The Swiftie and The Scholar - Cardigan – The Folklore Love Triangle Part 3

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

We’ve made it to the third and final episode of our beloved Folklore Love Triangle! We hope you’ve enjoyed this little series as much as we have. This episode dives into all the poetry and themes of cardigan, and then Uncle Jerry wraps up all the themes and questions and answers found in these three songs.Works Cited:Rashomon EffectThe Rashomon Effect: When Ethnographers Disagree – Karl G. HeiderDisnarration and the Unmentioned in Fact and Fiction – Marina Lambrou – Aff LinkDisnarration and the performance of storytelling in Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermoreThe Blind Man and The ElephantSplit Narratives or Fragmented NarrativesEnjambment EpistropheAnaphoraThe Longest Time – Billy Joel Love Stinks – The J. Geils BandThe Swiftie and The Scholar Grading MatrixFollow Us:Patreon⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Threads⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠Uncle Jerry’s Instagram

I have to get some energy going or something. But stop it. Okay. Okay. I'm ready. Cardigan. Cardigan. Corrigan.

Corrigan. Okay. Number three. Numro trace. Okay. Welcome to the Swift. No, I hated that. Let me start again.

Welcome to the Swiftie and the scholars. the podcast where we examine the lyrics, lore, and literary legacy of Taylor Swift. I am Angela McDowell the Swifty. And for one third and final time, I am Dr. Jerry Coates, the scholar. Yeah. How you doing, Uncle Jerry?

I am, I'm ready. I am ready to talk about this poem and to conclude our fateful triumbrate. Should we tell people that we recorded all these on the same day and we're tired? Getting a little goose, loosey-goosey in here. Yeah, a little bit. But we decided to get them all because they belong together.

They do. Yeah. Just like Betty and James. I know. Just like Eddie and Betty. Oh. I'm sorry, it's another poem. I don't know who they are.

Okay. This is our part three of the Folklore Love Triangle. Today we're focused on cardigan. And then we'll wrap them all up, tie them all together, put a little bow on it. And go and have dinner. Yeah. Okay, sounds good. Okay, cardigan was written by Taylor and Aaron Dessner, produced by only Aaron Dessner.

Okay. That's kind of all I've got. That's all I know. I'm sorry. That's what you got? It was bad timing. I got nothing else in this brain right now. Cardigan is a sweater.

That's about all that. I'm wearing a cardigan. Okay. Okay, so for the past two weeks, we have talked about how these three together are far more interesting than any one of them individually. And why? Why is that so? It's because of the very interesting use of things like disnarration or split narrative or the ration on effect where we're getting the impression of a person about. a mutually experienced event, and then we get another person's expression, and then another person's expression.

And we're looking at the nature of truth and the nature of what's a lie, what is true, how do these relationships work together, how will they finish? And today we're going to do cardigan. Okay. Okay. The juiciest of the bunch. I think the best poem of the bunch. Yeah, absolutely.

Again, I've mentioned this the last couple of weeks. On my first read-through, I was, August was okay. I was terribly unimpressed by Betty and then I thought, wow, Cardigan's good. And at the end of Cardigan, I realized, oh, wait, this is a kind of integrated,

interwoven narrative and we're supposed to realize that all three of these characters have different perspectives, maybe even a fourth character in Inez from Betty, so we have, you know, multiple voices creating whatever

the story is. And I think that's one of the big themes that we'll come to at the end is there's no such thing as the story, right? There are our stories. And that, in fact, like the very first episode,

we talked about what is folklore. And I ask, is this folklore? I think this is one of the things that makes it folklore. It's a collective story. We have stories together that we share. Cardigan. Yes.

Title is Cardigan. Cardigan's, you know, obviously a symbol. It is an image of comfort. Are you comfortable? Yes. I would be more comfortable if it wasn't 100 degrees outside, but... Now, you know, she's sacrificing for the costume. It is kind of nostalgic to wear a cardigan, cardigan.

Right. It demonstrates quiet authority. Do you feel authority? Always. Good. No, why does that demonstrate? and straight quiet authority. Well, it's generally something that older people wear who are comfortable with themselves.

Okay, okay. I got you. So think Mr. Rogers. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Right, Mr. Rogers puts his cardigan on, and Mr. Rogers is going to talk with anyone. He's going to talk with a soldier. He's going to talk with a fireman. He's going to talk with a little boy in a wheelchair.

He's going to have an earnest open conversation because he has quiet authority via his cardigan. Gotcha. Okay. That's right. Jimmy Carter, the president, used to wear a cardigan, and people would talk about that when he would even wear his cardigan when he had important meetings in the Oval Office. Oh, okay. You know, he said that he thought that he knew he was the president no matter what he was wearing, and he was comfortable in his cardigan. Okay. It's often also associated with intellectualism.

Okay. Oh, yeah, because it's like the professors wearing the car. again. You look very professorial. Thank you. That's what's going for. Interestingly enough, and I wondered if this is something that Taylor Swift thought about, is it's often associated with feminist liberalism or feminist intellectualism. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. And again, you know, if you don't believe me, watch Annie Hall. Uh-huh.

Right? The Woody Allen movie Annie Hall, you know, it's kind of a story like Pygmalion, My Fair Lady. where he takes this young woman and she is fairly uneducated, not terribly intellectual, and she begins to take hold of her own intellectual progress in life and ultimately will exceed him. And it really unnerves the character of Woody Allen in the film. Is that what's going to happen here? I'm going to be smarter than you? Absolutely. Absolutely.

That would be my hope that sometime before I die, you would exceed me. and then, you know, you're just flying on your own. Yeah. Yeah, pretty soon. You can just take anyone's poetry apart and say, look here. But, yeah, I mean, it's, so Annie Hall's dress, her use of cardigans, and the short vest cardigan became kind of a symbol of feminist intellectualism or feminist idealism. Interesting. Yeah.

So, you know, I mean, which one of these was she thinking of? I would hope that if we asked her, she would say they all sound good to me. She would. Yeah, I would hope. I mean, most good writers have a variety of reasons for picking an image, and this one certainly has a lot of different reasons than nostalgia. It is a looking back at what happened years ago. At the, when I was 17, it also demonstrates a level of comfort for herself, right?

She's now reconciled to the events of her Adelaide. lessons. It does, she does have a voice of quiet authority throughout this poem. Agree, yeah. Right. So like Mr. Rogers, like Jimmy Carter. And I think that she also demonstrates a certain sense of feminist idealism, you know, she's certainly poor James and Betty for his lame apologies. And even the sweetness, we watched the series with her, The Long Pond. Long Pond. Yeah, we watched the Long Pond, and she said that she kind of forgives him.

