The Swiftie and The Scholar - The Coming of Age Narrative in You’re On Your Own, Kid

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Angela finally introduces Uncle Jerry to a pivotal track 5 from Taylor Swift’s discography—You’re On Your Own, Kid. They discuss the real life events that could have inspired the song and Uncle Jerry talks about other pieces of pop culture that tell a similar story.Works Cited:AnaphoraColloquial dictionDramatic ironyFree indirect discourseVerbal ironyAuditory imageryMetonymyAdventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain – Aff linkThe Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri – Aff linkSonnet 73 – William ShakespeareThe Great Escape (1963)Li'l AbnerParataxisFather and Son – Cat StevensKeep a-Goin’ – Frank L. Stanton The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading MatrixFollow Us:Patreon⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Threads⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠Uncle Jerry’s Instagram

Welcome to The Swiftie and The Scholar, the podcast where we examine the lyrics, lore, and literary legacy of Taylor Swift. I am Angela McDow, The Swifty. And I'm Dr. Jerry Coates, the scholar. How you doing, Uncle Jerry? I am just back from vacation. Thank you, Angela. Feeling good? Tired.

We just got back like a day and a half ago. So just long enough to sleep and study my lyrics. Prepare. I literally had not done anything before we left. So you're going to get what you get. Everybody's going to be upset. Like, no, you're supposed to spend weeks with these now. I know, but I do have a new method.

Okay. You see? Yes, you know, Angela sends me these. And so I started going into your Google Docs and just typing my notes. Nice. So I know, they're all typed up. They're kind of nice. It's a lot.

So, yeah, the black is her stuff and then the blue stuff is mine. Okay. So between the two of us were black and blue. Oh. I know. And I went on vacation. and some of you commented to my... Oh, yes, Uncle Jerry has been an Instagram star

the past week on his vacation. I know. I don't know. I just saw that magazine in a convenience store, and I just thought, oh, Lord, she's following me. And then you found a black dog. I know, and our train conductor was named Taylor. So, I don't know.

I just had to share. I hope you all enjoyed that. Yes, there were also... You also posted some pictures with Jillian, seeing the movie, seeing Toy Story 5. Oh, yeah, that's right. And then there were lots of people on the Great War episode being like, where's Jillian?

Bring her back. I know, right? Oh, and can I just say at some point, I think this would be fun. I mean, you've talked about this. At some point, we should do like a talkback or something like that, if that's possible. I was on vacation and I was really anxious to know what people thought of the Great War episode because I did kind of strongly question the use of the metaphor, but then I went on and said, ah, but what a nice poem.

Right. And people really got it. Yeah, a lot of people said they felt the same. Yeah. I know. And I guess I loved, you know, this is the one, this is really the first one where I went through and read, like, I think all the comments, you know, like scrolled through. Because, I mean, I love the person from Australia who said, yes, that so many Australians, you know, died or were wounded in that terrible event. And I love the Italian who came back and said, oh, here's an, you know, here's an Italian war poet.

Yeah, the poems. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, oh, I got to look at that. that when I get home. So yeah, it's in my to-do list. I promise I'm getting I really am going to get to it. It was just really, you know,

to hear from Canadians who experienced that and hear from some, you know, some of the folks from the UK, people who've been at Remembrance Day, one of the people who lived outside of Kansas City. Oh, yes, I saw that. Yeah, you know, I mean, America's so

weird about World War I because I mean, if you go to Washington, D.C., have all these war memorials, and there is a World War one memorial there. But it's like nobody goes to it. I lived in Arlington, Virginia, so I went to it. Yeah. But it's just this little open-air rotunda off on the side. And it's kind of in a little bit of a wood, and so nobody goes to it. Yeah. But there is a National War Memorial in Kansas City. You know, they put it in the middle of the country because it was, it struck us to the heart. And I actually took honors college students. We were on a conference, and I took them over there to see it.

And they had no idea. They had no clue it was there. They had no idea what it was about. And they came away really touched, kind of amazing. So it is, you know, a fascinating place to visit. So go to Kansas City. Yeah. Thank you very much for your comments.

I really appreciated the way everyone took it. Yeah, there was a lot of interesting discussion on that one on all of the platforms. Yeah. We're switching gears today, though. Okay. We're going super, super Taylor-focused. Yeah, this is, this is super Taylor-focused. Same album, though, which is interesting.

Oh, it is, yeah. This is, we are back to our track fives. This is probably my favorite song on this album. Uh-oh. I just love it. It's a track five. It's very, like, personal to Taylor in that I'm just always going to like that, you know? Yeah.

