The Swiftie and The Scholar - Imagined Futures in Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

We are back in our Tortured Poets Era with Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus. This song was much-requested and was voted on by our Patreon subscribers. Angela and Uncle Jerry talk through the poem and Uncle Jerry concedes that sometimes we try to find too much meaning in certain images.Works Cited:Sadie and Maud – Gwendolyn Brooksmaggie and milly and molly and may – e.e. cummings[in Just-] – e.e. cummingsBrylcreem commercialSynecdocheSonnet 12 – William ShakespeareSonnet 60 – William ShakespeareSonnet 73 – William ShakespeareMy Boyfriend’s Back – The AngelsCold Cold Heart – Hank WilliamsEllipse in LinguisticsTo His Coy Mistress – Andrew MarvellTricolonThe Swiftie and The Scholar Grading MatrixFollow Us:Patreon⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Threads⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠Uncle Jerry’s Instagram

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Welcome to the Swifty and the Scholar. where we examine the lyrics, lore, and literary legacy of Taylor Swift. I am Angela McDowell the Swiftie. And I am Dr. Jerry Coates, the singing scholar. Oh, how you doing, Uncle Jerry? I am ready.

Okay. I've got songs to sing today. Don't look at my notes. I'm sorry. I actually can't even read that. Okay, yeah. I don't really have a lot of preamble here. Oh, man.

Come on. I know. I'm going to be singing. I'm going to give you a quiz today. Oh, dear Lord. You gave me a quiz a couple weeks ago. I got to give you a quiz. Oh, no.

Yeah, I got a quiz embedded in my notes. Now I'm nervous. Karma. Okay. Today we are tackling Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus. Chloe et al, that I like to call it. Chloe at all? Yeah.

Didn't leave much for anybody else. No. Does she at all? Start out strong today. Yeah, baby. This is from the anthology half of the tortured poets department I don't know what that means So this is the second half of the double album that we didn't know is coming

The surprise part She dropped the second half And Peter's in the second half And I don't know why because it's a great song And a wonderful poem I know honestly the second half At first I was like all in on the first half And I was like those second songs or whatever

Now I think I might like those second half of the song songs better than I like the first half. And this is a second half song? Correct. So you like this one? I do. Okay. This is a Patreon choice.

I think I mentioned last week that the Patreon voters or the Patreon subscribers are able to vote on a like a running tally of votes on this app that one of our patrons created. And this has been at the top of that list for several weeks running. So I said, I guess we just need to do it. Just got to do it. Yes. This song did not hit for me at first because, again, there were 31 songs, and that's just, that's a lot to take in. They're all very beefy songs, too.

They're all very dense and poetic, as you've learned. So, yeah, this one took me a minute, but now I do love it. I love the melody. I love the sounds. I love all the things. It's very Aaron Dessner, written and produced by both Taylor and Aaron Dussner. Yeah, that's kind of it. I've referenced this first line a couple of times.

to you talking about she who must not be named. And so that was another reason where I was like, well, I guess we just need to do it. Just gonna do it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And that's kind of all I've got. Okay.

Excited to hear your thoughts on this title and a couple of the lines in this song. Shall I start with the title? Yes. Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus. Why? Yes. Yes.

Well, okay. So at first, At first glance, I looked at the four names and I thought, okay, you know, these have got to be symbolic names. Okay. And the more I looked at them and the more I thought about, the more I thought they don't generate a sympathetic rhythm as symbolic names. Okay. Yeah. I mean, they might.

No, but it takes you a while to be like. Yeah, and I felt like I was. What are those names again? I felt like I was trying to fit a size 14 foot, that would be me, into like a size 12 shoe. And so there are sometimes when you try to force too much. And maybe this is one of those times. Interesting. Yeah.

I mean, okay, so I thought about it in terms of other writers who make lists of names. For example, Gwendolyn Brooks has written a poem on Sadie and Maude. Cute. And it's great. It's a cute, funny poem. You know, Sadie lives life to the fullest, and she has children out of wedlock, and she's just, she loves a lot. Maude is a little thin brown mouse, and she gets her degree, and she lives in the library all of her life. And so Sadie, you know, kind of the name, sexy Sadie, you know, and Maude.

Yeah, it just sounds like boring and old-fashioned. So if your name is Maude, my apologies to you. It's a lovely old-fashioned. It is. Yeah, I'm not mad at the name. It just really evokes the right image. You know, I couldn't figure out that this was anything at all like the Gwendolyn Brooks poem, so I dropped that idea. And so then I started thinking about E. Cummings. E. Cummings has a poem on Maggie and Millie and Molly and May. Cute. Yeah, it is. It's cute. It's cute if you've not read this poem. Maggie and Millian, Molly, and May all have like different, they'll see different things and they what they experience are. emblematic of their attributes.

Okay. You know, does that have anything to do with this poem? I don't think so. Probably not. No. No, probably. And then he's got a poem called Injust, in just spring when the world is mudlushes,

the little lame balloon, man whistles far, and we. And Eddie and Bill come running from piracies, and it's spring. Yeah, so there are four characters, Eddie and Bill and Betty and Isbell. Cute, okay. And Eddie and Bill are running together, and Betty and Isbell. are together, but you know at one point, they're going to be rhymed up. So Eddie

and Betty and Bill and Isbell are going to be together. And that's very clever, and I don't think it has anything to do with this poem, so forget I said it. So then I started looking at name, meaning, and symbolism. So

Chloe, you know, I knew was from Greco-Roman mythology, Greco-Roman religious belief, of antiquity, It's another name for Demeter, who is the goddess of grain, also called Ceres. The goddess of the season. She's the one who brings us springtime. So Chloe means blooming, verdant springtime.

And I thought, well, okay, maybe this is about her, you know, blooming and maturation. And then Sam is short for Samuel, which means, you know, God is heard or God is he. you know, Samuel L. L is an old Canaanite, you know, a word for God. And then Sophia, of course, is Greek for wisdom. Okay. Right. Sophia appears in the Bible, but also in a lot of Greek literature. You know, in things like Buetheus, de conciliati only de philosophia.

The constellation of philosophy, why you should pursue Sophia for wisdom. And then Marcus, of course, there's a whole God. gospel of Mark and Marcus can mean a redemption. It can also be cognate with Mars you know in Latin so it would

mean warrior. Someone who is a Marcus is a warrior so we have a blooming spring time that God has heard wisdom and a warrior and that doesn't work out at all for me I know it's like what I came down to

is that these are four generic names, two females, two males, that are supposed to demonstrate that whoever it is that she's writing about in this poem might have a relationship for any of them. And she either wants to represent this person as bisexual or bi in some way, or she wants to represent that she doesn't want to genderize the narrative. Yeah. So she represents two females, two males. You know, you can make any gender a sex assignment that you want to and, you know, however you want to

parse that out. Yeah. You know. So I think that's it. Yeah, I think it's kind of like, it's just in the context of when we hear this line in the first verse, it's like, it's just a person. Yeah. It just kind of doesn't matter who it is. It's

just a random human. That's like not me. You know, I read a book years ago. In matter of fact, I still have it on my shelf down the hall. I probably should have gotten it out to impress you all and say, here is Gerald Graff's book Professing Literature. Okay. So Dr. Graff wrote this book, Professing Literature,

and he talks about how, you know, people who are literature professors have this entire industry of publication. Mm-hmm. You know, and so, you know, I've had to write theses. I've had to write dissertation. Every time you write one of these, a great deal of impetus is put on. originality. You don't want to repeat research. You want to create your own original research.

