All There’s Left To Do Is Run: On Feminism, Fairytales, and Taylor Swift
In the 21st century, the princess has received much backlash for her passivity, but today, I want to offer an alternative resolution: the fairytale as an act of resistance and rebellion. I believe Taylor Swift’s song “Love Story” seeks to reinterpret the story of the love story as one which can be liberating. In her song, she declares, “It’s a love story, baby just say yes,” which implies that we as individuals should recognize the revolutionary nature of love, especially by reinterpreting fairytales through a new modern framework.
In “Love Story,” Swift re-examines the story of Romeo & Juliet through the eyes of Juliet as the heroine. Over the course of the song, she illustrates how Juliet possesses a level of awareness about her situation and the need to “run” away from the traditionalist resolutions her parents passed down to her. This is a revolutionary notion Swift imposes upon the listening audience. Love can be utopian. Fairytales, when re-interpreted, can also offer new, enlightening resolutions. In this manner, those who are young can be clever, too (see “Cardigan” by Taylor Swift). Juliet, herself, in this song, recognizes this in the line: “I’ll be waiting, all there’s left to do is run.” At this moment, Juliet knows there is an immediate dissonance and disconnect between her desire to flee toward revolution and conversely remain in the chains, which currently keep her stuck to the life she inherited from her parents and ancestors. However, Juliet wants to provide herself with a new radical story about love and happiness.
This dissonance presses Juliet forward to meet Romeo “on the outskirts of town” — to pursue her unconditional love by meeting Romeo halfway, and in this way, she regains her agency by the bridge of this song. Juliet is losing faith in Romeo, but she recognizes her feelings as true; she knows her love has brought her to this form of new expression and she’s not ready to leave all that she’s learned behind.
It is through this act of good faith that Juliet discovers Romeo shares her romantic feelings too and meets her halfway through his final proposal. Swift cleverly recognizes the mythology she is taking homage from in this song and offers an alternative here: one, which promises a fulfilling fairytale that rings true, though many may consider this declaration to be childish. Moreover, fairytales can illuminate love and desire and they need not end in a fatalistic tragedy.
We can be young and clever, too. We can choose to be playful with our hearts and lovers and in our lives, too.
And above all else, we can view ourselves to be feminists and the loving princesses of our own stories, too.
As Swift has sung it a million times before, “It’s a love story, baby just say yes.”
Pure White in Expression: On Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring
Girl with a Pearl Earring, oil on canvas by Johannes Vermeer, c. 1665; in the Mauritshuis, The Hague.
Image: Ian Dagnall/Alamy
I’ve been thinking lately about one of my current reads: Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. This book is inspired by the story of Johannes Vermeer and the infamous painting created by the same moniker identified within the title of the book. It’s one of the books I’ve been able to pick up and read more than a handful of pages, which has been an accomplishment for me, considering the book slump I’ve been entrenched in lately.
There’s one scene that’s been running through my mind and it deals with matters of art, expression, and creation. Griet, the main character who would later become a muse for Vermeer’s famous painting, declares that the clouds in the sky are white (Chevalier, p. 101). Vermeer counters her argument in this special scene, drawing her attention to the nuance of colors reflecting back at her through the clouds outside the window. In this scene, he questions Griet’s choice in handing him blue paint. He remarks, “You will find there is little pure white in clouds, yet people say they are white. Now do you understand why I do not need the blue yet?” (Chevalier, p. 101). For me, this stands out as one of the most significant scenes in the entire novel, namely because it illustrates the concept of expression.
Although I’ve never met Vermeer, I imagine he created his art as he saw it, meaning he observed the world behind the purest aspect of its appearance. I believe all artists work in this way within their work, whether it be through the written word or in the visual sphere of creation. All art is true as it is merely an observation of the pieces, which made the clouds both white, blue, and tinged with gray and black. In this way, there are many colors to creation and we need not settle to look at the world through a small lens, which reflects back at us what we imagine we need to find in the clouds or in a woman’s dress or even in the color of the grass beneath our feet.