She kind of thinks he's trying to apologize as much as a guy can. Yeah, yeah. My first reading, I thought she was a little mean to us, but we probably deserve it. And she was very sweet and kind when she talked about it. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I think that she's trying to assess the male persona. And it's a difficult thing to cross genders, and she does it with a sense of quiet authority. Yeah.

And a calm sense of her own feminist idealism. So, yeah, cardigan. Yeah. Why not? Okay. And then we get to the verse one. Yes. That was a lot on just the title, wasn't it?

It was, yeah. But the title's rich. This is a rich poem. It is, yeah. Yeah, I like it. Vintage T, comma. Okay, I'm not going to make the prediction. Like I did with the first poem with August, that she's going to sing this with a Sciura.

Vintage T. Brand new phone. Does she do that? No. It's not that far off, honestly. Oh, gosh. Well, the reason why I didn't perceive that is because the rhythmic pattern is not the same as August. And certainly with the chorus, the rhythmic pattern is very different, right?

Plus, there'll be other elements, too. So vintage tea and Sychura, so she isolates it. She wants us to stop and think about that vintage tea. It's old. And, you know, so it's an old t-shirt. Either it's literally old t-shirts or it's a vintage. It replicates something. Right.

It's a Led Zeppelin T-shirt that's a retro throw bag. Right. That's like actually from Target. in 2010. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, either way, she's demonstrating a time shift. Mm-hmm.

And that's one of the things we talked about with this split narrative is that this, the narratives are shifted across time. So we have, you know, one guy who's speaking almost in the same instant, and we have this speaker who's speaking perhaps years later. Agreed, yes. Because, and we know that. that because of the second half the line after the Syshira brand new phone so the phone is new but the T is vintage and what's interesting is she is claiming both okay so if oh okay if they are

symbols the vintage T a kind of symbol of her youth uh-huh right the brand new phone a symbol of her earned adulthood. Yeah. Right? But she's claiming both. You never let go of your entire self. Yeah. The old you, the old childhood you is still inside you.

Yeah. And so symbol, symbol, or maybe metaphor, maybe the T is a metaphor for the, you know, the adolescent me and the new phone is a metaphor for the current. The today, me, yeah. Yeah. So symbols, metaphors, right off the bat. Much richer than the other two. Yes.

You know, I mean, clearly Betty's the voice of a 17-year-old boy, very monosyllabic. It's almost devoid of important intentional symbolic elements. It's almost devoid of complex metaphors or cliches. This immediately gives us a sort of newer, richer, feel. Yeah, agree. High heels on cobblestones. Okay, H.H., we've got some

alliteration going on. We have high heels, which would be maybe an image of another time. You know, her adulthood, I think he'd wear high heels. She's walking on cobblestones. So it's a precarious

passage. It's a balancing act. Okay. Right. So again, she's developing symbolic elements relative to her adult life. Yeah. You know, life is always a balancing act. Beautiful. That's her.

When you are young, they assume you know nothing. Okay, so you remember the redundant line from Betty when he says, I don't know anything? And then he does say, but then I know I miss you. You know, so he constantly uses the word no. and he uses it unconsciously without even understanding what it means because he doesn't know. He doesn't even know that he's being an unreliable narrator. Right. Exactly.

He doesn't know. He's unreliable and he doesn't even know that. But she is older and wiser and she is assessing what knowing means. So when you're young, people assume you know nothing. A sequin smile and black lipstick. Okay. This confuses me. So I wondered about that, you know, a sequin smile, a kind of smiling faces, fake smiles.

Okay. And black lipstick, which is sort of dramatic in a dark and gothic way. Yeah, yeah. But what color lipstick do we usually associate with the adult Taylor Swift? Red. Red. Red is going to be a consistent image throughout this poem. Oh.

Right. Okay. Yeah, we're going to see red elsewhere. Okay. So I think this is one of those disnarrative elements. Yeah. Right. I think what she's not saying is, you know, the red lipstick is today and the we've got the old lipstick for me.

So like when she was younger, she was, yeah, okay, okay. Sensual politics, you know. And I really wondered about this phrase because it's just two words. and we should, you know, I tried to make sense of it grammatically, syntactically, and it's at this point we should stop and say, huh, where is a period? Nowhere, nowhere to be found. Right. This is enjambment when one line leads to another leads to another. It's not true enjambment because usually there's like a crossover.

There are some examples of it later, I'll point out. Oh, okay. But yeah, it's like it reads more like free verse. Yeah. When I tried to scan it, vintage T, so stress, unstressed, stress, brand new phone, stress, unstressed, stress. But then high heels on cobbled stones. That kind of breaks that up. And then you have the extended line.

When you're young, I assume you know nothing. It's not a consistent rhythmic pattern. Rhymeskine, phone, cul-stones, Stone's. Okay, nothing, lipstick, politics, nothing. Interesting. So we have kind of free verse. Yeah. Right. So she is, again, if these poems are all about memory, she is reminiscing in the now years later. And she's thinking, I almost felt like she was smiling, shaking her head, saying, sensual politics. Okay. Yeah. politics of adolescence. Okay. Yeah. Right? Because August is she's trying to discover herself and her sensual politics is, well, let me get with a guy and see how that works. And, you know, maybe he'll stay and maybe it'll be a relationship. And his sensual politics is he really wants back in with Betty. With Betty, yeah. And, you know, the question is, what's Betty wants? Okay. Okay. You know,

So I almost felt like this, that you could build a sentence around these two words, you know, oh, the complexity of sensual politics in my adolescence that I'm still trying to figure out in my adulthood. Okay. I love that. Yeah. And I'm, I mean, people you can tell me I'm completely wrong and that's fine. I'm good with that. Because I just made that up entirely.

No, but I think, I mean, that feels like I've never really quite understood. I love the, I love the way this all sounds and the way it looks on the page. Like, all these s is, you know, in the sequin smile and the sensual. But I'm like, what is, like, sensual politics makes more sense to me than the sequenced smile and the black lipstick. Because it does sound like, okay, this is a thing that the three of us went through when we were younger. Right.

And that was like a political situation, you know, political, like a small town political situation. And what did you do to get attention? You know, you drove up in your car and you threw your door open. You wore black lipstick. You, you know, danced at the high school dance in the gym. You know, these are the sensual politics, the sequence mile, the lipstick that you play in order to get attention. Right, right, right. Because when you're young, they assume you know nothing.

So it's that knowing that becomes a pervasive theme, you know, already in this poem. and it's going to be an important theme in the rest of our trilogy. Yeah, and we talked about it, but cobblestones are mentioned in Betty. Right. James is talking about the cobblestones, and then James is also talking about how he knows nothing. Right. Yeah, so it's really fun, like, tied together. Yeah, strong connections through the addiction.

And already in the first verse, you see the moving between the past and the present, between the then and the now. You know, the vintage tea, the brand new phone, the how was it then? And what do you assume about youth? Yeah. So as she's thinking, as she's reminiscing, I mean, this feels like just a reminiscence, like, you know, a midnight memory, you know. And she's just sort of mulling over in her own mind with her cardigan wrapped around her.