You've got to have an original idea. Well, after hundreds of years of this, original ideas come very dear indeed. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, one of the things he suggests is that we, we spend so much time dissecting the minutiae of literature that occasionally we forget just to say, isn't it beautiful? Doesn't it bring you joy? or sadness or doesn't it make you reflect. Catharsis. Catharsis, exactly. Yeah.

And so, you know, at some point, maybe I can be guilty of engaging in too much. Oh, interesting. Right. Literary analysis. And occasionally maybe we should just step back and say, this is a group of people. Yeah. Yeah, these are just names. It's okay.

Or you can go with the whole demeterrefer. blooming and Samuel God is heard and wisdom and Marcus the warrior if that makes you happy or make it intertextual with some poem by Gwendolyn Brooks or E. Cummings if that tickles your fancy. So I want to give something for everyone. Gotcha. Verse one. So first line, your hologram stumbled into my apartment.

Now, you didn't play fair with me because you mentioned Valentina as a hologram that stumbled in in one of our previous episodes. I did. And I had no idea what you were talking about. And thousands of people out there knew exactly what you were talking about. And so I sat here just going, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Thinking I wrote a beautiful, I said a beautiful line right then. I thought that was great. I said, yes, that's really cool.

She was a hologo. I'll never forget that Sunday night watching Bananza. Exactly. When her image came before. me, you know? And then I read this line, I go, you stole them. I did. I didn't have an original thought.

Man. Well, it's a metaphor. The hologram, you know, the song inhabits the realm of memory. Yes. Okay. So the hologram is visible, but if you try to touch it, no, it's not real. It's not really there. Not real.

No, it's untrue. It's a appearance without substance. It's just a memory. Well, I shouldn't say just a memory. It is a memory. It is, you know, is it like him in real life? Well, maybe. It's a spectral image, too.

It's a ghost. Oh, sticky. We have more of those later, coming later. Well, and I like that as an interpretation because it haunts her. Mm-hmm. Right. So it's like a waking dream. It's technological symbolism.

It's got great diction, this first line that stumbles in. Okay, so why would you stumble? You're unsteady, you're drunk. I was going to say you're on drugs, maybe. Oh, later on, we find out it's drugs. And then we have the, okay, so she does something very nice that I mentioned last week that she does as a good poet, and that is she gets hold of an image, and she will carry it through the poem

in various forms and stages. So here in this first line, she mentions that the hologram stumbles into her apartment. So an apartment is her interior space. It is her private interior world. Right. And so we're going to see that throughout the poem.

She's going to talk about going down corridors and back in her space. And again, if you're writing your thesis or dissertation on the use of the use of, of space in the poetry of Taylor Swift, this is another poem that you can touch on. Yeah. Right? Because this is, the apartment is an enclosed kind of boundaryed space.

Yeah, and the ghosts are coming in. The ghost of the memory has come in. Yeah. Yeah. Hands in the hair of someone in darkness, both visual and sensory imagery, right? You can see it. You can also feel it. Everyone knows what running your fingers through hair looks like.

Or if you ever, okay, so I'm old enough that I used Brill cream when I was a little boy. I don't even really know what that is. Brill cream is the first of my songs of the day. Oh, no. Brill cream, a little dabble do you? Oh, a little dabble do you? Yeah. That's what they say about sour cream.

It makes her water run your fingers. through your hair. Oh, okay. Yeah. It makes your hair so slicky and perfect that the girls are going to want to run their fingers through your hair. Okay, okay. And that is absolute, that is a lie and a complete fabrication.

Yeah, I'm saying, I don't think that's, I don't think I would rather just touch hair that has nothing in it. Yeah, Google Brill cream. It's like grease. It's just like hair grease that you put in your hair to make it stick. And it's like you comb and then you, you, you comb, and then you, you, you, you, look at your comb and it's got this like white grease. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

On your go. And yes, I used to use that on my hair. But then I graduated from that to a crew cut and I started using hair wax. Okay. So that's what makes the front of the crew cut stand there was the hair wax. Yeah. And, you know, now it's like nothing. Yeah.

Just my hair. I put absolutely nothing on my hair. Every time I go to get a haircut, she says, do you want a product? And I go, product. You're like, no, I'm a man. I don't need products. Oliver uses products. Yeah.

Oliver loves product. That's my grandson loves product. His bleached hair right now for the summer. I feel like we've just run off the road. It's okay. So yes, Brill cream, a little dab will do you. She'll want to run her finger through your hair. And so here we have this very sensual image that's, you know, synecdochie.

The hands, you know, convey like physical gesture. It's a symbol. hair is sensual, it's private. Like you don't let anybody walk up and run your fingers or your hair. No. It's so funny because my old boss, the former

vice president of the campus, African-American lady always used to say that for some reason when she was a kid people always wanted to touch her hair. And there's a common thing, yeah. Yeah, like, you know, if you know an African-American person, don't walk up and say, I want to touch your hand. It's like, really?

Yeah. That's actually mine. Like underscoring difference here? Right. What are you doing? Yeah. So yeah, it's essential image and it's somebody in darkness. So darkness, symbolic, you know, you know, note what the line doesn't indicate. Doesn't indicate who the other person is.

It doesn't indicate why they're there. Right. It doesn't indicate whether this is a real or imagined memory. You know, is this something that she wanted to happen? This is something that actually happened. Right. It is ambiguous. Yeah, it does feel like it's like I'm just picturing this.

Right. It's not actually a memory. Right. It's my brain is just doing this because I know that you've moved on. So my brain is like filling in the gaps. Yes. So who is it? And what?

Their name Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus. Kind of an enumerated list. One, two, three, four. I think that the names are intentionally ambiguous. They're a mix of masculine feminine. They could be anyone. You know, I think the speaker's concern isn't directed at a person in particular who's in this scene that their names are like variables in an equation. Exactly.

Like they're A, B, C, D. Yeah, it doesn't matter who they are because it's not me. Yeah, it's somebody else. Yeah. anybody else, and I'm imagining that you're with them. And I just watched it happen. So she is passive in this relationship or in this vision, you know, with the hologram. Which is really strange.

And I really, that really did give me pause because this is her vision. And yet she's passive in the context of that vision. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, it's like she's so, I mean, I think as we go through, we kind of find out that she's, like, so beat down, so depressed. So, like, just, like, exhausted by the last decade of being played for a fool, which is in a couple of lines, that she's just like, yeah, that she's just like, yeah, people are moving on with random people and I'm just sitting here and I can't do anything. I'm passive. I'm inside my space, but these things are invading that space.

Yeah. And then she says, I think this is an intensely interesting line, as the decade would play us for fools. Okay, so personification, the decade is personified here, playing us for food, for fools. And so she's talking about the nature of time. Time has changed. And it changes not a person or circumstances per se.

and so actually I started thinking about the characterization of time in the poetry of Taylor Swift. And I mentioned this last week where we saw time shifts, where she changes verbs from present to past, you know, back to present. And, you know, I think that there's work you could do. And if you really want to get down with intertextuality, then you could write your thesis and you could title it William Taylor. Taylor Swift's spear. And you could compare William Shakespeare's sonnets with Taylor Swift's poetry. Okay. How would that work, Uncle Jerry, you should ask me.

