#YES my playlists have repeating motifs based on tiny similarities between the lyrics of various songs

[frodo-with-glasses]

Not playlist anon (obvious now I guess), but I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and ask you to talk about Little Talks for the game since it's by my favourite band ^^

Oh HECK yes Of Monsters and Men, let’s goooo!

So once again, “Little Talks” is in the playlist more for the overall emotion of the song than for any specific lyrics. There are obviously any number of interpretations you can get out of it—that’s one of the best things about OMAM songs, their artistic ambiguity—but for me, it’s one of those songs that goes into my little list of “this is what it feels like to love somebody with mental illness”.

You may notice that I picked a male cover of the song, rather than just using the original (which is exquisite and has less confusion over that one part in the second verse where the two singers’ voices overlap for one word), because it is meant to be, once again, a conversation between Frodo and Sam. Specifically, I see this as being a sort of snapshot of life in Bag End in that…what, year and a half?…after the Quest had ended and before Frodo left for Valinor. The song is sleepy, it’s tender, it’s melancholy, and it’s deeply unsettling. Whoever the two speakers are, they love each other, but something has gone very wrong in the mind of one of them, and it’s tearing the other one apart.

F: I don’t like walking around this old and empty house

S: So hold my hand, I’ll walk with you, my dear

F: The stairs creak as I sleep, it’s keeping me awake

S: It’s the house telling you to close your eyes

F: Some days I can’t even trust myself

S: It’s killing me to see you this way

For Frodo, Bag End doesn’t feel like home anymore. It’s too big. Too empty. Too full of memories of a past life to which he can’t return. He has constant nightmares and frequent insomnia and can’t always be sure of his own mind. Sam offers what he always has—patient, gentle assurances, and sometimes a hand to hold—but it breaks his heart every time.

Both: ‘Cause though the truth may vary, this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore

Ships. The Sea. The Sea only ever means one thing. It’s a look ahead to the very end.

F: There’s an old voice in my head that’s holding me back

S: Well tell [him] that I miss our little talks

F: Soon it will be over and buried with our past

S: We used to play outside when we were young, and full of life and full of love

Throughout the book, Frodo has a habit of looking into the future with pessimism: he’s miserable, but at least the misery will all be over and forgotten when he’s dead. Even the past is tarnished by the pain of the present; his happy years in the Shire come back to taunt him, dancing just out of reach, where he can’t grasp them again. But Sam looks on the past with fondness and almost aggressive optimism; in the dreary desert of Mordor, he thought back to when he was young, swimming in the farm pond with Rosie and her brothers, and even here he thinks wistfully about the days when Frodo was free and whole and things were easy.

You’re gone, gone, gone away, I watched you disappear All that’s left is the ghost of you Now we’re torn, torn, torn apart, there’s nothing we can do Just let me go, we’ll meet again soon

What is this story except Sam being forced to watch Frodo slowly deteriorate; of cradling his cold body, when he thinks he’s dead, and then watching him truly die from the mind outward, which is so much worse? Sam is determined to lead a good life in the Shire, but Frodo can’t stay here any longer. He has to leave, or he won’t heal. So after walking a long, long road side by side, they’re now torn apart on the pier of the Grey Havens. “Just let me go,” whispers Frodo. “We’ll meet again soon.”

Now wait, wait, wait for me Please hang around I’ll see you when I fall asleep HEY!

The sudden, raucous crescendo here in the original recording just gets me in the throat every time. It feels like love that hurts—raw, roaring, and desperate—when saying goodbye is like a shard to the chest that’s so close to your heart you can’t remove it without risking even worse damage, so it just stays there, and your skin and muscle close and heal around it, but you’re still carrying it with you ‘til the end of your life; and even though you may go for months or years without noticing it, it still pricks and gives you pain sometimes.

(Did that metaphor end up going a lot further than I thought it would? Yes. Am I running with it regardless? Also yes.)

“Wait, wait, wait for me.” It feels like something Sam would want to shout after the ship as it pulled away, but he shut his mouth and swallowed it into his chest, because Rosie was waiting for him at home and he couldn’t go, not yet.

“Wait, wait, wait for me.” It feels like something Frodo would want to whisper from the stern; please don’t hurry, take your time, but don’t forget me.

“Wait, wait, wait for me.” I read something recently that said mortals aren’t actually made immortal by the trip to Valinor; the land is called Undying because it’s full of elves, not because it can grant immortality. I’m not a smart enough Tolkien person to know if that’s true or not, but if it is, that adds a whole other layer of agony: Bilbo would have likely passed away not long after reaching Valinor. And Frodo? Frodo wasn’t exactly a spring chicken himself. He would have been even older by the time Rosie passed away, and Sam took it into his head to leave Middle Earth. After he had found his healing—and met all the elves he wished to meet and seen all of Valinor he wished to see—what else was there for Frodo to hold on to life for?

What else, except for the vague, wild hope of a reunion?

But until then, Sam lies awake in Bag End, with Rosie at his side, staring at the ceiling. And a motif of this playlist is repeated that first popped its head up in “Dear Fellow Traveler”:

“And I’ll return to my beautiful city Black skies will change into blue And though my love is so wise and so pretty Some nights I’ll still dream of you”

I’ll see you when I fall asleep…

I’ll close my eyes and dream of you, until we meet again.

WORD ASK GAME! (kinda!)