Right. So she's warm. She's comfortable. She's examining life and herself, and she's moving back and forth between her then and her now. Yeah, okay. So in the chorus, she says, but I knew you. Okay, notice a slip to past tense. Yes.

People assume young people know nothing, but when I was young. I knew you. I knew you. Yeah, dancing in your Levi's, you know, very youthful. image, drunk under a street light. Okay, she loves this image. And I am now going to demonstrate my versatility as a Taylor Swift reader. Okay.

Where else do we see her dancing in light all too well? Dancing by the refrigerator light. Opel light. Uh-huh. Dancing through lightning strikes. Yes. That's so fun. That is fun.

Are you impressed? I am, honestly, because I hadn't thought of that. I was waiting for this today. I'm not kidding. I was hoping to impress you. That's honestly so impressive because never in my life have I thought of a refrigerator light. Yeah, dancing to the refrigerator light. That is so fun.

Look at you. She likes that image of like darkness around her, but dancing in the light. They are in the light. Yeah, it's like it's an intimate image. It's, again, that cardigan image. It's a comfortable image. I just love the intimacy of it. Yeah.

You know. So in my limited knowledge. Yeah. Now I'm trying to like rag my brain like, are there more? But I don't know. They probably are. I don't know. They'll let us know.

That's right. Let us know. Let us know if you find dancing in light. But, you know, apparently drunk under the straight light. Okay. So drunk has. Yeah, like are you drunk in love? Right.

You drunk on your youth? Yep. Literally drunk. Are you actually drunk? Right. So, you know, I think that she, as much as she likes to move back and forth between then and now, in this sense, she is moving back and forth between, you know, what is literal and what is figurative. Right. So I think both work.

Again, I think if we ask her a good right. is going to say, oh, yeah, I meant all of that. Yeah, that's what, so there was like all these pictures of Taylor and Travis at a wedding of somebody in like Travis's family, I think. And all these stories came out after. And one post that I saw a girl, a woman asked Taylor, you know, what does this lyric mean? Or does it mean this or this? and Taylor responded with a well-written lyric can mean many things.

So she knows what she's doing. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Well, and I may have told the story before, but I'm going to tell it again because I like it. Okay. I took a group of theater students down to Southwest, Southwest Texas University, Southwestern. Southwestern, yeah. Southwestern, yeah.

And Edward Albee was there teaching a summer workshop. Yeah, yeah. And that we were performing the play Malcolm and the stage crew, the running crew, were dressed in camo. And one of the people, one of the students in the talkback, asked, why camo? And he said, well, why do you think? And, well, it was a play about a Vietnam vet. And they said, well, because he's a combat vet.

And he said, okay, why else? And they said, well, they're in camouflage, and you're not supposed to see the running crew. Okay, well, why else? and they actually came up with seven different reasons why camo would be appropriate. And he said, that's great. And one of the students, the same student who asked him the original question was frustrated and said, well, which one's right?

Give me the answer. And his answer was, I like all of them. Which is, that's just brilliant. Of course. Of course you do. Yeah. I think the reason why we write and the reason why we read is to, you know, discover our thoughts. Yeah, whatever we find.

That's right. Yeah. I love you to have drunk under the street light. I knew you, hand under my sweatshirt, baby, kiss it harder. Kiss it better. Kiss it better. Excuse me, kiss it harder. Kiss it better.

Okay, so it's hand under my sweatshirt is basically carnal, and I am shocked and offended. I'm sorry. But they are 17. Yeah. And you know what I mean, Beatles. And please tell me you recognize that baby kiss it better is a song by Rihanna? It is. What song?

Baby kiss it better. It's called that? Yeah. Baby kiss it better, baby. Are you lying? I'm afraid you're going to have to look it up. she's looking it up what was it last episode or two to i i was singing

oh my gosh it is bam yes it is DMX and rihanna how about that i was seeing DMX a couple of episodes ago and she said i'm surprised you even know that song you know more than me it's from 2016 there you go never ever heard this song well we could play it now but it would violate copyright

Do you know that Taylor wrote one of Rihanna's songs? You told me that in one of our previous episodes. That's interesting. Yeah. I wonder if she borrows the line. That's interesting. Look at you. I know.

I thought I was the one that was going to bring the pop culture knowledge. I am the very maven of pop culture knowledge. Yes. So he's got his hand up under her sweatshirt and he uses baby, which is, You know one of my pet peeves. Yeah. But 17. Yeah, of course he's going to say.

And of course he's going to say baby. You know, one of the things I admired about Betty was the adolescent diction. Mm-hmm. And so she's going to dip into that well once more of adolescent diction. The refrain. Yes. And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone's bed, you put me on and said,

I was your favorite. Wow, isn't that something? So here the cardigan is a symbol that that shifts what I think is intended in the title. It's not comfort or nostalgia or quiet authority or feminist integrity or any of those things. It's like that cast-off sweater, right? So it's that old sweater that you cast off and toss under the

bed and then you remember, oh yeah, I'd like to get that out again. Yeah, I really liked that sweater. Right. So you pull it out, put it on, and go, oh, this was always my favorite. Earnestly, was it, you know. Yeah, because why did it get put under the bed? That's right. How did it get tossed away?

Yeah. How on one August night behind them all did James toss that old sweater under the bed and put on her new sweater vest or put on his new sweater vest. Yeah, I mean, I think that this is, again, a remembrance of August and James who are tangled up in the sheets and the bed. And, you know, so the bed serves as an image in both.

Yeah. Right? So we have the twisted sheets and then we have the cardigans under someone's bed. So think about that as an image. Yeah. So James and August are twisting up on the seats. And meanwhile, Betty has been tossed up under the bed.

Poor Betty. She's just lying there going, listening to the strings. I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's seriously. The imagery of that is just so cruel. Yeah, that's funny. It is kind of funny. We do have a little bit of rhyme here.

Beds said, got a little internal rhyme going on. So she hasn't completely cast that aside. But again, we have no periods. You know, she's just, she's rolling through these memories, dancing and Levi's, drunk with each other's company at night, hand under a sweatshirt, you know, tossed under a bed, tossed on a bed. Right. And so all these things are sort of just rolling in her head. Okay. Love it.

Yeah. First two. Yes. A friend to all is a friend to none. Tell me you all know Aristotle. Taylor knows Aristotle. It's a very famous quote. Yeah, yeah.

It's attributed to Aristotle. A friend to all is a friend to none. So if you're a friend to everybody, then you don't have any really close friends. You have nothing but superficial friendships. You know, a person who doesn't form close friendships, you know, is flippant, is frivolous with their emotional attachment. Yeah, you can't make any good friends. Right.