Oh, my gosh. How would that work, Uncle Jerry? I'm glad you asked. Because in Shakespeare's sonnet number 12, Shakespeare says nothing against times sithe can make defense. There is no defense against the side. the reaping of time. Yeah. And in Sonnet 60, he says,

time that gave doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth. And delves the parallels and beauty's brow, feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, and nothing stands but for his scythe to mow. And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand. praising the worth despite his cruel hand. Or in Sonnet 73, Shakespeare says,

That time of year thou mayest, in me behold, when yellow leaves or none or few do hang. And he goes on with three different examples how time passes us into old age. Or in Sonnet 116, he says, Love's not Times fool, the rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickles compass come. A line I've quoted in the past is one of the most beautiful.

lines in poetry. So again, again and again, he notions the idea that time cuts us down, that time changes us, that time plays us for fools. And there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing you can do about it except right, because it's in the eternity of the written word that we can transcend that foolish side of time. What do you think? That was amazing. Okay, I'm done for the day. Yeah, that's so interesting. And we've talked about this before, like, with all too well, and she's too young. And so she hasn't had the time, but he knew all along that she was that age. Yes.

Yeah, and then Peter, she's waiting and waiting and waiting. And time is passing, and she eventually turns out the light. Yeah, she is subject to the ravages of time. Peter is not. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. He somehow stands still. He is flying a different direction on a different mechanism.

flying on a plane, he on fairy dust. Yes. Right? He on imagination and she in reality. He is illusion like a hologram and he and she is trapped in her reality in that apartment. Even though the holograms invade them. Yeah, I love the line and I love the intertextuality. And I think that there's, I mean, someone does need to take this up as a thesis or dissertation idea.

I think it would be really fun to work with that person. So yeah, that's a good idea. Okay. And you saw my bones out with somebody new. Okay, that's a, I mean, bones is such a hard, harsh word, but it's a word she likes. Can you name five poems? This is today's quiz for Angela McDowell.

Can you name five poems we have discussed or are currently discussing that use the word or reference her bones? Oh, dear God. Okay. Because it struck me and I went back over the ones we've done and I found five. I'm going to fail at this because I'm blanking. Does all too well is lifeless frame?

Does that count? All too well is one. Okay, because she comes back half her weight and she has a lifeless frame. So that feels like bone adjacent. The line is from when your Brooklyn broke my skin and bones. Okay, so there's like a lot in there. Okay. Okay, oh my goodness.

This is hard. Okay, bones, bones, bones. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

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Okay, yes, her bow, the weary bones caught the chill. Weary bones caught the chill. Ivy. Meet you where the spirit meets the bone. A spirit beats the bones. Like a hologram, like a ghost. and the very Okay, not the first recording we did,

but the first we ever published for a view. We had a first recording that's the lost recording. Viewable only on Patreon. Yeah, it's not technically lost anymore. But you remember the very first one we did that we put out there? Yeah, my tears ricochet.

And it's like a funeral. And she says, what does she say about bones? But you would still miss me in your... In your bones. Yes. Well, I did really terrible on that. So you saw my bones out with somebody in it.

I think she loves the word. Even though it's a harsh word, like it starts with this, you know, the B sound. It's not particularly poetic, but in sound, but I think it's poetic and meaning for her. Agreed, yes. So bones is to strip everything away, to bring it down to its most bare essential, to be naked before the world, to be naked before the viewer in this line, you saw my bones out with somebody new.

Yeah, I have a lot of different thoughts about what bones could mean here. Yeah, tell me. Like that, like, everything's stripped away, like I'm very, like, vulnerable in this moment. Yeah, vulnerable. Also, that she's so, like we were just talking about, like, beat down and exhausted,

and like she's just, she's just like skin and bones at this point. Like, she's not, she's like barely human anymore. Right. And also, I think it's fun to contrast her, he's seeing her bones out and about, but he's just a hologram. Yeah. Because he, and I think this maybe could turn into a whole different conversation, but I think a tortured poets department as a whole is it's about

these a couple of men that like have kind of worn her down but also how fame and celebrity and we have worn her down and I think this is like you saw my bones out because anytime I go out everyone sees me

but no one ever sees you when you go out so you're just like a hologram you're not actually being yeah you're not being seen like I'm being seen as a person but at least the bones are weight-bearing structural elements. Okay, yeah. Right.

So she's still upright. She's still upright. She's still upright. She's still going. Yeah, she's vulnerable. She's more than naked when she's out literally. Yeah. But yeah, if you go back and look at the lines and the four other poems, when you're Brooklyn broke my skin and bones.

So bones associated with brokenness. And weary bones caught the chill. So bones are suggestive of weariness. And the spirit meets. the bones. So they're like ghostly elements of us, but you would still miss me in your bones, in the most essential part of yourself. Yeah, deep down. Yeah, deep down in your bones. It's like that line about feeling it in your ribs. Right. Peter, ribs, other bones. Yeah, other bones. Oh my gosh, what have you unlocked here? I know. I agree. I just thought it was so fun that she mentions

it's so many different times. It must have, I think it has a deeply internalized meaning to her. Much like bones do. Much like bones do, yes. Yeah. Stripped to the bone. Right? Oh, yeah.

So you saw my bones out with somebody new who seemed like he would have bullied you in school. It's time for me to sing again. Oh, gosh. He reminded me of the song, my boyfriend's back and you're going to be in. trouble. Hey la, hey la, my boyfriend's back. You see him coming better cut out on the double. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, la. Is it law? Yeah, De la, my boyfriend, back. Interesting. Yeah, I don't know. You know, it, I didn't, okay, so this is the one line that I

kind of, yeah, it kind of takes you out of it a little. It does. It's a little bit of an adolescent a taunt, you know, you know, yeah, I may be cut down to the bare bone, but at least I'm out with someone who can beat you up. Yeah. And I do feel like the, if we, well, maybe I won't, maybe we'll just move on. Are you going to say this is Travis? Yes. I mean, it was written in 2024.

Correct. Does she know Travis at this point? Yep. He's a big old six foot six hunker. Yeah. And the other boy. She's dated or like scrawny artist types, you know. My boyfriend's back.

I don't know. Yeah, I love the imagery that goes before it is so much stronger than this line. Right. Yeah. You know, and then we end the verse with, and you just watched it happen, which is an inversion of the previous line I just watched. Right. And so we've got the structural mirroring where both characters,

become powerless observers, she at first and now him. So I love it. I love almost everything about the first verse. Just take out of that one line. Yeah, yeah, the one line. And forget a sakes, if you guys can cleanse me of this feeling about the bullying you in school, let me know. And then we get to the chorus. If you want to break my cold, cold heart, it might be time to sing again.

Oh, gosh. Do you love Hank Williams, senior? Oh, okay, I don't really know much Hank Williams, Seder. I tried so hard, my dear, to show that you're my every dream. Yet you're afraid each thing I do is just some evil scheme. A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so far apart. Why can't I free or doubtful mind and melt your cold? cold. Colds too.