This is also, we're doing your own. on your own kid, which I haven't even said yet. This is written and produced by Taylor and Jack Antonoff from the Midnight's album, and this is the song that got us onto our friendship bracelet journey. Oh, okay. I have my friendship bracelet.

Okay, thank goodness. Wait, is that, okay. Here there's another. Here up, I got it on. This is the one I made you. This one's more important. Thank you. I hate to do it without, I mean, you know, they mentioned friendship bracelets here. Okay, I do love this song.

also say that Stevie Nix also loves this song. Oh man, there's no pressure that... She said that she thanked Taylor for the song, sharing that it helped process the grief of losing her bandmate and best friend Christine. Oh, really? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I always love this song. But yeah, that's kind of all for me. I'm excited to be back in the land of Track 5. So, here we go. Well, here we go. Take it away. Yeah, I mean... You're on your own.

Kid. So, yeah, I mean, you're on your own kid. Obviously, a direct address. You know, so you've got to ask, okay, who's the speaker? Who's being spoken to? Clearly, Taylor Swift evolves as the speaker, you know, she emerges in the speaker. And I think, you know, all of you who know the song well must know that she's speaking to herself, you know, at the beginning and then to all of us at the end. And so we see a kind of progression and evolution for who the you and the kid are.

I did make that as an opening note. I said, you know, note the pattern of pronoun use in the opening lines. So, yeah, we're back to an aphra. So if you, you know, if you look at verse one, you see, I play, I wait, I hear, I touch, I didn't. I waited, I search in the pre-chorus, and verse two runs the eyes. but then when you get down to the final chorus, the latter half of the bridge in the final chorus, it's you, your, your, your, you.

So she makes a clear pronoun shift that it pretty much exemplifies who she's talking with. Right. So we'll get there. Verse one. Yes. Verse one, summer went away. Still, the yearning stays.

To me, that sounded like the opening of a novel. Yeah, yeah. It does. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Not as good as Dickens. Of course, of course not. Lots of literary devices.

She, you know, she smacks us in the face in line one with these personification. A summer can't actually go away. It doesn't have its own agency. It can't get up and leave. So she personifies summer. And it's seasonal symbolism. You know, what does summer represent? Summer is the bloom of life, it's youth, it's innocence, its possibility.

And, you know, so she's immediately characterizing who this, this, you're on your own kid might be. Yeah. Right. Because she's speaking with then a young person or out of the voice of a young person because of this seasonal symbolism. You know, what I did like, I made a little note on the economy of language. Okay. Yeah. I mean, she goes literally from childhood summer went away to maturity to yearning stays, right?

It's like it's like a photograph of your entire lifespan. Oh, right in that first line. In one line. Yes, in seven words, she hit your entire life. Okay, you're saying economy, economy of language, is that what you said? Yeah. That feels, I've never, I don't, I didn't know that language that word. that, but, like, that is very, the way that Taylor is able to give us full snapshots in, like,

one verse or one chorus or one line sometimes that tell like a complete story is crazy. Yeah, and I mean, I agree completely. This is, it's also what we call expositionary, right? Exposition, the beginning of a piece. And so this is also very expositionary. You know, we're going to, we're going to hear her entire lifespan. in the poem, you know. And so she gives it to us in seven words as an exposition.

And then she's going to go and backfill, here's what I did in my childhood and teen years. Here's what I did in my pre-professional years. Here's what I did in my professional years. Here's my advice to you. Oh, no, I just gave away the entire narrative structure. But, yeah, it follows a really clear narrative structure. Yes. And so what I did love, the economy of language, it's like, bam, and now let me backfill.

You look at the internal rhyme, you know, away, stays. I also like the contrasting time changes. You know, you're away and then you stay. Yeah, time changes, desire does not. You know, and I think that's going to be consistent for her characterization of her career in the poem. Yeah. So I made a little note to say, interestingly, right? The poem begins with a symbolic ending rather than a beginning.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I do think that's interesting. It's like she takes us from the beginning all the way to the end in this one line. Yeah. But then we still have a whole song to go through all of that. That's right. Yeah.

So what we see is that the physical landscape changes, the temporal landscape changes, but her driving emotional landscape does not. Right? Yeah, that makes me want to cry a little. I hope you all cried a little. I don't know. This song just feels very like Taylor is going to, she's like the symbol of all of us, you know, like all of us young women,

not that I'm young anymore, but like that, you know, we can just like face the things and do it and we're going to survive. And you don't have to change like, your inside feelings to make it in the world. Yeah. Physically you might change. Physically your environment might change. You know, certainly your temporal landscape changes.