Yeah, you know. And so, I mean, that's what she's questioning, you know, James was, was that a close friendship? Or was he just, he was a friend to her? He was a friend to me. And here, a friend means a very distant and very close relationship. Right, right, right. So a not particularly spiritual, but very physical friendship. Mm-hmm.

And then she makes that very clear if we didn't get it with the next line. Choose two girls, lose the one. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be rough, right? I mean, unless you are a member of a church or society that believes in multiple wives or multiple husbands, multiple husbands, it's going to be difficult to maintain an appreciable relationship with two spouses or two girlfriends.

When we are young, they assume you know nothing. Okay. So even though we should know having two significant others at the same time is a bad idea, does it stop us from trying when we are young? Right. Nope. No. No.

As a matter of fact, three. Three or four wouldn't be. Yeah, you're just like, nothing's so serious. So you're just doing whatever you want to do. Right. Well, and, you know, I mean, you're echoing back to what August comes to in her later stanzas, right? She says, you know, I had you. I had you for that moment.

But she's sort of reassessing and wondering, will you call me when we go back to school? Right. Will you be there for me later? Yeah, so she's like, I understand that this is not going to work out for me, kind of. Right. Yeah. She's assessing that realistically, which demonstrates the level of maturity that James clearly does not. Yeah.

No. Right. This line, Chase Two Girls Lose the One. It took me a long time to find in there, like you're going to lose the one. Right. Oh, that's really good. The one. Oh, I had not marked it.

I mean, it took me. a long time. But yeah, it's like, it's not just losing the one. You're losing one of the girls. You could, you, you have the opportunity, or you could chance losing the one. Oh, I see. You're talking about the girls. I thought you were talking about Keanu Reeves in The Matrix.

Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, okay. I get that now. Oh, my gosh. The girls are, and maybe one of them is the one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Good. That's good. You, someday. someday you'll be sitting over here. Maybe. Will you still make Matrix jokes? Probably not. Okay.

No. Chorus. It's not really in my wheelhouse. I don't know. For one. The chorus. But I knew you playing hide and seek and giving me your weekends. I knew you.

Hide and seek is a child's game. And you remember there's a lot of hiding in the previous poems. Right? They're hiding behind them all. And hiding on the other side of the gym. On the other side of the gym. Yes. So both of the poems

talk about the adolescent need for hiding, you know, fear of interaction, concern over social inadequacy, all of those things and they're playing hide and seek. So I think that's greatness.

Me too. She recalls that and she doesn't have to state it explicitly, but yeah, you're hiding in the gym. You're hiding behind the mall. You're playing hiding seat. Yeah. So she leaves it to us to put that together. And we're so smart.

So smart. Aren't we? Between the two of us. We've got something. Yeah. And the last two lines of that is, Your heartbeat on the high line once in 20 lives times I. Aye.

This feels like enjambment to me. Yes, yeah. They'll run over to another line. The high line is capitalized. Anytime you see capitalization in a poem, especially a free verse poem, then you should stop and think, why is that capitalized? They're either highlighting the word, and so they want us to. to go through definitions or meanings of the word,

or they want us to think about it as a reference or illusion. So they want us to go and look it up. Well, I have been to Manhattan. Me too. Yeah. Did you go to Highline Park? Yeah, actually, when we went in January, we went up there. Yeah.

So there is a Highline Park. Yeah. It used to be a train track, an elevated train track. That's right. And now it's a park that you can like walk over the roads in Chelsea, maybe. Yeah? Soho. One of those. It's around there. It's like attached to Chelsea Market, so. So she might have capitalized the H& Heartbeat. Do you know what the heartbeat on the High Line is? No.

Oh, here you go. Hot break. Oh, man. The heartbeat on the High Line is a public opera series. Oh. Yeah. They decided to start opera for the people. Okay, yeah. And the only reason why it came to my attention is, I mean, I don't know. don't look at the social calendar of Manhattan very often, but they were performing Dido and

Aeneas, which is one of my favorite operas. So, yeah, unlike Timothy Shalame, I do like Hopperkin. Oh, no. Oh, he can, it's, it's, it is a, a marginalized art form, I understand. For sure, for sure. But I love Dido and Anias, and they happened to be playing that a few years ago. They did it on the high line. Uh-huh. They did. So cool. Yeah, isn't it? Yeah.

So heartbeat on the High Line, opera series. I didn't look it up to see if it's still going on, but I did look it up to see when it started. It started in 2016, the same year Rihanna wrote the song. Kiss it better. That's right. So she made, you know, I think certainly she's referring to the public park in Manhattan, referring to a park in Manhattan where there are these kind of fun events

like the heartbeat and suarez and people enjoy walking gives her the voice of a mature speaker so she loves that shift back and forth in this poem between then and now yeah absolutely so now she's the mature speaker living in New York, strolling in the parks but also

your heartbeat is on the high line can have a symbolic meaning the high line being a tightrope. Okay, yeah. Right, and you know, your heart would beat faster on the tight robe, which is something that happens to adolescence. Right.

I mean, come on, you remember the you remember the first time you met a guy you liked? Yeah. Remember the first time you met Chase? Oh my goodness. I remember the first time I met Leslie, you know? Yeah.

I went to an event, a mixer, you know, some people that suggested I should start dating again. And, you know, I went to this mixer and I saw her and I thought, wow, she has got great eyes. And I don't know if my heart raced. Oh, Leslie, if you're listening to this. It did. It did. It did. Yes.

And, but you know the thrill of. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it doesn't even, we don't even have to say adolescent love. You know the thrill of love. Yeah. And it does, and if you think of it as a tightrope, it's like, it's like a, that's a precarious, like, delicate, that was for y'all, delicate new thing. That's a, that's a, it's a song. I haven't gotten there yet.

Okay. And it's like you're walking a tight rope because it can go wrong at, like, any second. You don't, you don't know how it's going to end up. That's really fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. So it was one of my favorite lines of the poem.

Yeah. I'm going to have to say I don't really fully understand the line once in 20 lifetimes. Oh, I understand that line. Tell me. Tell me about it. I feel like she's saying like this thing that we felt, this heartbeat that I'm feeling, the playing, the hide and seek and him giving her his weekends, like that kind of of love is one that only happens once in 20 lifetimes.

Like it's a rare kind of love. Well, that's good. I mean, I kind of wondered if that was it, but I didn't know if there was some deeper symbolic element to 20 lifetimes. But it's just as you say, the rare event that occurs only a few times in your existence. Yeah. So Chase is that rare event? Absolutely. Okay.

Absolutely. Absolutely. The refrain. And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone's bed, you put me on and said I was your favorite. So that's a little different. Yeah. You know, now she felt like she had been cast away. And he pulled her out and put her on, drew her about him and said, you're my favorite.