Cold, cold heart. It's cold, cold, cold heart. And it talks about melting the evil, the lonesome past out of her life so that they can melt her heart and be together. Another love before my time

made your heart sad and blue. Interesting. And so my heart is paying now for things I didn't do. In anger, unkind words are said that make the teardrop start. Why can't I free your doubtful mind And melt your cold cold hard

So you know in a previous episode Wait those weren't my notes I think it was just the song That carried away In a previous episode I mentioned that I thought she had a lot in common With the songwriting of Hank William Sr. He's like the male reciprocal voice to hers

and talks about relationships with women in many of the same ways. You know, I mean, come on, I got the lonesome blues. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Another line you said in there, you said, like, I'm paying for the pride, like, paying for sins that somebody else, like, inflicted upon you. Taylor has another song where she, when you said that, my brain went to put you in jail for

something you didn't do. Oh, yeah. So there is like a lot of parallels there. There are a lot of parallels. And he was, you know, a great country Western. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure Taylor knows Hank Williams. Yeah, there's not a chance that she doesn't.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would hope that she does covers of some of his work every now and then when she's just strumming at home. Maybe, yeah. Yeah, I have to say I was a huge fan. My dad was a huge fan. So my dad had Alzheimer's.

And, you may have heard that when Alzheimer's, you know, when Alzheimer's, you know, sufferers can't remember where they are or what their address is, what year it is, or what the president is, you know, you can put on music and... Yeah, they remember. They're right there. Yeah, I could put on Hank Williams and my dad would start singing along every single lyric. Yeah. That was pretty stunning. The magic of music.

So when I hit the line, cold, cold heart. Oh, that really, like, took you there. It did. It really took me there. You know, to start the chorus, it's a great line. If you want to break my cold, cold heart, you know, she's got the doubling of the adjective is intensifying. You got this really tactile imagery, the breaking of a heart. Like, the heart is something hard, you know, to begin with.

And I really do think it's an allusion to Hank Williamson. She can't not know. Yeah, especially with the two colds. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That also takes me back up to the first verse with the bones. Like if she's just bones, like her heart is cold because she's.

She's, like, dead. You know, she's been, like, exhausted by all of it. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. I don't want to disappoint anyone, but I will just tell you that I'm done singing for the day. Oh, man. Only three of them. I know.

I know. So if you want to break my cold, cold heart, just say, I loved you the way that you were. Oh, that is just emotional toying. I mean, that is wrong. So I like you the way you used to be. Yeah. By the way, Hank Williams has a song about Mr. and Mrs. Used to be. Oh.

Okay, I guess I need to dig into Hank Williams. Sounds like I might be a fan of his lyricism. Yeah, he's the next one we'll have to tackle it. So when we're done with Taylor Swift, when we cover all 200 plus songs, and she's clearly done songwriting now she has Travis. You know, we'll go to Hank Williams next. You know, I think it's a fun line because I said the word fun. It's fun because this should be comforting, you know.

I love you the way you were. But it implies that time should stand still. Right. The decade that played us for fools has changed her into something. Right. Yeah. We know time only stands still for, you know, the immortality of the written word and for Peter.

Peter Pan, yeah. And that's it. The rest of us are just like we live until we die, or until we're petered out. I didn't say I was done with bad puns. Just singing. You know, or that he would want her to reverse time. You know, I wish you could go back to that person.

I remember you. Well, that's unfair because, you know, we know time change. all of us and we have the right to grow and expand and to be different people, you know. Love is not static, nor is time. Right. You know, and it implies, I love you who you were. I love the person you were, not the person you become. Yeah, not who you are in this moment.

Which is a terrible thing to say. Yes. Right, I don't love you now. Yeah. I want you to go backward in time. I also wondered if it was an allusion to the movie the way, we were. Oh.

Right, the Barbara Streisand, Robert Radford film. That doesn't work out either. Okay, yeah. I mean, if you've never seen the movie, sorry, I spoiled it for you. I mean, maybe it could, it should, it would have, could.

Would it could. It should, uh? If you want to tear my world apart, and I looked at that several times and wondered if we're intentionally used the word tear to EAR because it looks like T. If you want to tear my world apart, just say you've always wondered.

So if you want to tear my world apart, that's hyperbole. Obviously, just by rejecting one person, you don't have to tear the entire thing up. It's metonymy. It's representing apart for the whole. And you also know that this is terribly manipulative. Right. Yeah. Right.

To be fair, though, I don't know that he said these things. Right. I think that she is taking what has happened between them and what happened when they found themselves together a decade later. And it's just not the same. And he leaves. And she's like, well, is it because? There's got to be a reason. Yeah.

And it must be because I'm bad now, but I was good then, you know. Well, and, you know, we talked about this with Dear John, where it's a dramatic monologue. It's an epistolary work. So it's framed in, she uses other voices. She uses indirect discourse to free indirect discourse to refer to a mother's voice and to other people's voice and to his, to John's voice. But we know she's writing. Right. We know she's truly the only speaker in this dramatic monologue.

And you're right. She's still the only speaker here. Uh-huh. Yeah. So these are like maybe like intrusive thoughts that she's having and her or her just trying to work through like, why did it feel so good 10 years ago and this time it's bad and didn't work out when we always

felt like we were going to come back together. So she gets tricky at the end of the course too. Because she uses an ellipsis. Okay. And ellipsis is like a missing part. Okay. Right? Yeah. We elipse things all the time. Like we don't use

complete grammar. Like you can run faster than me. I mean you know that's incorrect grammar. It's and ellipses. So the actual English statement should be, you can run faster than I can run. Right, right. No one says this. No, no, yeah.

You can run faster than I can run. Yeah, that's not. I just don't always speak. So people ellips it. She says, if you want to tear my world apart, just say you've always wondered. Dot, dot, dot, dot, yeah, wondered what? What? Yeah.

Again, this is manipulative. It's incomplete syntax. you've wondered what? Uncertainty, regret, did they have an alternative future that didn't come through? Yeah, you've wondered that if I had stayed the same, would this have worked out now? Maybe.

Yes. If I had been absolutely static and denied the footsteps of time, if I had never heard Time's wing and chariot hurrying near, then perhaps it's a line from Andrew Marvell's to his coy mistress, then, oh, maybe I could have fulfilled your every dream. Right. That's a line from Hank Williams. And, you know, but we know we can't deny time in that way.

But the ellipsis really engages us as readers. Yeah, what are we wondering? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And also carry us into verse two. Okay. Yes.

Yeah. So you've always wondered, you said some things I can't absorb. I can't excuse me can't unabsorb I just thought that was such interesting diction I think so too yeah so it's very fun so I think it creates a series of of ambiguous metaphors because there are lots of ways to metaphorically understand the word absorb so we use it in medical diction okay like you absorb nutrition okay you take nutrition in and it is absorbed by the body so you said some things that my body just can't. They're just, you can't get rid of them. It can't, yeah. We also use it in business, so things that can't be accounted for are unabsorbed. So unabsorbed costs.

Okay. So you thought, you know, you thought buying a car was going to be this much, like they told you, it was going to be $34,000. But then they say, well, but then there's tax, title, license, vehicle preparation. Yeah. And, you know, those are costs that are unabsorbed. Right, right, right. In the initial layout. And there are some costs that just can't be accounted for.

So you said some things, some things that cost me that I can't absorb. It could also be like poison that's unabsorbed. Oh. I know. So you've got metaphorical interpretations. you've got multiple metaphorical ideas, and they all work in the context of the song. Interesting.