Yeah. But yeah, but there are certain truisms about yourself, certain goals, desires that I think we all have, you know, that are going to remain fairly consistent. Yeah. Yeah. She wouldn't be marketing like mad like she does now if she hadn't been consistently for 20 years marketing herself and developing that skills. Yeah.

Yeah, so I wrote like a quarter of a page on the first line. And so, yeah, I think it's packed with a lot of literary involvement. And then she dives into the character. Yes. Okay. So here she is in her teen years. I play it cool with the best of them. So we have colloquial diction, right?

Play cool. You know, she's trying to recharacterize herself as this very young person. We also have dramatic irony. Okay. Okay. So, you know, I mentioned this before. There are, like, major types of irony. Yeah.

Like verbal irony where you say one thing but mean another, like, I like that color on you. And you could tell by the tone of my voice whether I'm being verbally ironic or, no, I like that color. No, I really mean it. No, I like it. Yeah. So this is dramatic irony. So in dramatic irony, the reader knows more than the person. in the story.

So there is a dissonance between the dramatic action of the story. You know, like we know immediately with a shift to the second line that she's this adolescent. And she's trying to be all cool around people. And we know she's not. Right. Because we've been there. I was a clumsy adolescent. I'm not going to mention her name again.

But I was a clumsy adolescent. And so, yeah, there is this dissonance between her vulnerability. in the second line and what we the readers recognize as the pose of an adolescent. So we just got a really nice comment from a mom who listens with her adolescent son. And, you know, hi. And I just, you know, I think the loveliness of the poem is that it really does recharacterize how we were as adolescents. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I remember that.

I remember that, you know, the pose, the trying to play cool. So we have characterization, we have emotional concealment, it's a strategy, especially in youth. Absolutely, yeah. Line three. I wait patiently. He's going to notice me. Yeah, so I don't have to keep saying dramatic irony because we all know that he may or may not notice me. Right.

And the likelihood of that may be sliding towards the no. Right. You know, again, syntactically, in terms of its diction, very simple diction, he's going to. You know, patience can be seen as a virtue here, but no, I think here it's just concealment. Yeah. No, I promise I'm waiting patiently. Yes, I'm patient. No, really I am.

Yeah. Yeah. I also think it's understatement, you know, because we know she's not patient. Yes, yeah. So, again, we're packing up all kinds of really kind of fun literary devices, but I think the top of which is the dramatic irony of she's waiting for the guy to see her. she's not being proactive with her life. Right. And I think that's an important theme to catch early on.

We're only in line three. But she's not being proactive with her life. And that's something that she's going to develop. It is a skill she will learn as we see later in the song. Okay. So I'm going to introduce yet another fun literary term. Okay. Free indirect discourse.

Okay. Yeah, so when a writer writes and they use quotes, that's called direct discourse. Okay. We know that's what that character is saying. Like, you know, Jed said, comma, quote, howdy, end quote. So that's direct discourse. But sometimes writers will use what's called free and direct discourse. Okay.

So that's when the third person narrator gives us the thoughts of a character in a story. Right. So essentially what she's doing is she's reproducing the thoughts and the words of the speaker without directly quoting the speaker. So essentially she slides into the mind of the character. Okay. Yeah. Right. And she allows us to participate in that slide. So when she says, I wait patiently, he's going to notice me. She's talking to herself. She's talking with us. There are no quotes in direct discourse. Okay. Okay. It allows readers to hear the thoughts of a speaker. Yeah, we're in her head. Right.

Yeah. So it's a fun technique. It's literally getting into the head of the character. Yeah. And she's still talking. It's okay. We're the best of friends. Okay.

This is verbal irony. Uh-huh. Right. She doesn't want to be friends. No. No. She wants a romantic relationship. Mm-hmm.

But she's ready to settle for just being the best of friends. It's okay. But we know it's not. It's not. actually okay. No, no, it is self-deceptive. And it's also foreshadowing, you know, because we're going to see later on that she's willing to deceive herself in other ways until she learns to, until she learns she's on her own. Yeah, and she's got to figure it out. That's right. You've got to act. Yeah. So, yeah, friendship here becomes a substitute for the, the unfulfilled, romantic hopes of,

you know, the speaker's just trying to comfort herself by saying, it'll be okay. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to have to tell you, this is one of my favorite lines of the poem. The anyway? Anyway. I just love that. It is so typical of an adolescent speech habit, right? Absolutely. It is a syntactical sciura.