It's you. It's you. You're the one. That's cool that you caught that. I did not catch that. So I do like she is the one. Yeah. Because she's the favorite.

And again, I'm just intrigued by the lack of like the flow of the work as a poem because of the lack of punctuation. Yeah. It's almost just, it's almost like because this is her in the present thinking back to like however many years ago she was a teenager. It's like they're just like fragmented memories or something. Mm-hmm. But they all string together.

It's like the river of memory. Uh-huh. That just keeps going and going. Yeah. Then we have the bridge. To Kiss and Cars and Downtown Bars, um, internal rhyme.

Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, the, uh, diction, she calls it bars. you know, not clubs, not joints. But bars is just a little bit better than joints, right?

I think that she's slipping back and forth in time. And kissing cars, I think that refers to our previous poems. Agreed, yeah. She drives up, throws the door open, get in. James blames her for, you know, for being too forthright. But he gets in. And she seems to imply. that he was more than willing.

You know, when I was a child, all I needed was kissing in cars and downtown bars. That's all we needed. You drew stars around my scars. Okay. Oh, yes, yes. We have stars. We have stars.

Stars, do you like them? That's another Taylor thing. We're not going to get into that. Oh, is that right? It's not a lyric. I was going to say I like them, but, you know. It's a thing. I still like them.

She can't draw stars, Taylor. Really? Yeah. Somebody's like, Taylor, what is this? And she's like, stars, do you like them? It's very silly. Internet stuff has to just kind of stay on the internet, you know? Doesn't make sense when I talk about it right here.

It doesn't have to make sense. It's okay. You know, a really nice line. It's got alliteration with the S's, which are beautiful sounds, right? Yeah. This is flowing. sound. It's got internal rhyme, stars and scars. It's got two levels of symbolism, you know, so stars are a symbol of aspirations. You're not going to make an aspiration joke?

No, thank you. That's your job. Thank you. And scars, you know, symbolic of past injuries. So you're drawing stars. You're essentially you're making it better. You're healing. Yeah, you kiss it better. Oh, yeah. See what I did there. Rihanna. Yeah. But now I'm bleeding. And what color would your blood be?

Red. Red. So, yeah, we have this kind of red imagery, red. Old wounds open up. They don't always fix. Yeah, he's done something that, like, hurt her again. Right, yeah. Because, you know, I mean, essentially,

you draw stars around your scars, but she's bleeding again because the fix was insincere. You know, and I think that we can, we have seen that we can expect a level of insincerity from James. Yes. Based on the previous poem. Yes. You know, where he says, you know, where he doesn't apologize and then he blames her for dancing with another guy to their song. Mm-hmm. You know, oh, that's why I did it two months ago.

Yeah. Yeah. He's unreliable in insincerexious. here. Right. Oh, let's see. So the chorus, because I knew you stepping on the last train marked me like a blood stain. So more red, more blood. I knew you tried to change the ending. Peter, losing Wendy. Oh, Peter. We'll just pause for a hallowed moment. Yes. We We love Peter.

Remember that Peter is my favorite song. Yes. At this point. You know, only having touched about 10% of her. I know, but I don't know that anything can be Peter. It's so lovely. Yeah. It really is lovely.

And I don't know if we need to talk a lot about the Peter image, you know. Peter loses Wendy. Peter, Wendy has to return, and Peter promises, you know, he will, he'll see her someday. He'll grow up. he'll catch her next season. None of those things ever happened. Peter stays a boy. Yeah.

Wendy grows up. Wendy grows up. Turns out the light in the window. Yep, and that's it. Honestly, I was, I'm going to have to say that the long pond session discussion confuses me now. Same, same now that we're talking about it, the way that she thinks that they end up together. Yes.

Yeah. Because I wrote in my notes that this was the line. that convinced me, James will always remain an adolescent. Agreed. Yeah, because he didn't grow up. Wendy did. He's Peter and she's Wendy. Yes. And so, no, they're not getting together. No, these are just memories. And yet she says she likes to think they got together, which is really intriguing. I mean, and maybe it just marks her for a hopeful romantic. I think so. Yeah, maybe so. Maybe that's like a separate thing from this because this sounds like

looking back, thinking of all those things and how James like seemed to have hurt her again and lost her because he didn't grow up. He's trying to change the ending, but he can't because he won't, he refuses to grow up. He's always going to be Peter. He's just not, he's not going to move past that. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, I know she wants to believe they get together. I think she just like wants everyone. have a happy ending. Oh, just romance. She wants Romeo and Juliet to get together. I mean, come on. Yeah, she changed it all.

She changes Ophelia's fate. She changes Romeo and Juliet. She, there's another, oh, this whole conversation, and honestly the Betty conversation has made me think about Cowboy Like Me, because that's the one that you said

that it, they, I, in my head, that relationship, ended, didn't end, like they stayed together. But you said, you didn't say, but I took from you that you don't think that they ended up together. I do not. And in the comments, people were very divided about that. And I think I was kind of coming from like, but I know Taylor wants everyone to end up together.

You know, Taylor wants everyone to have happy ending. That may be her fondest wish, and she does use the word hope liberally in the previous poem. Yeah, yeah. Right. And I think that she has hope. hope, you know, bless her, good luck with Travis. But, and I have hopes for her. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And I also think that it's not represented in this poem. Agreed. I just don't. I don't think that they get together. I agree. And if you guys can find the line, you know, and don't pretend on your own emotions. It's in the text. It's got to be in the text because when I read, tried to change the end. Peter losing Wendy.

You know, they tried, but it doesn't feel like they were successful. I knew you leaving like a father running like water. Yeah, I knew you were leaving. I knew you were running like that river of memory like running water. Yeah. So we have really nice similes, by the way. And it's not going to work. We must pause for today's literary device.

Okay. Today's literary device is epistrophe. Okay. Also called epistrophy. But usually Americans say epistrophe. Epiphora means turn in Greek, epiphora. Like an epiphany. Okay.

Like to understand before. So, or afterwards epiphany. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's the opposite of anaphra, which I've talked to. about before. So an epistrophic moment is the use of the eyes at the end of the

Okay. Yeah. You see how she uses I, I, I, I, I, at the end of the line. And then the use of repeated eyes at the beginning of the line is anaphora. So she dovetails epiphora with anaphora. Isn't that fun? Yeah. So your new literary device today? Epiphora. Epiphora. Yes, or an epistrophic turn. Beautiful.

One where she uses the same word over and over again. It's not rhyme, but it does connect the lines. Yeah, and she does that throughout, like in the choruses up above. Right, yeah. Yeah, all throughout the chorus. You'll see that she uses the eyes at the end of lines. So. Cool.

The word eye is also spread liberally throughout the whole text. So clearly this is a Betty-focused narrative, right? So, you know, again, in our understanding that we're creating this Rishamon effect where we're creating a split narrative, and this is just her opinion. Yes. Right. Yeah. And she underscores that by saying, I think this, I saw that, I felt this, I remember that. This is Betty's truth.