Big thumbs up here, William Taylor's swift shear, a fear. You turned me into an idea of sorts. So now she becomes this abstract entity, again, to withstand the ravages of time, you know, to be timeless, to be unchangeable. Nobody can do that. Yeah. He has a viewer as a human being.

he views her as an idealized concept. Yeah, yeah. I think this line is maybe one of my favorites just because I think that it could be, I always, I feel like I say this all the time, but like I love to find like the thesis statements in Taylor's work. And I think that you turned me into an idea of sorts

could be a thesis statement for the entirety of the Till Richard Poets Department album. Oh, that's good, yeah. Because these men are, dating her because she's Taylor Swift the image, but they aren't interested in Taylor Swift, the human. And also with fame

and celebrity, the people, the world around her sees her, like, dehumanizes her. And it's just like she's just this ideal of like a pop star, a singer-songwriter, a woman that can't keep a man, you know, all the different things that we've explored in this podcast and that,

she's explored throughout her entire work. And I just think I want to sit down and like really parse the idea out and like figure out how throughout this album, like she's kind of talking about like I'm no longer human in anybody's mind. At IKEA, we make things just for college life like the Rosenmando blackout curtains in gray. They say you can't put a price on sleep, but we did. the low low price of $49.99.

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Buckle up for the funniest comedy of the summer. Super Troopers 3, now playing only in theaters. Get tickets now. So you have just stated exactly what I, you know, found to be so interesting about the line. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I wrote that it's a philosophical question that she is kind of rhetorically posing here. is there a distinction between a persona and an idea between a person and a persona? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Essentially, she's, you know, who, I mean, she's asking that question from chorus line, Who am I anyway? Should I sing it for you? Sure, yeah, you said you weren't going to see it. Anyway. Oh, wait, I said I was done singing. No, but seriously, she's, she really is asking the question, you know, Who am I?

You know, and how am I assessed? How do I assess myself? How does the public assess me? How does any boyfriend ever assess me? Yeah. When Travis looks at her, does he see this giant public pop star? Does he see this statuesque beauty, you know, the external features of her? Or does he see something?

Does she see just a girl who loves her mom? Right, right. I mean. Yeah. Or does he see all of those things? And why haven't previous men been able to see all of those things? And why can't we as people that watch her and follow her career, why are we not seeing her as a human? And as a fundamental thesis question, as a philosophical question, we should pose the same question for ourselves.

Yes. Who are we as a person, as a persona, as an idea? You know, what is a Swifty? Uh-huh. Exactly. Yeah. Right. What is a scholar?

Right. Right. I mean, we, we have these, we have these names you have given us. Right. You know, you're the Swifty. I'm the scholar. And people have remarked that we seem to be growing together and that we've frequently changed places.

Yeah. Just as we did now. Just now. Yeah. Yes. You know, and so, I mean, what do you expect a Swifty to be? Just this, you know, airheaded giggly girl who cries at every other song. at a Swift concert?

Yes, I think that is what they think, yes. Well, what do you expect a scholar to be? Do I have to wear a smoking jacket and pull my pipe out? And be uptight and, like, not make your silly jokes. Or sing. Yeah, or no Hank Williams even. Or songs from chorus learning. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I know. It is a seminal question for me. Yeah, I really love it. And it took me a while when I heard it, and then I finally like internalized. that and I was like, whoa, wait a second. What is she even saying here? Yeah. I think we're done with this song.

I should say, sorry, I always bring up only all too well. But in all too well, the 10-minute version, she says, the idea you had of me, who was she? Oh, that's a great line. Yeah. Uh-huh. So it's again, it's like I'm not being fully seen in my, like, humanity and by anyone, you know. Well, and by extension, you know, are we? Right.

You know, is, you know, how are, how do our spouses assess us, you know? Yeah. How do our family members assess us? How does the public assess it? It's amazing to me you can pull that line, but you couldn't remember from when your Brooklyn broke my skin. I don't do work. I don't work well under pressure, apparently. Yeah.

Because also in, I've really failed when you did this before, In the I knew it, I knew you episode, you were pulling out all kinds of references. And I was like, I have no clue. I don't know what you're talking about. Like, I've never heard these songs before. Yeah, it's just, I'm always fascinated because authors do tend to use the same language. Right. You know, and sometimes they do it as a matter of habit.

Sometimes they do it as a matter of literary structuring and development. I think she does it intentionally. Yeah, agreed. So yes, great line. you turned me into an idea of sorts. You needed me, but you needed drugs more. Yikes. Yeah, so he has a little problem.

And, you know, we learned, we got a little foreshadowing of that in the first verse. Stumbling. It's also parallelism. You know, you need me, but you need drugs. You need me versus an artifice. You need, you know, and then what am I? What of me do you need? You know, is it love versus?

addiction. You know, I think that the line draws a moral distinction between loving me and loving external things like drugs. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I couldn't watch it happen. And I made a note, couldn't instead of wouldn't. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. She changes from couldn't to wooden. Yeah. You know, and I think that that should have, could have, would have, you know. Yeah, kind of fits. Diction rolls through several of these songs. So I think it's an act of refusal of passive acceptance. You know, she's just not going to accept that in someone who, you know, is supposed to be esteeming her for her own self. Right.

Yeah. And it also goes along with, so we were talking about how in the first verse, they're both kind of passive, like just watching it happen. And I just watched it happen. You just watched it happen. But then now we're going back to, that's kind of after the relationship. And verse two, now we're kind of inside the relationship. And she's like, I actually can't watch this happen. So she had that agency to be like, I have to leave because, or this is too hard for me.

Then that leaving like kind of rips her agency away almost because of like the depths of sadness. And it gets her stuck. Yeah. No, I agree completely. I think that is a great assessment. You know, she goes from couldn't to wouldn't. She can't do it. Yeah, yeah.

And then I think she gives us, this is one of my favorite lines, I changed into goddesses, villains, and fools. Me too. In his esteem, she finds, you know, he labels her archetypally with roles. So she ceases to be a real human being. Right. Idea of sorts.

She's an idea. And the idea shifts depending on his needs. or her needs depending of who we're talking about because after all we're non-gendered. Yeah, and we don't know. She's like, I changed into these things, but is that her saying I actually did change into these things?

Or is that him saying you've morphed into something I don't recognize anymore? So this is a tricolon. Yeah. Yeah, I remember I mentioned this before, a list of three in literature, a tricolon. And the narrator asks,

she proposes or a dot a series of persona that are extremes and they'll cope with the reality of the relationship. One of them is a goddess, which is an untouchable ideal. Okay, yeah. One of them is toxic or rebellious, a villain,

and one of them is just blindly naive and just plain hopeful in the face of despair, right? A fool. Yeah. Interesting enough, if you are a feminist reader, you could reflect on the fact that these are frequently roles assigned to women.

Interesting. Yeah. And I think I've mentioned this to you before. When you look at Anglo-Saxon literature, and you're a feminist reader and you say, well, this comes out of a masculine culture, well, it does, but look at the roles assigned for women. You know, you've got Wealthea,

who's just this kind of beautiful bimbo who passes out the beer. Yes. And then you've got O'nella's queen, who's not even name. She doesn't get a name. a sex goddess and then you've got Grendel's mother who's this villainous devouring monster. Oh, that's interesting. So they really fit into that. Yeah, you do. You kind of have this

this, you know, Bimbo Fool, you've got this beautiful goddess and you've got this villain, this evil creature. And none of them are real women. Right. And none of them are in fact named, right? They're just assigned in these archetypal roles. And, you know, I think it's from a full of feminist perspective. Yeah, that's interesting. Really interesting list.