It's a pause. It's just throwing your hands up. It's like when kids say, whatever. You know, it's like, whatever. Yeah, and just like leave. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, I just love it because I really feel the voice of this preteen or teenager, right? Anyway.

Yeah, absolutely. Very colloquial. I mean, the single word to me is a sudden word of just surrender. Mm-hmm. It's just like. Yeah, I'm moving along. I'm not going to think about that or anymore. I'm going to talk about that anymore.

She's just like emotionally retreating out of here. Yeah. And then I hear it. your voice. Okay, but she's not giving them. You're smoking with the boys, with your boys. So we have auditory imagery. You know, she does

like to attack our five senses, so we hear the voices, like you can almost hear the murmur of the smoking circle. Yeah. You know, and it's also the device, I've mentioned metony before where you name something that represents something else. Yeah. Like,

the very famous example is the White House released a statement today. Right. But the house is a building cannot talk. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So it's not really the White House. It's metonymy. You're substituting one thing for another. So I hear your voice, you're smoking with the boys.

The voice actually represents the sort of emotional truth she feels. So, yeah, it's representative. You know, and then we had this social symbolism where the boys are in a smoking ring, right? So if you're standing around smoking in a group, and one of my best friends at school, one of the English professors, was a smoker, and he used to talk about this. There was a place you could go outside, like off campus to smoke. And he and his friends always went over there, and I always feel excluded. Thank you, Mark, because I didn't smoke.

But, yeah, he said one of the best things about it was just hanging out and talking and being with that smoking circle. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, and so you're inside the smoking circle or you're outside. And so he's inside, she's outside. So we set up this real social barrier symbolism, which is really nice. I touched my phone as if it's your face. That's a sweet line.

You know I was going to like that. The yearning. The yearning stays. It is yearning. I know it's me watching Bonanza, thinking of her. Wouldn't have been Valentina's hologram stumbled into your apartment. That's right. So obviously this is a simile.

like as or then. It's also technological symbolism. Oh. Right. She substitutes the phone for like physical intimacy. You know, she's not really stroking his face. Right. Imagine.

Okay, why a telephone? That's a fairly easy one, right? Well, it's the connection between them. Yeah. And it's very contemporary imagery. Yeah. Right. It's how how kids relate and have for, you know,

ever since those things came out, you know, I know when my elder daughter started going to school, we got her her phone. Yeah. Just so when she was driving Highway 6 to Texas A&M, we could keep track of her and be sure she would say. But since that time, you know, I think that the telephone mentioned is an update for the digital age. For sure. And, you know, I mean, it is so funny because, you know, I pick up one of our granddaughters after school. and, you know, sometimes we'll take she and a couple of her friends out,

and they will sit and talk with one another at the table on their phone. Yeah. Yeah. It's very much a substitute for, like, human connection. Right. So I think it's pretty perfect that she interposes the phone here. Yes. I didn't choose this town.

All right. Now she's sick of the whole thing. I didn't choose this town. I dream of getting out. Okay. So I'm going to say that the setting of her native town is in itself a symbol. Yeah, which we've talked about before, right? Yeah. The small town that she's ready to escape to go to L.A. or whatever.

Yeah, I think it's an image of being trapped. It's symbolic of being in a trapped state. I also think it's a symbol of lack of choice. You know, when you're an adolescent, you don't choose to live in the city where you live. Your parents are there or your guardian is there or a single. significant other is there. Yeah, it's kind of dreams of like being on your own. Right. And like making your own, getting to make your own choices when you're a teen or like a kid,

you don't feel like you, you don't have any of that control over your life, really. I also think it is metonymy. I think that the town stands for more than itself. The town is a symbol of being trapped, you know. So it becomes the entire town itself like a prison. So we see the motif of escape, which we'll see later in the place. home as well. And for me, when I got to this line, I began to think, well, this is really a coming-of-age narrative, right?

So that's a very popular motif in literature, the movies and storytelling. You know, it is how we develop. It is Huck Finn, you know, in a coming-of-age sense. Yes. And when she says I dream of getting out, you know, just because I'm connected to other forms of literature, I thought about dream narratives. There are a lot of great works of literature that are, in fact, dreams. Okay. Yeah. Like Dante's Divine Comedy is a dream. He falls into a slumber, and then he has this dreamlike journey through, you know, hell and purgatory in heaven. And that's very typical of a lot

of different literature. So I began to think, I wonder if this is connected to a dream narratives. And that made me start thinking, I wonder how often she uses the dream in her works. Interesting. Yeah. I think I'd like to go and do some more looking. Yeah. But for her leaving, getting out, becomes synonymous with a journey of self-discovery. Right.