This is Betty's truth. Yeah, James has his truth. August has her truth. this is Betty's truth. And when you were young, they assume you know nothing. But. First three. But I knew.

I knew you'd linger like a tattoo kiss. Red lipstick? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I love that simile. Linger like a tattoo. You too.

And, you know, how many times have you seen a tattoo of a kiss on someone's arm? Uh-huh. And it's very difficult to remove a tattoo. I knew you'd haunt all of my what-ifs. I love this line. I knew you would. I love it. You have quoted this line to me, and I did not know where it.

I definitely have. Yes. I didn't know where it came from? And I thought, when I read it, I thought, where have I heard this? No, it's just me. I have no idea what the context was, but I do remember talking about it. Yep. And what type of creature would haunt?

A ghost. We're back to ghosts. Yes. I should say that on Patreon. If you haven't joined, you should because we have a whole chat of people crowds. We're like crowdsourcing all of the instances of ghosts and haunting and phantoms. And there are thousands, it seems like. So that's very fun chat that's happening on Patreon right now.

Well, and the reason why I'm excited about it is because, oh no, is because it is because it, It's typical Taylor. Absolutely. Typical Taylor. Typical Taylor time. Typical Taylor is she's going to use ghosts or, you know, death imagery or something, some of witches or, yeah, that's going to be typical Taylor. We haven't seen typical Taylor in the first two poems, but... Here she is.

Here she is. I knew you'd haunt all of my what-ifs, the smell of smoke. Oh, what looks like smoke? A ghost. A ghost would hang around this long because I knew everything when I was used. young, because I knew I'd curse you. What might curse you? Maybe a

ghost? A ghost. For the longest time chasing shadows in the grocery line. A shadow? Like a... Like a ghost. Ghost. Okay, wait, I want to stop there. Because this line has confused

me, but I feel like I've finally maybe gotten a hold on it. Okay. It's chasing shadows. What's the deal with the shadows in Peter Pan? Oh, you mean he loses his shadow and the shadow has to be restored to him. It has to be stitched back to him. Yeah.

How do you mean what's the deal? Well, I was trying to, I was like, I know there's shadows in Peter Pan. So to me, this is like, in my head, it's like this, this Peter is out here still like in Never, Neverland, trying to find his shadow, not growing up. But I am in my real life going to the grocery store, just live in my adult life. And I'm like still picturing you. Like I'm still seeing you like in my everyday life. Okay. Over there chasing shadows.

So let me put my academic hat on. Please, please. A lot has been written about the shadows in Peter Pan. Okay. The loss of the shadow in Peter Pan. Okay. You know, you guys can go online or go to Google. Google Scholar and type in Shadows in Peter Pan.

You know, a shadow is an image of self-reflection. Okay. Does Peter Pan have self-reflection? No. And his shadow escapes him. Okay. Also, what grows as the sun sets? Your shadow.

Your shadow. What does not grow in Peter Pan? Him. Him. Yeah, so the shadow tries to escape him. The shadow literally has to be stitched to his body to remain with him. It's almost as though this influence. this internal adult persona is trying to break away.

Wow. Yeah. Well, and it's not, I'm not being personally brilliant here. No, no, but. Demonstrating that I've read a few things. Yeah. That is so fun. Isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, the shadow is very meaningful for the, you know, that Peter Pan lore. Yeah. So, yeah, chasing shadows in the grocery line is a lovely line. Yeah. She's, you know, chasing the memory of him. Yeah. But he's eternally Peter Pan.

Ugh. Yeah. I like the smell of smoke would hang around. You know, who would know that the smell of smoke would hang around this long? And again, that's not a completed sentence, but you kind of know the intention of the sentence completion. Right. I knew you'd haunt all of my what-ifs. I knew that the smell of.

smoke would like I knew that you would you would stick with me forever right I knew I'd curse you and you see how she uses um I knew in the first line of the third verse the second line of the fourth line the fifth line the seventh line she uses yeah over the ninth line yeah right so you know that's a very simple device repetition um underscoring that now now in her adult she knows, right? She understands the world. She understands a little bit more about personal relationships. She understands more about herself.

Right. And she can memorialize an understanding about past relationships. She can remember, you know, oh, you know, that was the relationship I had. And here's how it worked and here's when it didn't work. And, you know, it still haunts me a little bit. but at least I understand it. Yeah, I understand why and how these things happened. Yes.

Yeah, I knew you'd miss me once the thrill expired. You know, again, this poem is full of great lines where the others are more couched in the adolescent world. This one's clearly in the adult world. You know, as an adult's, you know, carnal lust is lots of fun. However, you know, long and lasting relationships are built on other things. Right. Right. And so she knew that years after the carnal lust was over, years after they had escaped one another,

once the thrill was gone, that you'd be standing in my front porch light. So we're back to that image of In the Light. And I knew you'd come back to me, you'd come back to me, and you'd come back to me, and you'd come back to me and you'd come back. So maybe he does come back. Yeah, but like later on. Yeah. This, by the while, oh, I'm sorry, we got the refrain too.

But I'm going to go ahead and say... Yeah, it's the same. This is an indeterminate ending. Oh, that's what I was just talking about. Like me. Yeah. Yeah. So we are not sure whether he comes back or not.

She believes that now that their carnal lust is expired and now that all the memories are back and adulthood is in place, that that tattoo kiss will provide enough of a bellwether to bring him back. But you remember she at least four times characterizes him as a ghost. Uh-huh. So does he come back?

And then we have the song The Longest Time by Billy Joel. Okay. Which is a line from her work here. And you guys, do you remember this 1983 song, oh, for the longest time? If you said goodbye to me tonight, there would still be music left to right. What else could I do? I'm so inspired by you. That hasn't happened for the long.

I know this song. Yeah. Yeah. You know that song? Yeah, I do. Once I thought my innocence at God. Okay. Yeah.

So was her innocence gone once? Yeah, but now I know that happiness goes on. That's where you found me. That's when you put your arms around me. I haven't been there for the longest time. So clearly she is echoing that song and the two of them get back together. Oh. Or do they?

Or not. I don't know. Okay. So do you want to do? a summation for all three or shall I watch this song since I've never seen it? Yeah, let's listen to this song

and then we'll come back to get the summation but I do have one more thing. Okay. That sounded like you maybe have one more thing too. I did. And you'd be standing in my front porch light. So this is the same as in Betty and August get in the car

was at the same minute, the same second of the song. I knew you'd be standing in my front porch light. Oh, is it really? It's at 247? No, this one. is at 313. Oh, okay.