And then we go to change plans and lovers and outfits and rules. So we got plans, lovers, outfits, rules, a quad-colon. And it's also parallel with the previous lines. So she's making lists of things she's assigned. The frantic links that the narrator will go to out of Descent. Right. Right. You know, thrown out of all routine, dated other people, changed physical.

Yeah, changed my look. Change my look. Yeah. Altered personal boundaries. Change the rules. All to outrun my desertion of you. Okay, we have a military metaphor, desertion. You remember in Dear John, we had a military metaphor.

Traders. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, you could do the whole military, you know, of military metaphor in the songs of Taylor Swift. Yeah, but a lot of that. Paper. So all these frantic changes in her life are merely a distraction from the heavy emotional toll

that she's undergoing, the heavy emotional toll of that desertion. She left him, and she's trying to outrun him, trying to get away, and you just watched it. As an ellipsis, you just watched it happen. Yeah, she doesn't say it this time. Right, she doesn't say it this time. It's even compression of emotion. I wondered if it was a building of anger.

And so I'm wondering how she sings it. Interesting, yeah. Yeah, so I'll be listening for the line and you just watched it here at the end of this verse. The chorus. Yes. If you want to break my cold, cold heart, it's repetition.

Just say, I loved you the way you were. You want to tear my world apart. Just say you've always wondered. And there is such strange cruelty and now, you know, like the second time you see it here. I mean, it took me several readings to realize that she's, this is also very violent imagery because you're breaking the coldness, you're tearing the world.

Yeah. Yeah, so that it's, you know, invasive, violent. Interesting. Yeah. I think that's why she repeats it because she wants us to hear it. Yeah, yeah, this, I didn't change anything in this chorus. So hear it for the second time. Yes.

Then we get to one of our famous bridges. Yes. If the glint in my eye trace the depths of your side, you're going to tell me that's one of your favorite lines. It is only because of the rhythm of it. Yeah. Like I like other ones more for the image and the ideas behind them, but I do like this one because it's just if the glint in my eye trace the depths of your sigh

down that passage in time. Like it's such good internal rhyme, I guess. Yeah, it's internal rhyme. Yeah. It's also dactylic tetrameter. Of course. That's what I said. Dactyl is, bum, bum, bah, right?

Unaccident, unaccented. Okay, yeah. And it's four of those in the line. If the glint in my eye trace the depths of your thigh, down that passage and time back to the moment. So she breaks it a little bit. It leaves it there, yeah. I crashed into you like so many wrecks do.

So it's very rhythmic. Yeah. And it's also internally rhyme. So I sigh. And then you do. Yeah. Yeah. It's.

Yeah. Yeah. I sigh and then passage in time. Right. Yeah. So it carries on to the next line. It does. Yeah.

The rhyme. And we have the mentioning of time again. time can travel backward but only through memory. Right. And we have a spatial metaphor. Time as a kind of architectural passage or hallway. The passage of time. Yes.

The passage of time. Yes, we have a double meaning in the idea of the passage of time. And that passage is in her apartment that she's in while he's stumbling in. It's a kind of architectural space. So now we're back to that idea of space in the poetry of Taylor Swift. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, and she crashed into him like so many wrecks do. It's metaphor.

You know, the relationship is like a car crash. You know, the metaphor, the wreck. She's a wreck. She's the wreck, yeah. She's the wreck. Their relationship is a wreck. And she's too impaired by her youth to know what to do. you know she blames her adolescence her you know you notice that youth is is impaired as if she's

intoxicated right yeah yeah this idea of of impairment kind of runs kind of runs through the whole thing yeah it does yeah you know i did wonder about her um appealing to her youth um it it feels like she does a great deal. She's constantly reassesses things she did as a young person. Yeah, that is interesting because you keep talking, you've pointed out to us that so many of these poems deal with memory. And sometimes she's just going back to like a year,

or sometimes maybe she's in the moment and she's like making a memory out of it. But sometimes like this, it feels like she is talking about, because we're talking about a decade, she's going back 10 years and she's like well I was just a kid yeah she goes back to that moment yeah she crashes in their relationship is a wreck she's a wreck and she's you know she's traveled down that passage in time through her memory to her youthfulness and it's her youthfulness that's partially to blame it it intoxicates her something that's interesting is that like is that just incredibly introspective to keep going back to things that happened when you're you were younger

and trying to like recontextualize them and like understand why you did the things you did. Yeah. Yeah, I think it is. I think it's also a hallmark of confessional poetry. Okay, okay. Yeah, you know, it's a way of reexamining, you know, the way you were. You know, and by doing that contextualizing how you are. Right, yeah.

How I ended up here is because of those things. Yeah, here's where I am. That's where I was. Yeah. Interesting. I think so. Verse three. Yes.

So, if I sell my apartment. It's our apartment again. Okay, so we have circular structure. So first stanza mentioned the apartment. Third stanza mentioned the apartment. Circular structure is something a lot of writers do. I think I've mentioned very famously it happens in Moby Dick. Mm-hmm.

In the very first chapter, Ishmael comes down out of the hills and stays in this inn run by a guy named Coffin. with a coffin that's hanging as a sign. And then in the last chapter, when the Piquot is destroyed, there is a coffin on board the ship and it comes bobbing up and Ishmael is rescued by climbing on top of the coffin. Interesting.

So, yeah, you've got this great. She does the same thing. You know, here, the apartment, she's talking about selling the apartment. She wants a metaphorical change of location, a change of life. Because the apartment is her space and she wants to change her space.

She wants to recreate a kind of new space for herself. You know, and you have some kids with an internet starlet. It's like, I don't know what you do, buddy. Go and reproduce. You know, I think that it is a comment that's kind of grounded in contemporary celebrity culture. Right. You know, you're famous. Why don't you go find yourself a starlet?

You know, again, she uses this infantilizing diction where he's not going to find a mature person. He's going to get some young, up and coming. You know, Starlet implies youth. It may also imply a kind of pattern of predatory behavior on his part. Interesting. I wonder if that is true. And some kids feels hyperbolic. It's like, wow.

How many is the expectation this young, young girl? girl is going to pop out. Yeah. Or is it just like you're just going to move along and do some stuff? And so I just, I don't even know because I'm having to escape this inner world that I've created and you're over there doing whatever. And it doesn't really matter what you do. No. So it's just vague and like, you know.

I think it's emblematic of irresponsible behavior on his part. Interesting. Yeah. You're going to find a girl. You're going to pop out kids. Yeah. You're not going to have a plan. Okay.

Yeah. I like that. I'm selling my apartment. and moving on. Okay. Will that make your memory fade from this scarlet maroon? Uh-oh. Wow.

Yeah, memory, obviously, you know, one of the thematic elements here. Scarlet, sin, blood, passion, maroon, it's old blood. A vampiric blood, maybe. Yeah, it could be vampires. Could be. Yeah, the scarlet maroon. like hit me like a ton of bricks when because anytime you know she brings back like maroon is such an important song in her discography and then all of a sudden she's like just saying maroon here and it's

like well why why why did you do that are we supposed to connect this song with maroon i don't know and then she also says so scarlet it was maroon and maroon so she has both scarlet and maroon and then maroon here is like is it maroon as in not the color but like being maroon like being like abandoned. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the red like you're saying like blood like dried old wounds. It's like yeah, it's like an old wound.