Yes. There's just one who could make me stay. She still can't let go with a guy in the smoking circuit. The yearning stage, she told you in the first line. I know. She's yearning. Yeah, I did. And it is so, she really gets that adolescent voice.

Yeah. Yeah. It's hyperbolic. Uh-huh. Right? This is a hyperbole. There's only one, really, just one. Yeah, just one person.

Not my parents. Yeah. Not my friends. Just this one guy. And I wrote, it is romantic absolutism. Oh, okay. It's like, it's that or I'm out of here. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh. I mean, essentially at this stage of her adolescent development, her romantic interest, her love, is really, it outweighs the speaker's own sense of ambition. Yeah. Right. So the sense of ambition is going to tilt that scale another direction. But we're not even out of the first verse. No.

We have all my days. All my days. Forever and ever. Secula, secular. That's Latin. I know. Yeah, so that's a temporal hyperbole. She's hyperboizing the idea that, you know, this is how I'm going to feel forever and ever.

Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Well, you know, it's the way you'll feel now and three years now will be a little different. I mean, it suggests the idea of permanence, but only permanence as a teenager would see it. Yes, exactly, yeah. It feels like developmentally appropriate because it does feel like that's just how you feel in your teenager. Yes.

These are my friends forever. Right. I'm going to live here forever. BFFs. Yeah. Best friends forever. Yeah. Kathleen had four best friends forever.

Yeah. Until one fell out of the group. Then there were three. My mom. I know. And we're at the end of the first verse. Yes. And it is now that we can pause and all get excited.

Because this is Uncle Jerry's favorite line. Oh, it's so good. It is a great line. It is a great line. Yes, the pre chorus. From sprinkler, splashes to fireplace ashes. And I've got like a whole paragraph. Oh my gosh.

Give it to us. About that line. Tell us. First of all, it's beautiful. Okay, why. The alliteration of the S's is beautiful. Sprinkler, splashes, ashes. The internal rhyme, right, is beautiful.

The sensory imagery, you know, who has not. not felt that gentle rain. It goes away and then it comes back and then it comes back of a sprinter. Who has not seen a log in a fireplace collapse and the ashes trickle down? You know, it's also seasonal imagery. You'd be watering in the spring and summer. You would have your fireplace at winter, which brings us to temporal imagery, symbolic of life.

Yeah, because it's like that's like spring or summer, I guess, to winter. Yes. Or spring to fall, summer to winter. And then it's also like you're saying at the top that summer is like a youthful image. So it's also from youth to adulthood. Right. She takes us back to the first line of the poem. Right.

The very first line of the poem, summer went away, still the yearning stays. And so essentially this is an echo. of that first line, you know, that you've got childhood and youth were there, but old age takes its place, you know, so you have juxtaposition, images of childhood, images of mortality, they're all bound together by the internal rhyme. It is so cool. That's my penultimate comment, so cool. So cool. I love that you wrote that down. Yeah, just good. Sorry, I need to move this chair a little. Well, and I had a side note. Take a look at, just for fun, not that she did or not that you have to, but Shakespeare's

sonnet 73. Okay. Take a look at the third stanza of this little sonnet. It has the same ashes as mortality imagery. Okay. So it is, in me, thou seest the glowing of such fire that on the ashes of his youth doth lie, as the deathbed whereon it must expire. consumed with that which it was nourished by.

Oh. Yeah, so the logs of your youth are all consumed and what are left over are the hoary gray ashes, like the color of my hair. But, yes, it's a perfect line. Yes, agree. I agree. So roll the tape, we're done. That was the mic drop.

I guess we could go on with the prequel. Yeah, I think we should probably. I waited ages to see you here. Hyperbole, it's not ages, right? You know, so we've got three or four hyperboleys stacked up in a row. You know, why? She's a teenager. It's a teenager.

Everything is either the best or the worst or the loudest or the quietest. Yes. Sorry to those of you who are teenagers out there. It gets better. It does. Yeah, it's the nature of teen impatience. She waited ages to see you there. I searched the party of better bodies.

Great alliteration, better bodies. A critique of the impossible standards on young women. Right? She looks around and that person is more mature, that person is thinner, that person is taller. You know, you always find yourself less by what you're compared by. Right. You know, what is the, what is the narrator reveal by this? She reveals a lack of confidence.

She reveals the expectation. She does not meet the idealized standards. Right. And who of us does? Right. There's no such thing, really. Right. You know, just to learn that you never cared.