And in Betty, whenever he says, I'm here on your doorstep, also 313. Oh, freaky. Okay, maybe there's a ghost in the machine. Maybe so. Haunting all of our what-ifs. Okay, my final admission before we listen? Yes. You know how it's very cheeky and very self-assured and already knowing how to sing the first two?

Uh-huh. I have no clue. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think the free verse element and the lack of punctuation leaves me wondering, how is this going to sound? Is it going to be wistful? I mean, I'm thinking it might be. Is it going to be full of memory?

How is she going to phrase it? Because there are only a handful of Syshura, and otherwise it's just free verse. Okay, I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited to hear it. I have no clue. Good. This one actually has a music video,

because this was the single, like the lead single from folklore. Will there be ghosts? Um, maybe like, um, assumed ghosts. Okay. So we're gonna watch the music video. I think that's all we'll watch right now. Maybe we'll watch all the other things at a different time.

Um, but if you're on Patreon, or if you're not on Patreon, you can join Patreon to go watch and listen to the song with us. It's up there now. And we will be right back, if not. I'll do all kinds of ghostly antics. Okay. No. He might. Maybe I will.

I'll be inspired to do it. Okay. So yeah, it's like she's moving through different planes of thought and existence. Yeah. So she's got this real place, a place that seems real, with a fireplace and an old piano. But then she opens up this golden past and she goes into a fantasy land, but then she goes into a tempest. a tempest. And are those not our memories?

Yeah. Our memories are sometimes just fantasies of what we thought once was. And sometimes they're a tempest of what we thought we once experienced. Then she comes back. And she's clinging, like, yeah. And throughout all of that, the music is what's taking her through it. Like it's always about the piano, you know? Yes.

that's fun. Yeah. I like it. Yeah, that was, so that was made during COVID that music video. Oh. And so I always kind of took from it that it was more about the situation of her writing folklore than being specifically about Cardigan. Because, like, the, her releasing, her writing this music was like the only thing, like, keeping her going throughout the pandemic. She released these two albums back to back, you know, that.

Right. at a terrible time to release music, you know, at a time when she knows she can't tour the music, all of those things. But it's like what kept her grounded and alive. Because she's an artist and that's how she lives. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Okay. I guess summative comments about all three. Yes. So if you remember from the past few weeks, we've been going through the trilogy, We have a lot going on. We have disnarration. We have non-linear narratives. We have split narratives that create what's called the Rishamon effect.

And we've talked a lot about that. So hopefully you guys have been taking copious notes. You know, we have at least three, and I think four voices. You know, we have the voice of August. We have the voice of James from Betty. We have the voice of Inez from Betty, and then we have the voice of Betty herself. So we have multiple voices. So we're being shown the story from multiple sides.

So we get each one of their truths. We get August's truth that life is a maturing process and she's in the middle of it. We get James's truth that it didn't mean anything, and I want you back. We get Inez's truth. that yeah he cheated on you. Yeah. And you get Betty's truth

that now that I'm older truth seems a little slippier and truth doesn't seem quite so definitive and you know the memories are important and I'm going to keep the memories

as well as I can I do like the fact that it is a non-linear narration. August is the near future on a scale of a year or so less, I think months. Betty is the fall after an immediate future. And then Cardigan feels like kind of slides a little bit,

remembrances of adolescence, but in the distant future. Agree. Years ahead. Yeah. And so, you know, there's another impact on the nature of memory. You know, how do you remember something that happened yesterday as opposed to something that happened a year ago, as opposed to something that happened a year ago, as opposed to something that happened 20 years ago

and your memory may not be the same as everyone else's memory. And your memory now your memory shift and change and evolve and so your memory now is not the same as your memory was a year after that happened.

Exactly, yeah. Yeah, I mean something terrible might have happened and your memory shifts worse or something great might have happened to you and you've practically forgotten the memory you know? And along with the memory goes truth. You know, where is the truth?

Well, you know, the truth is subject to your opinion, your impression, your remembrance. It's subject to the passage of time. It's subject to immediacy. It's subject to distance. And I think all of these things are the really complex thematic elements of these three songs.

That's why I like them so much. I'm just going to admit I kept calling Angela I called her and complained a little bit And then I called her and said These are great Because there's There's a lot about it Okay so I listed a bunch of collected themes

The nature of divergent narrative personalities and goals Because if you think about they all have different goals Interesting Right August wants experience And she would She hopes for a lasting relationship I think it's pretty clear

what James wants. Yes, yes. His hand under the sweatshirt. And I think that Betty is evolving her own goals. Some of that is just to be an adult. To live an adult life.

Another theme is, what's the nature of friendship? Oh. You know, Inez is a friend to Betty. Is she a friend to James? Is James a friend to Betty? Is August a friend to Betty? You know, how do friendships interrelate?

Yeah. Or what is the nature of knowledge? How do we know anything? You know? Oh, gosh. Now you can get me existential again. I know. Because, you know, James says he knows, and then he says he doesn't know, but then he assures

Betty she knows he knows. And Betty talks about knowing. Yeah, what is the nature of knowing? And then how do friendship and knowing? change over time. So you've got three factors. Time is always a factor that figures into the calculus of understanding.

Okay, here's another big theme. What lasts? Is anything eternal? Oh, this pain wouldn't be forevermore. I know. Is it just a ghost? Does it just haunt you in the grocery line? Is it just smoke?

What lasts? What is the nature of permanence? There's a great line from Ovid. Opium Mutantur said, Nihilomni on Mutanzas. Sure. All things do change, but nothing eternal ever changes.

Oh, what? I know. All things do change, but nothing eternal ever. What is eternal, you know? Is love eternal? Our relationship's eternal.

And maybe, maybe just the growing up is eternal. You're always growing. Yeah, you're always learning. You're always growing. And maybe that's what's eternal. You know, maybe that's why she brings up Peter in that last poem because Peter can't get there. Yeah.

His growing shadow has escaped him. Oh, dear. I know. What's the nature of truth? That's a pretty obvious one. And finally, what's the nature of memory? How do we sift through our memories based on time, perception, emotion or based on our need.

You see why I like the news? You see why I called you and I said, this is just blowing my mind. Why you had to skip church today so you could write some more stuff down? I did. I did. My wife went to church and I stayed home continuing to type and write on this. I took pages of notes. You're asking really big questions right now.

I know. Well, I think that, you know, I, I don't know where Taylor or Swift's mind is, but I do know that she's asking these questions implicitly through the text. Yeah, absolutely. Because of these non-linear narratives, because of the disnation where we don't get the entire story,

because of the Rashman effect where we're only getting partial bits of stories. You know, I think that these are the questions of our lives. You know, how do we understand memory? How do we live? how do we move forward? What is the nature of our time here? And how did we form our perceptions and our emotions?

And how do we maintain them? And how does all that wrapped up in our day-to-day needs? And I'm not talking about just needing to eat, but needing relationship or love or... Yeah, the psychological needs. Yeah. We need acknowledgement. Send us nice comments.