It's like stained beyond removal. It's permanent. Uh-huh. Yeah. So it, you know, so is it a memory that stains beyond being able to be removed? You know, she can go back and revisit it down the conduit of time, down that corridor of time. But she can never remove it. It is stain on her.

Yeah. And I wondered how it connected to the song Maroon too. Yeah. I'm going to have to like dig into that. I have not done that. But it is interesting to think about it. Because we don't really know who that song is about Maroon. So like is there something here?

You know, we could make an assignment to our. Yeah. Y'all, y'all put those together. Do an Uncle Jerry analysis, figure it out for us. Tell us how these two songs work together through the use of the word maroon. Like it never happened, that's an impossible wish. It's not real healing. Right.

So even though it's old blood, even though there's this deep wound, it's aged, there's just no erasing a bad memory. No. No. Well, you'd repress it if you want it to be erased, and then that doesn't all, that's, that's, it's not great. Yeah. But you can't erase it. Could it be enough to just.

float in your orbit. Okay, so the English teacher in me is just going to say this is a split infinitive. Oh. To float is the infinitive, two plus a verb. Oh, and she put just in there? The word just splits the infinitive. And you're not supposed to do that, kids. It should be, could it be enough just to float in your orbit?

Okay. And would it have made any real difference in the rhythm of the singing of the song, Taylor? Could it be enough just to float in your or? No, it sounds the same. Yeah, and it would have made me happy as a member of the grammar police. This is also astrological imagery. Again, this has a lot of relativity to the poem, Dear John. It does, and I didn't plan that.

Well, because she mentions being a satellite circling around. him and he's the center of gravity and you know is it enough just to imagine him is the center of gravity and she just floats to use her addiction

it's like casual proximity it's not deep love it's centering all gravity with him and nothing with her he is central to the relationship and she's you know merely coincidental to the relationship you know is it enough to do that

Can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses? This was my favorite line. Okay, this is, I was hoping so because I, with this line, with the next one, I don't really understand what she's trying to say. But before we get there, floating in your orbit reminds me of Peter. We, uh, underneath the same moon in different galaxies. Oh, that's good. Yeah.

Yeah. So they're just like, they're, they're, they're in this. same area, maybe, the same space, if you will, but they're living completely separate lives. They've learned the right steps to different dances. You know, like, it's very like, we're here, but we're not here. With the many astrological references, and I'm wondering if we could write a whole paper here, are people going to get tired of us saying, wow, this reminds me of? I don't think so, because they're yelling it right now, too.

Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah, just like Peter. Yeah. I mean, you realize I'm only like 50 songs in now. Yeah, yeah. And it's hard not to make these. Well, and I think that's kind of the fun of it,

is finding the references in other songs from other albums, from the same album, and seeing how she uses these references and these themes and these images. And if they're, you know, trying to figure out if she's telling the same story or if she's using an issue, different way or, you know, I think that's kind of the fun of it. I think it is too. Yeah.

Why I like literature. Yeah. That's why it is fun. Yeah, fun, fun, fun, fun. That's a tricol. So can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses? Yes. Phantoms, former selves, lost relationships, memories, imagined futures that never come to fullness.

Mm-hmm. Like wild horses, wild horses. image of freedom, youth, unbridled passion. Oh, literally unbridled. Literally unbridled. Yeah. Beauty, untamable memories, memories that we can't repress and wouldn't, right? Cooler in theory, but not if you force it to be. And I've made the note, this feels like romantic poetics giving way to reality. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cooler in theory. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't work by force. Okay, so she's like saying like we're in each other's orbits. We can maybe think of each other. We can

remember that time. Yes. But I'm trying to like kind of force myself into being okay with orbiting each other and watching our phantoms. And it doesn't work. It does not work. Okay. It's a nice theory. It's cooler in theory, but but you can't force it to be. It just didn't happen. Yeah. So, yeah, the phantoms, those memories, those holograms that I can't keep out, you know, are not just real memories. But remember, I asked that question, are these real memories? Right. Are these hoped memories? Are these, you know, wished memories?

Yeah, like imagined future. Right. And I think that that imagined future is something that this poem is greatly deals with. Agreed, yeah. You know, so, you know, do we, do we live? look at it like, oh, we could have been like wild horses. We could have been untamable. We could have been beautiful.

We could have been unbridled together. But that's just in the theory of my memory. Right. And you can't force that kind of thing. And the fact is it just didn't happen. So she's using that word just again. That's not the reality. You can't erase the events.

You can't change. the memory, you can't deny the reality. Okay, okay. You can wish that we had another outcome. You can imagine what that other outcome would have been, but it's a phantom. Yeah. Sorry.

Beautiful. Didn't work. Chorus, so if you want to break my cold, cold heart, Hank, say you love me. And notice this is abbreviated from the previous chorus. Yeah, so this, so in the previous course is say you, I loved you the way that you were. And this time she's like, just say you even loved me. Just say you love me. Just, yeah, just admit that you love me and let me cling to that

memory, that hopeful remembrance of what should have, woulda could have should have been love. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But it wasn't. And if you just want to tear my world apart, one last stab in her heart, say you'll always wonder. Share. that wonder with her, you know, do you ever wonder what would have happened if we had worked out? Right. You know, what if, what if, and kind of a quintessential what if. I love the what ifs, the what if questions in Taylor's work. So, we go out.

Yes. Because I wonder. I love the way it connects to the court. Yeah. You'll always wonder, because I want to know, you know, the perspective here shifts inward. I certainly wonder what would have happened. I wonder what memories I would have made if you'd have said you love me,

if you'd have done things that were more appropriate for our relationship. Will I always unfinished syntax, right? Unfinished emotion in complete memory. Will I always wonder? Yeah. It's a rhetorical question. I just love that.

Because I wonder, will I all? always wonder. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Poem, okay, so what I like about it is that last line tells you this poem is not about closure. It's about reassessing and trying to understand what happened in the past. You know, it is weird to, you know, when I think about sometimes those seminal moments in my

life when I make decisions, you know, I do wonder what would have happened, you know, in my final semester as an undergraduate. I changed majors from biology pre-med. I'd already been accepted to med school. I changed majors to classics. Yeah. And everyone thought that was a really smart decision, I'm sure. My dad was so cool with. He said, I always knew you'd be a teacher. And my mom went, you did what? Yes. You know, and I do. I wonder what would have happened if I had just gone to med school you know you know I was accepted to the Naval Academy and I decided not to go you know know I was going to be a doctor in the Navy and I wondered well what would have happened if I'd stayed if I'd have you know I don't know that I would have you know been great in the Navy I don't

know the military would have been good for me I love the freedom of academic inquiry yeah yeah it's very different that's like opposite yeah yeah I mean it's so crazy you know I mean I've had those moments where people come up and say, hey, would you like to go out with me? And I, you know, no, I was dating Diana. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

But I do wonder. Yeah. The, the, you know, we've talked about this line a lot in Cardigan. Like, I knew you'd haunt all of my what-ifs. Right. And I just love that because I, and I, I always, I mean,

I think that's maybe just a normal thing that were like, if I had made one different decision here and my life was going this way, but I made that decision. and my life would have gone that way, and, like, how would those things have turned out? And, you know, it's just, I just, I think about that all the time. Like, if I had made this decision differently, like, you know, it's like, I go to, like, well, maybe I wouldn't have, like, gotten my dog juniper.