So it's like, you know, she compares herself to all these other girls. They're perfect. She's waiting for him. He never shows up. and ultimately it comes to her by the end of the pre-chorus that he never even cared. Yeah. Oh, well. So the chorus is her advice to herself.

You're on your own kid. You always have been. Always have been. Right. So here she's speaking with herself. Later on, we get another person. Verse two. Yes.

Excited to see what you have to say about this. I see the great escape. So long, Daisy May. Okay, I think we have an illusion to the movie, The Great Escape. Man, I loved that movie when I was a kid. We actually went, my dad was in the military, and we actually went to the Navy Air Station to go to the movie, and I saw it there with a whole bunch of military guys,

and, you know, it was a cheering section. It was fun. Also, Great Escape, like the Getaway Car? Oh, yep, always comes back to Getaway Car. How about that? And an allusion to Daisy May? Yeah, who's Daisy May? This is the cartoon Little Abner.

So I collect comic books, remember. That looks like it is in a perfect condition. It's good. It's nice. Yeah, so this is my Little Abner, and this is 1948. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it's an Alcap. Alcap was the original.

originator of Little Abner. So he built this whole little bitty community. You know, Little Abner's one of the Yolkums. It's also cute. It is. It's kind of fun. Little Abner's wedding. I know.

This is the one where Little Abner gets married. Does he marry Daisy May? Well, he eventually will. Okay. Yeah, so Daisy May is the girl up here. I think you can see her featured up there. She always dressed in it. a most revealing way.

Gosh, I don't know if we've got a really good picture of her. She's the blonde? Yeah, she's the blonde. Oh, like this right here? Yeah, so Daisy May always dresses in a somewhat revealing sense. And she wears those short short. I mean, she looks like someone from the Dukes of Hazard. Yeah, okay.

Right, and so they live in dog patch. The cartoon actually ran in newspapers. It was syndicated in newspapers from the 1930s. through I think 1977. It's also the origin of the Beverly Hillbillies. Okay. So, I mean, if you look at Little Abner there, Abner Yocum, he looks like

Jethro Clampett. And then Daisy May up here looks like his cousin and his parents look like, you know, the Clampets. Okay, okay. Granny and Paul. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's a reference to Dan. Maisie Mae, I can't prove it is because it's misspelled. M-A-E is the spelling used by Al-CAP.

Oh, interesting. So this has M-A-Y. Okay, we'll have to see, because I pulled these from Genius, but we'll have to see when we watch the lyric video if it's spelled with a Y or if it's spelled with an E. Oh, okay. Because it could be wrong on here. I don't have the time to, like, check the official lyrics.

And I'll get there, though, I promise. M-A-E has is the more considered to be the backwoods, the country. Right, right. Your Aunt Diana. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Aunt Diana was Diana-M-A-M-A-E. So I have a dog named Daisy that Chase named before I came along, and my mom always calls her Daisy May.

Oh, really? And I'm like, why do you say that? Because she loves Taylor Swift. Yeah. Well, so Daisy May, an allusion from the Little Labder cartoons, It would be a symbol of naive innocence, right? Okay. She's this, I mean, she is like the girl on the clampet who doesn't seem to know anything but how to take care of animals.

Okay, so she's like, I see I can escape from here and I'm not going to be this like. This goofy, countrified backwards. Yeah, I'm going to be smart. Yeah, well, and you think about her body, you know, she's incredibly voluptuous. She's always drawn half naked, you know, so, you know, very revealing top, little short, short, So we have this, again, this exploited body per image. Okay, okay, yeah. Yeah, I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to exploit the body image. I think we can talk about whether or not. We hear a little bit more about that in a minute. Whether Taylor Swift does or does not do that. Yeah, did she have an eating disorder? I really don't know. Yeah, she's talked about it. Or she talked about it in her documentary that came out in 2019.

She talks about it a little bit. She was, like, very thin. And, like, if you see pictures or video from, like, the Red Tour and then the 1989 tour, she looks completely different than she looks now. Oh. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I wondered from the ensuing verse whether or not, is this, is that autobiographical?

Yeah, I think it is. Yeah. Yeah, I think that the poem does have a very strong critique of, you know, the exploitation of body image with young women. Yeah. With any woman. Right. Yeah.

You know, and certainly by calling up days. who has this sort of, you know, exposed body. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's an implied critique. I picked the petals. He loved me not. I love that line.

Yeah. I think it's fun. Well, it's a great image, right? So we're playing the game of Romantic Dreaming. But you notice how when you play that game, it is pure chance. Right. Unless you pre-count the pedals. Yeah.

