If all the other songs in j-hope's 2018 mixtape embody a hopeful balance in the face of travails of life, Blue Side (Outro) stood out as an incomplete, mysterious feeling of sorrow. It is pithy and lacking, but pensive. I remember wondering who he was talking to: himself, his past, or us? Released early in 2018, was this providence preparing him for doom? Was he afraid something was about to happen? The track had desolation.
"Why wasn't I able to finish the song?" j-hope wrote in his letter when he released Blue Side on 2nd March 2021. That this time in his life was ripe for the creation (completion) of this song is significant for me. The band never broke up as they had feared in 2018, and the desolate feelings were resolved. For the moment. Now, Blue Side comes in the wake of so much grief and pain. The pandemic has been a difficult experience of loss - loss of lives, of life as we knew it, of many things we took for granted. Racism, hate, anger, divisiveness have risen significantly in the last one year, intensifying the history of pain. J-Hope reminds me that it has also been a loss of the courage and innocence of childhood, when I could dream of daring life to throw at me its best shot. It is the loss of those free dreams, of that faith in living, and being alive.
The song is a wish for the recovery of hope lost, a quiet longing bordering on despair. Every time the wind chimes tinkle in the song, an image of dusk is conjured up, the sky suffused in its deepest, brightest cobalt blue. His husky, low pitched melody intensifies the images and feelings from an irrevocable past of contentment, hanging heavy in the air. He reminisces about his childhood self, an innocent, enthusiastic self that didn't feel encumbered by loss, that could be reckless, unthinking and carefree. j-hope of then didn't have to think about the ravages of time. He could accelerate into the future and thirst towards what he wanted, with little to lose. Now he feels that "everything between us has changed".
Blue Side makes me think of the immovable sky or sea, and both are referenced a lot in many of BTS' lyrics. Perhaps the knowledge that the sky and sea will never change, considering the whirlwind changes in their lives in the last eight years, is being sought as consolation. Because the song is also gasping for breath, suffocated in the thick murky gloom of this inexplicable existence. An existence where so much has changed, yet nothing is moving, and we are trapped and clueless about the future. Rather than be consumed and depleted by the blues, he hopes to tear through the anguish and unearth its burning enervating force. The song is a desire to lock it up in a dedicated blue space in his heart, a space of purity, where not knowing evokes wonder and not despair.
As I have been getting to know this person of hope and resilience, the embodied ego of BTS, Blue Side is a track of pained nostalgia, that broke my heart. In a single year it seems j-hope has aged many years. Namjoon has said that the pandemic has been a forced reflective pause in our lives, a chance to recalibrate our present and take a stand about our future. I wonder if without this intermission we would think about our lives like we have, if we would entertain the possibility of change. I wonder if j-hope would have been able to complete the song. It is a beautifully heartbreaking encapsulation of this long interlude in our lives, when we have felt the blue flame engulf us to the point of choking. I am grateful he has this medium to express himself and keep his Blue Side close. It has given me recourse to acknowledge my own pain, and dig deeper to capture and cherish the same within.
Lyric translations and interpretations referenced from:
1. https://doolsetbangtan.wordpress.com/2021/03/01/blue-side-2021/
2. https://sarabangtan.medium.com/translation-of-j-hopes-blue-side-1cce527c164c
3. https://twitter.com/ColinSH3/status/1367503582115885066?s=20