And then maybe I wouldn't, you know, it's like, I'm not saying that in order of importance. I'm saying that in order of time, like, just to clear. Did you hear that chase? The dog. And then chase. No, but, I mean, I got juniper first. And then, you know, I got a different job. And then at that job is where I met Chase.

And so it's like, what if I, when I was interviewing for that job, I was also interviewing for a different job. And so if I had gotten this job, I never would have met Chase. And then, you know, so it's just like. Yes, it's this cascade of little events that makes you wonder. And, you know, what would have happened not just to you but to him? Exactly, yeah. You know, I mean, he would be just mired in his loneliness.

Exactly. Yeah. He would just be pining for the phantom. of what might have been, you know, and you rescued him from that. I absolutely did. I saved his heart from the fate of Ophelia, you're sorry? And now it's just opalite all day long. All day.

Okay, the totality of literary elements, spectral imagery, holograms, phantoms, old love, the beloved exist only as projected memories, astronomical imagery. Is love gravitational? Is it reciprocal? Is enough to have one body to draw in the other? Architectural imagery, the apartment, the passage, the memory that inhabits like a room, like a house. Lots of parallelism, beautiful circularity of structure.

Memory has a projection, the remembrance of an act of creation rather than as retrieval of facts. I like that. Wait, say that again? She imagines memory as an act of creation and not just the retrieval of facts. Oh, that's very interesting. Yeah, right, because she thinks about memory and she thinks, oh, what might have been if, if you have said you love me, what might have been if it would have been just enough for me to circle in your orbit. If we could have been wild horses together, you know. Oh, that's fun.

So it's not just the retrieval of fact. It is a creative act. Yeah. Yeah. use memory that way. Identity as performance. You know, who are you anyway? You know, are you, are you that persona?

You know, am I that public figure? Am I that private figure? Am I? How am I to my family members as opposed to how am I to you? And how would that have fit into the creative process of memory making? One of those archetypal roles that I assign myself or other people assigned me. Am I a goddess? am I a villain?

You know, am I a fool? And the way that time is personified in this works, you know, how time alters people, how time creates conduits to and from memory, how time reciprocates love, you know, the distances between reality and possibility. Oh. I know.

I know. This is a good poem. I got very excited about what you produced. Good. And I kept singing different songs, to myself. That's also fun. I mean, the range from a jingle to a...

Brill cream. Yeah, to Hank Williams to... She loves to run her fingers through your hairs. Oh, how I wish that it happened. And who would want it? Okay. I do have a summative statement prepared. Okay.

Do you want to do it now or after you hear it? After we hear these songs. Okay. I think today we're just going to watch the lyric video. Sounds great. Okay. We'll be right back. Whether life serves you an ace or an unexpected backhand,

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Give us the statement. I actually wrote two different ones, but I think I like the second one better. Okay. So Swift doesn't narrate a breakup chronologically. Rather, she explores her memory continually rewrites the past through imagination. It does, we always reimagine through our memory. Much of the song concerns events that never literally occur.

I find that really interesting. There are instead visions, possibilities, or emotional reconstructions. They repeat uncertainty with the word wonder. Right? So the word wonder has, has different meanings. Okay, yes, yes, yes, yes.

To contemplate, but also it's a wonder. It's a fantasy. It's not real. It's not, yeah, it's a, it is. It's unreal and generally implied, unreal, but perfect in some way. It becomes the song's governing poetic principle. Through the spectral imagery,

cyclical structure, symbolic color, recurring acts of witnessing, the song argues, that love rarely ends with complete understanding. Instead, its deepest legacy is the persistent act of wondering. Not merely who the other person become, but who we ourselves might have become and how the relationship might have unfolded differently. Beautiful.

We're in a perpetual state of wonder. Yeah, yeah. And that also, you saying that this stuff didn't happen, like it's all kind of imagined. and she's seeing it via the hologram that kind of underscores the title of Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus because it's not actually happening. It's like I'm just imagining this.

So then it doesn't matter who that person is because it's not a real person. It's just maybe it's Chloe or maybe it's Sam or, you know. Yeah, I think that that's, again, one of the things that I came to with, you know, why am I stressing out about trying to find some deep symbolic relativity between the four names, I think that can be any of us. Yeah.

I think that, and that's why, you know, I don't want to make a contest or a racehorse between poems, but I do like this one better than Dear John because it engaged me as a reader more. Right. It invited me in. The other one is so very about her. Yeah, it's very specific and it's very detailed about this specific. situation. Very confessionalist poetry that's strongly focused on her life.

But this is, although the focus begins with her life, she invites all of us to wonder. Yeah. So I had fun doing it. I had fun engaging in that wonderment. Good. Yeah. Good. Okay.

You ready to grade? I'm ready. All right. Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus. Lyrical strength. I kind of wish she'd show it another title. I mean, that's kind of what I, that's what I was wondering because that's not, that's not an obvious song title for this. It's like, will I always wonder or like, you know, say you loved me or something.

You know, those aren't great. But, you know, something like that that's repeated throughout the song. Yeah, I mean, but I agree with you that the title is emblematic of the idea that it can be any of us. Yes. You know, and that any persona is subject to question and restructuring and memory and wonder. Yeah. And time. Yeah.

Yeah. So what was your question? Sorry. Yes. Just keep getting distracted. Lyrical strength. Yeah. Circularity of structure is great.

You know, diction is really fascinating. The way you can, the way she looks at time, architectural space. I just, I really, really liked it. So I'm going to say in 99. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Nariman instructor in 99. Okay.

Right up there. Production and atmosphere. Yeah, I liked the song. I especially liked the lyric video where she takes some of the words and breaks them or tears them or they're a part. Yeah, they're like messed up. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. So 97.

Okay. Law and literary references and devices. There are a serious number of literary devices and references, so I'm going to say 99. You found Hank Williams in there. And emotional impact. You know, she leaves that window open for all of us to participate in that wonderment of our own memory. Right. You know, and it's something that we all day dream about.

We all do this. And she has tapped into a universal, you know, and I think that's why she uses the archetypes, you know, the goddess villain fool. tricolone. I think that that's just one more element of the universals that we all try to re-tipify our persona. And I'm delaying saying that, yeah, I think it's a 99. I do like this one very much.

All right. That gives us 98.6. Yeah, I can see why people wanted it. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. It does have a lot of poetics. I just hadn't always I hadn't dug deep until the last couple weeks when I knew we were going to do this to really find those extra threads that I thought that you would find in it, you know? Yeah, that's good. I got a few.

Yeah. But I still think it's worthy of revisiting and thinking about. Yeah, for sure. Okay. All right. That was fun. Yeah, that's a good one. We will be back with another song next week.

I do not know yet what it's going to be. I normally have these things planned out, but I just don't have them planned out. out right now. Got to sit down and do that. I just sit and wonder. Okay, make sure you're following along. Keep up to date with the podcast on Instagram and TikTok at Swifty and Scholar Pod.

You can keep up to date with Uncle Jerry on Instagram at Dr. Uncle Jerry and you can keep up to date with me and Juniper at Angela Wyatt McDow. And we will see you next week. And he'll be here wondering. Just wondering.