memory is another slamming door. It's getting too
dark now to see.”
Notes: I think Blue feels like she's
been on a journey for a very long time and she's not sure when it
will ever end. Her life has been on the road, and she has been
walking that road for years now. In addition, the quest makes her
mortality in a more serious manner than she has done before. She's
not one to talk about her feelings but she is afraid for herself and
her friends, afraid that they won't survive to live happily ever
after.
6. Early Morning Light – Sarah
Jarosz
“So I'll move on down the line,
thinking I'll make it better this time.”
Notes: This one is kind of a sequel
to the track before it. Blue does question whether or not the choices
that she makes are the right ones, but she pushes forward, even when
her doubts weigh heavy on her mind. In the end, she is persistent and
stubborn, and these are the saving graces of a person in Blue's line
of work. When things are hard for her, she just keeps going, hoping
that she's going in the right direction.
7. Miserable – Kacey Musgraves
“You try to tell me you want
happiness, but you ain't happy unless you're miserable.”
Notes: This is obviously an Alaster
track. Blue has strong feelings for Alaster, both positive and
negative. She admires him a lot – she thinks he's intelligent and
funny and, despite his attempts to convince people otherwise, very
kind. However, it is often frustrating that Alaster cannot see his
own positive qualities. His extremely pessimistic attitude about
pretty much everything sometimes makes it hard for her to understand
him. At the same time, she has similar issues, she just internalizes
them instead of vocalizing them like Alaster.
8. Mountains O' Things – The Duhks
“Those who deserve the best in life
and know what money's worth, and those whose sole misfortune is
having mountains of nothing at birth.”
Notes: As someone who has grown up
very poor, Blue has a lot of resentment for people who are rich and
wasteful with their resources. In particular, she finds fairy culture
abhorrent, not only because of their luxurious lifestyles and
tendency to hoard wealth, but also because of their outright
hostility toward other races, like nelfkins. Like many people, she
does dream of one day being well off enough to settle down in
comfort.
9. Take Another Turn – Sarah
Jarosz
“What does it mean to be lost? You
can't find your way on a map. You took the wrong turn, forgot where
you came from and now there ain't no going back.”
Notes: Blue feels alone often,
usually because she literally is alone. She travels a lot as a guide,
and even when she has a client to travel with, it's not a person she
knows or even has much interest in getting to know. Even during the
quest, she can't quite move past the loneliness and solitary
lifestyle she has developed over the years. She's used to doing
things for herself but doing for herself has isolated her from others
in many ways.
10. Let Me Touch You For Awhile –
Alison Krauss & Union Station
“I don't hardly know you, but I'd be
willing to show you I know a way to make you laugh at that cowgirl as
she's walking out your door.”
Notes: I've been listening to this
track for years and I love it so much that I'm very certain it shaped
the way I wrote Blue and her feelings for Alaster. I loved it before
TROUF and I loved it even more when I came to associate it with the
two of them. Blue is a caretaker by nature. She feels a keen sense of
responsibility for people around her. Alaster, by contrast, is a
person in need of someone looking after him. Blue empathizes with him
and wants to protect him, almost from the beginning, even if it takes
her a while to understand how she feels about him. Also, this song
goes back to the cowgirl Blue idea, which I can't get enough of.
11. Scattered and Small – Amelia
Curan
“I was so afraid. I have traveled so
far. Blaming the horizon and shouting at the stars.”
Notes: Let's just call this the
Cowgirl Blue playlist. For real though, Blue is the kind of person
who seems utterly confident on the outside, but on the inside, she
worries a great deal about whether or not she's on the right path.
She has a lot of humility, and also a lot of inner turmoil.
12. Whiskey Girl – Gillian Welch
“Nowhere Man and the Whiskey Girl,
they loaded up for the weekend in the Underworld.”
Notes: This was a track I'd never
taken the time to listen to before I started work on this playlist,
but it was just perfect for Blue and Al. Blue can be a bit of an
enabler to Alaster's bad habits, as she herself used alcohol as a
crutch and sometimes it's too tempting to just join him in getting
drunk and ignoring all the world's problems for a while. Despite this
being problematic in some ways, I think Blue and Alaster come to
understand each other better because of their shared problems with
drink and their desire to block out all of the bad things and just
relax for a while instead. They are drinking buddies first.
13. Lost Dog – Sarah Jarosz
“If I open my door, make you my
friend, are you gonna run out and get lost again?”
Notes: When I first listened to this
track, I decided to make a new playlist for Blue just so this could
be on it. She definitely sees Alaster as a sort of stray who needs
someone to take care of him, but at the same time, she is wary of
getting close to him. Getting to know Alaster is a risk for her,
because she feels drawn to him but she also knows that Alaster has a
lot of problems, many of which are of his own making. On the one
hand, she wants to offer him shelter, but on the other, she knows he
might bolt on her at any moment, and she also knows that his
self-destructive behavior could very well be the death of him in the
long run. She treats him the way she would treat any skittish animal
– with calm respect but clear boundaries, letting him decide for
himself if he wants to close the distance between them.
14. Restless – Alison Krauss &
Union Station
“There's a restless feeling in my
bones and I know that at times it just won't go away.”
Notes: By nature, Blue is a
wanderer. She has spent a lot of time traveling literal roads and
even more time working towards an unspoken goal, a simple life in
which she is satisfied. It remains to be seen if she ever could truly
settle down, but for her, being restless is a way of life.
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