Yeah. That's why the three of them together kind of, blow my mind. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so I have two more. Okay. One is I began to wonder about the rest of the album. Okay. Yeah. And I began to wonder about her other work. You know, to what extent are her other works about these themes? And you know, I thought about cowboy like me. Okay. I did. And I thought about the Harkness poem. The Last Great American Dynasty. Last Great American Dynasty. Thank you. which is in the Eremor. It's in folklore.

Oh, folklore. Yeah, it's in folklore. And so because we're looking at her life from the outside. And people in the town are judging her. And, you know, but we don't hear from her. And, you know, Taylor says, I'm like her. People judge me. Okay, but you don't judge her in the same way that the media often judges her.

Right. We never hear how Travis. judges her. We don't know how Joe Alwyn, that's one of her past, judge her now. Oh my gosh, look at you. I know. Right. And I wondered to what extent is a great deal or at some level of propensity of her work bound up in these questions for herself? I mean, it does kind of feel like a lot, right? Like, she, especially in the later, in the later years, I would say from folklore on, things have gotten a lot more. And because she's older, she's, she's grown up. She has more perspective. And so I think she has the, the space to ask those, like, bigger questions. Well, and so then I started thinking about the most recent release. And, you know, we have Elizabeth Taylor. Uh-huh.

Right. And we have the title song of the album. Uh-huh. Yeah. Showgirls, yeah, the life of a showgirl. What's a showgirl? What, you know, how do you perform? You know, what's real, what's not? What's the truth of me in my performance? And, you know, and what's only a public face I'm throwing up?

You know, Ophelia, whose story she wants to change. So she's creating characters. And we're getting views of the world and narratives of life based on these characters' opinions. And we don't get the entire show. Right. we don't always get hers. So, yeah, to what extent could you do a mash-up of a whole bunch of them and write a great dissertation?

Just suggesting to those grad students out there. Yes, please. And if all of this completely blows your mind, walk away from it. Just walk away and go bring up the J. Giles band song Love Stinks. because those lyrics are you love her but she loves him and he loves somebody else

you just can't win and so it goes till the day you die the thing they call love is going to make you cry I've had the blues the reds and the pinks one thing for sure love stinks

what year is this song from I don't know it's not the Jay Giles band Jay Giles band yeah You know, they also wrote, um, centerfold. I don't think I know that. Oh.

Love stinks. Yeah, yeah. Wait. I feel like you do know that. Yeah. Okay. Love stinks. I don't know when this song was written, but they were.

Two by two. And side by side. That band was formed in 1967. There you know. Still greatest. That's hilarious. That is, that that is exactly. exactly what we just spent three episodes on.

It's just summed up right there. It kind of is. Yeah, we could have just listened to the J.Galb band and called it a day. Yeah. Yep. Or we could go through the whole epistemological wrestling with the nature of truth, persona, need, and all that other stuff. I'm gonna, and like my music, my hair changed with me and has to be able to

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for your music for your own that's that's why we're here. that's why we're here. That's why we're here. Okay.

I hope you... Okay, I'm going to make an earnest please. Okay, yes, please. I hope you guys liked this because it's, it is really very complicated. And maybe I make it too complicated. I don't know. But it's what fascinates me as an academic.

It really is. It really is. And, you know, how much she intends doesn't matter. It's in the text. And, you know, being in the text, it's so fascinating to see. And I think about my own life, you know, when I reflect on all of these questions. Yeah. And so, yeah, today Taylor Swift has made me reflect on the nature of my own existence.

Oh, my goodness. She does that to me every single day. Welcome to the club. Okay. Thank you. Okay. You want to grade cardigan? Sure.

Do you want to grade them all together or just as separate works? I don't know. I think we've already graded the other two. Yeah. Let me grade cardigan separately. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Cardigan from full. Chlor. Lyrical strength. Yes. Yeah, free verse, great literary devices. Really, really nice diction, phrasing. I just love it. It's a, I don't know, trails off into ghostliness.

Yeah. You're thinking I'm going to say 100, aren't you? No. I was going to go to the nine. Yeah, let's go ahead and hit, Two of those nines. Okay. It's a 99.

Narrative and structure. Yeah. I love the way it has an internal structure of someone reflecting years after an event. I love the way it works with the others. So 99. Okay. Oh my goodness. Uncle Jerry loves Cardigan.

I do. Production and atmosphere. Yeah. Kind of fun. I liked the video where she kind of slides through different realities. It's what we do in memory all the time. Yeah. We slide through reality.

So 98. Okay. Lour and literary references. You know, not a lot of lore in particular, specific literary references, but, you know, the ghostiness, the tattooed lips, those. Yeah. And the referentiality to the previous two poems, very strong. And Peter Pan. And Peter Pan.

So 99. Go ahead. Oh, my goodness. emotional impact. I really, it made me think, and I loved it for its depth of understanding of the multi-ity of the way we view life, 100. Oh, my gosh. That's a 99.

There you go. Wait, what else has gotten in 99? Ivy and Cassandra rounded up to 99's. Peter got 100. It's the best. All 2L 10 minute, 99. Yeah. Okay.

Well, this is fun. This has been so fun. I'm exhausted, but it's been really fun. Kind of a marathon to go through all of them. Yeah. And we thought about, like, could we mash up one or two, but they're really rich after you get to? Yeah, that was the plan, but it didn't work out. Yeah.

Okay. Super fun. I'm so glad you know all of the folklore trilogy lore now. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. I mean, I get it. I get why people.

have been chatting about it and stuff. Yeah. It's really good. Yeah. And I think you need to go back and read them and reread them and reread them. And I will. I think they're really interesting. Yeah.

Okay. So fun. Thanks for doing this. This has been a blast. Thanks for introducing me to it. This has been, in terms of his thoughtfulness, some of the best that I've read. Yeah. Or I guess I'm going to go ahead and say it's the best that I have read.

Like as a collective. Yes. As a collective, it's even better than Peter. It's not musically better than Peter, and I don't emotionally like it better than Peter. Right, right. Yeah. But, yeah, as a collective, just for the way it makes me think, this is a 100. It really is.

So fun. Amazing. I hope y'all enjoyed that. That was a lot. That was so fun, though. Like, this has gotten way deeper than I was expecting, of course, but, you know, that's what you always do. But, yeah, so fun. Okay. Anything else?

No, ma'am. I'm ready to go eat dinner. Yeah, same. Take a little nap. Yeah. Okay. Make sure you're following us everywhere. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, wherever, get your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Swifty and ScholarPod. You can follow Uncle Jerry at Dr. Uncle Jerry.

And you can follow me at Angela Wyatt McDow on Instagram. And we will see you next week to tackle something new. Something else. Okay. Bye. Bye.