week one

This week I have been stressed out of my mind with work responsibilities and school responsibilities. I haven’t watched one movie or TV show. My roommates consistently watch TV when they need a break between the hours of homework, but I did not join them this week, electing to finish up papers, start readings, participate in meetings, and do work. However, I did consistently consume media in the form of music, specifically one album. I have always been drawn to music, as I’m sure most people are. Music is where I go when I am sad, excited, bored, happy, angry, or just want to feel numb. This week I wanted to listen to something that was beautiful but sad, because I was feeling particularly hopeless with everything that I have to get done. I chose to primarily listen to my current favorite album, folklore by Taylor Swift. 

The songs on this album somehow speak to my soul. I’m not in an unhealthy relationship, and I’m not incredibly sad, but the imagery and pure poetry Swift uses in her music feels calming, like a hug. The melodies are mostly soft, there are no sharp choruses or strange key changes, and the excited pop that constitutes her normal popular music is not there. Instead, it’s a melancholy, old, but somehow wild-feeling album that I could never write enough about. The album cover shows Swift in the background of a foggy, black and white forest. She looks tiny amongst the tall trees that surround her, like someone who is just now realizing that she is not the center of the world, and the world will continue without her if it has to. 

I specifically love the song “the lakes”. This song is a bonus track from the deluxe album, and it talks about her painful journey through fame and how people have vilified her and hated her for one reason: she makes music that people appreciate. Before her Reputation album, Taylor Swift was constantly dragged through the dirt and told that she was not a serious music artist. Her work was consistently put down as amateur, when she had spent her whole life to give a little piece of herself in each album. the lakes talks about this experience, specifically about her previous manager who refused to give her the legal rights to her own music. 

What this song means to me personally is that it’s an expression of sadness. Swift is singing about pain that she wants to forget but can’t seem to stop crying about. I think a lot of people have experienced that type of feeling. There are times in our lives when we have felt hopeless and lost and sad, and those moments have helped us become who we are today. It could be past trauma, previously held beliefs about how life would be, or maybe you had an experience that shaped your worldview. Whatever the case, the lakes gives imagery surrounding the Lake District in England, and talks about sadness that is hard to touch, and hard to abandon. 

Some of my favorite lines from this song are:

Take me to the Lakes where all the poets went to die

I don't belong and, my beloved, neither do you

Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry

I'm setting off, but not without my muse

I also love the bridge:

I want auroras and sad prose

I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet

'Cause I haven't moved in years

And I want you right here

A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground

With no one around to tweet it

While I bathe in cliffside pools

With my calamitous love and insurmountable grief

I love the imagery she uses in this whole album, but specifically in the lakes. When she sings the first line of the bridge, it sounds so wistful and sad, as if she is missing something that is not there anymore. The rhythm of this song is slow and not incredibly surprising. It’s familiar, but beautiful.

I highly recommend folklore.