You know, and I think one of the things she's trying to tell us, later in the poem is you can't leave it to chance. You've got to act. You're on your own. You've got to act. Yes. And so the pulling of the pedals would be symbolic of adolescent surrender. You know, I'm just going to give myself over to fate.

And whatever happens will happen. Yeah. You know, well, that could be a very tenuous way to live a lot. For sure. So, but it is a great, it is a great image. It's just a fun image. Yeah. And then I like that.

She says Daisy in the line before. And so you already have like kind of a... And you have your petals. Yeah. And then in the next line... Yeah. Something different bloomed. Something different bloomed.

Yeah. I think that's fun. It's very cohesive. Yeah. It's the way she writes. She very intentionally connects lines and verses. I also wondered if she... Okay, just because I know the author Judy Bloom...

Uh-huh. I wondered if she uses the word bloomed and wants us to think of Judy Bloom. Love Judy Blume. That's the right. I mean, she's the right age for Judy Blume books. I think so. And the right temperament for a Judy Bloom book. Absolutely.

Because Judy Bloom is conscious of all these problems. Absolutely. Of, you know, adolescent agency and of body images and, you know, that kind of thing. So I do wonder. I also think that the word bloom has a double entendre that is intended beyond the possible illusion. Okay. And that is, you know, a flower blooms, but a creative artist blooms. Right.

So something different. the creative artist blooms while writing in her room. Yeah, so I, like, became something different when I, like, discovered that I could, like, write this stuff down. Right. So she is the flower opening to the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I play my songs in the parking lot. You know, and my comment that I wrote down is, maybe she's waiting for a car.

Getaway car. I don't know. There are just so many cars. There actually are pictures of Taylor playing, like, in parking lots when she was like 14 or 15, you know. I, you know, obviously I didn't know, but yeah, I kind of wondered. But, and what great advice, right? Yeah.

You know, don't wait till you're perfect. No, you just got to do it. You got to get out there. Yeah, I mean. That's what we did here. Exactly. Hey, we were pretty great by that 20th episode. I mean, you know, like I said, I just like the idea that she's doing and not just, you know, wishing.

Right, right. Yeah, acting. I mean, you have to practice. You know, nobody's great that first time. The parking lot itself is a symbol, you know, I mean, when you're in a discussion group and someone says, well, we're going to put that topic in the parking lot. You know, you're saying, we're going to set it aside and hold it for later. You know, there's a she's still in her late adolescent.

Her life is still in a holding pattern, right? So the parking lot is where she's developing skills while she waits. to depart on the journey of life. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. And then she says, in one last burst of childish addiction, I'll run away. It's not a mature reaction to loss.

It's not a mature reaction to, oh, dang, you know, mat of petals. Yeah. But it is one. So we have this pre-chorus that comes back to us, this sprinkler. splashes and fireplace ashes. And it really becomes what, you know, in ancient Greek theater, you know, the chorus is there, and it starts a number of functions. You know, there are actors on a stage, there's an audience listening, but the chorus is

an intermediary between the actors and the audience, right? And the chorus will ask questions of the actors sometimes. they'll ask questions to the audience. How are you feeling about Oedipus now? Or, hey, Oedipus, are you sorry that you did that with your mom? You know, and so they will elicit emotion, you know, and make comments. And this is a really interesting poem because I think the chorus serves that function. Okay.

The chorus is like this constant tick talk of time. And if you think about how a sprinkler works, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, And it goes back and forth. Yeah. I thought, wow, if that's an intentional image, that's a really good one. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. So it's almost as though the sprinkler splashes and fireplace ashes.

So she's reminding us, everyone lives alive, everyone gets born, everyone dies, and time reaps out at single moments as we roll along. And so she called a cab. Yeah. You know, a symbolism, cars are. consistent Taylor Swift symbol. Yes. Symbol of escape, transition, moving on, moving to new lives, new circumstances. Why a taxi, it's an escape, right? She doesn't own the car.

Yeah. Right? She's too young, maybe to own it. She doesn't have the resources for the purchase, but she's going to get there. I'm just now putting together that if you look from verse 2 into the pre-chorus, it kind of can be, is that enjambment where it's like always. run away from the sprinkler from the sprinkler splashes in the fireplace sashes. Yeah, I think it is. Yeah,

because then she's running away by calling the taxi. Right. Yeah, I think I'll run away, you know, is the adolescent voice, but then she really will run away from this life. Yeah, yeah. So she calls the taxi. Yeah, that's nice. So she searches the party for better bodies.