At the end of the day, I truly believe this is the beauty of art and is one of the sole reasons why we need to create.
I think herein lies the beauty of this special scene within Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring.
Where All The Poets Went to Die: On Mythos, Folklore, and Taylor Swift
I’ve been contemplating the mythos of stories — of folklore and of the myths we create in our lives. Lately, I’ve been listening to Taylor Swift’s two sister albums: Folklore and Evermore. After a meaningful conversation with a friend, I came to the conclusion that, as human beings, as lovers and dreamers, and as poets, we naturally mythologize our lives through living through them.
By making meaning in this world, we seek out natural connections to the stories and the myths we grew up with. These are painted in the portraits and vintage photographs our families raised us on. These are formed from the archaic, glossy textures our parents told us about, too.
In our quest to live meaningful lives, we turn to the stories of heart and soul — of Psyche plummeting to the ground after reaching for her immortal beloved Cupid — of Odysseus on his grand journey across the world — of Penelope waiting and waiting for the return (in due time) of her true beloved.
Why do we return to these stories again and again?
I’ve been asking myself this of late.
In the nature of Taylor Swift’s sister albums, I believe this quest for meaning is formed from the desire to ground and bring our words down to earth. In Folklore, Taylor Swift sets out to understand and, inadvertently, see herself in the characters she crafts between the lines and timbre of her voice and the instruments pressed in the liminal space she creates. Swift also speaks of an infamous woman and how she has inherited and contributed to the history of Rebecca Hartman since she now owns the home Hartman lives in.
By way of this, Swift is mythologizing herself and the long line of supposed “mad women” who were deemed inappropriate, brash, and obnoxious. Swift is smart as she offers a new interpretation of the “mad woman” as smart, bold, brave, charming, and beautiful. As viewers of this album, we begin to see the various ways in which Swift contributes to the myths she has unfolded in her music. In Cardigan, Seven, and perhaps even in Epiphany, Swift sets out on a journey to understand the myths she was told and how these myths weren’t believed — how in the very nature of these stories they were told “wrong.”
In Cardigan, the narrator of the song questions her potential love interest as he has supposedly rewritten the myths of her childhood in a thoughtless manner. Swift sings, “I knew you / Tried to change the ending / Peter losing Wendy, I / I knew you. / Leavin’ like a father / Running like water, I / ‘Cause when you are young, they assume you know nothing.” In this series of lines, Swift asserts the claim that the person she is speaking of has arrived at a thoughtless interpretation in not recognizing and sharing the same understanding of the myths she has created within her life.
Even more so, Swift critiques the nature of those who do not believe the “young” understand the nature of myth. She debates the pre-established interpretation that those who are young are deemed naive in the eyes of their ancestors. Here, Swift is performing an interesting declaration; namely, one which questions the set mythos while inadvertently contributing to this already formed mythos as well. In Swift’s case, she recognizes her voice and history as laced and formed from these myths. Nevertheless, Swift reminds the listener that she chooses to arrive at new, thoughtful interpretations from the narrative frames she has been given.
In Seven, Swift speaks to a childhood rife with trauma and wonderings. She contemplates the house, which birthed her mythos and the friendships she garnered in this place. She sings, “Sweet tea in the summer / Cross your heart, won’t tell no other /And though I can’t recall your face/ I still got love for you.” There’s a gentle vulnerability in this song, which is quite comparable to the kind expressed in Cardigan.
Yet, in this space, Swift speaks to the remembering of the myth in all its delicacy, gentleness, and candor. Swift sets out to remember the potent memories of her youth. Even so, in this place, Swift recalls the trauma too of the mythos, which has tainted her youth. She declares, “And I’ve been meaning to tell you / I think your house is haunted /Your dad is always mad and that must be why /And I think you should come live with me and we can be pirates / Then you won’t have to cry / Or hide in the closet / And just like a folk song / Our love will be passed on.” This moment is potent as Swift recalls the trauma and the twisted, inherently insidious nature of her youth as recaptured in the mythos of her fathers and in the nature of bad men, viz. a viz. the patriarchy. Taylor Swift decides then and there that she will move away from the myths, which speak of abusive men who abuse with their words and their rigid, physical actions. These series of lines can be interpreted in several means, but no matter how they are to be interpreted, the listener will inevitably arrive at the interpretation that some myths are not beautiful as they have taint to their tellings.
Nevertheless, Swift chooses to remember the unfolding beauty of the myth despite its tainted beginnings. There is poetry even in the classic myth’s shortcomings. In Epiphany, Swift recalls the birth of the trauma as she compares it to the contemporary setting in which she is situated in. Swift sings, “Only 20 minutes to sleep / But you dream of some epiphany / Just one single glimpse of relief / To make some sense of what you’ve seen.” It is not an easy endeavor to traipse through the trauma of the past and of the mythos created in this liminal space. Yet, Swift chooses to make some “sense of what [she’s] seen.” As she charts her way through the story of her grandfather who served in World War One, and by way of this, compares the current trauma she is experiencing as witnessed through the pandemic and Covid-19, she considers what it means to dwell in these myths.
What does it mean to catch “one single glimpse of relief?” How, despite, the shortcomings of myths can we reinterpret them and arrive at brighter conclusions and reopenings in the stories of our life? There’s “only 20 minutes to sleep,” but in this moment, Swift asserts that “we dream of some epiphany.”
We remember that it doesn’t have to be this way. Our mythos can be fantastical, filled with pleasure, and removed from trauma.
Despite all this, as readers and as listeners, we are left to wonder how we “can make some sense of what [we’ve] seen.”
How can we mythologize our lives and ground them in this reality, too?
How can we dream better dreams and wash the gum from our eyes to see honestly and live lives filled with integrity?
I believe it begins with a word.
I believe it begins with a new interpretation.
And I believe it begins with me and you.
The Shattered Record: An Examination of the 2008 Universal Studios’ Fire
Last night, I read an article about the 2008 tragedy, referred to now as the Universal Studios’ fire. After this fire, hundreds-of-thousands of original masters were burned or destroyed, reduced to an irretrievable form of what they once were. Some of the music records spanned as far back as the 1940’s and included big names like Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, and Billie Holiday.
This information still isn’t known by the main public to this day. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this, but in the age of digital streaming, the importance of masters is paramount. As the desire for higher resolution audio increases, the desire for capturing a moment in time in music does as well.
This, in turn, is why the 2008 fire is an absolute tragedy for the world of music. In the face of this travesty, hundreds of records cannot be returned to — a moment pressed into a vinyl or earlier form of recording now cannot be captured or re-translated as it once was intended in its original form.
At times like this, I am reminded of semiotics — the study of signs, symbols, and meaning-making in a world dominated by images and advertising on a daily basis. In essence, the poor management of these records symbolizes an ill-regard or lackadaisical care for the work of many artists — people of color and various minorities included to top all this. Moreover, this tragedy raises questions of private ownership and who possesses the privilege to maintain and safeguard artifacts for future posterity.
In this manner, I often think about questions of privilege as it pertains to who “owns” the rights to keeping and storing away masters, because in this case, Universal Music Group (UMG), the record company, obviously did not handle this well.
Who, in the end, holds the power to store these masters and maintain their quality?
Who chooses what artists will be available to the populace or viewing audience?
These are all questions worth considering, which have obviously not been mulled over well enough.
Now, because of this fire, we as the viewing audience, will never have access to these masters or be able to see them re-interpreted in the 21st century.
So, what do we do then in the face of such a travesty? Well, it’s a multi-faceted question we should partake in, but it begins with asking greater questions of societal hierarchies.
And, yes, it means questioning the inherent power that record companies like Universal Music Group have over the music industry and even over you as a consuming listener.
The Muse of Idle Stars 