Yeah. She goes into town or into the big city, wherever she's trying to find a career. And even there she discovers there is competition there's competition in the new surroundings there are women who have the same body stress image that she's got she's dealing with

just to learn that my dreams aren't rare you know ambition is not exclusive to her but desire for success is not exclusive to her yeah you know so I always picture that as like her making it like moving from Pennsylvania to Nashville and then

like being in the Nashville scene and being like oh I'm actually just exactly like all of these people. Right. Yeah, you go up and down the street and everybody's singing in every bar. They're all talented. They all try to look good. Yeah.

They're all trying to succeed. Yeah, like, oh, I thought it was like this, like different, like this weirdo almost or like this person that was going to like outshine everyone. Like it could be positive or negative. And then it's like, oh, no, I'm actually just like all these people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's, it's a hard thing.

You know, so I taught high school, you know, for, for 12 years and a coached basketball, among other things. And, you know, I've had athletes who really had had desires for a professional career. And, you know, I could watch them play. And I would think they're a very good high school athlete. Right, right. Yeah. You know, and it's a hard thing, you know, to realize that there are 100,000 just like you

across a state or a region that are also very good high school athletes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, she realized that everybody's good, competition is great, and ambition to succeed is there among so many people. Yeah. I think this is an adult realization. Agreed, yeah.

So we're trending toward adulthood, and it is with that adult voice that she says, you're on your own kid, you always have been. So, yeah, I did make a note on the second chorus. I said this is what we call a semantic progression. So semantic using words progression, where the writer uses the same phrase, but the meaning and sometimes the time or the emotional content shifts. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

So in the first one, she's a kid, and the second one, same phrase, now she is verging on adulthood. And by the time we get to the next one, it will shift again. So semantic progression. I like it. Yeah.

So we get to the bruceing on adulthood. bridge. And we know how we love bridges. We do. So this time she incorporates Jerry's favorite line from sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes in the bridge itself. She knew it was a good line. Yes, she did. Yeah. So repetition. Again, it's like the tick-tock of a clock. It's like the sweep of a sprinkler arm. It is time passing. I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this. Blood, Blood sweat and tears, idiom could also be an illusion. You know, blood sweat and tears was a rock group. Did you know blood sweat and tears?

No, I don't know. When I was a senior in high school, blood sweat and tears came to my high school. Oh. Yeah, if you've ever seen Greece, you know, where different groups travel around to high schools, that actually used to be a thing. I mean, big stars would try to, you know,

hawk their albums by going from high school to high school. Interesting. Yeah, so blood sweat and tears. came to us. So, yeah, she gave her blood, sweat, and tears. It's idiomatic. She literally worked as hard as she could. She began to realize suddenly, I have to seize agency.

She's no longer standing all outside the circle of smoking boys. She's no longer randomly plucking petals of a flower. Yeah. Now she's working. She's working. I hosted parties and starved my body. So, you know, the hosted parties creates her own social circle. Yeah, she's not outside anymore.

She's the one hosting them, bringing the people. The boys are smoking in her room. Right, yeah. Yeah. And so I think it is symbolic. She's making sacrifice with starving her body. You know, I think it does connect with better bodies in the chorus. Agreed.

And that's where it really, the more I read this, the more I thought, you know, did she have an eating disorder and was as part of it. Yeah. She says, like, I'd be. saved by a perfect kiss. Yeah, like if she looked like those better bodies earlier in her life, the boy would have wanted to kiss her. She wouldn't have to be touching the phone, you know?

But even then, it would, it's that fairy tale image, you know. It is an allusion to fairy tales. It's the reason why I don't care for the movie Pretty Woman. Sorry, I just don't. It's very, very Disney. Why don't you like pretty woman? I don't like the idea that she has to be rescued. Right.

You know, and I get the whole thing, you know, you rescue me, I'll rescue you back. That's sweet. But, you know, it's very difficult for me that she has to surrender her body as a prostitute in order to be saved by a billionaire. Right. You know, that works against my belief system. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm going to say I like the line like I'd be saved by a perfect kiss. It's very ironic.

Because it's like, and her recognizing like, oh, this actually isn't what I need. That's not the way to go. Yeah. Like this is not going to make me not on my own. Right. I like the next line. You know, it's one of my top lines from this poem. The jokes weren't funny.

I took the money. This is a really interesting literary device. Okay. It's called parataxis. Okay. So parataxis is a rhetorical device where you put two statements side by side, and they appear to be dissimilar but have a direct relationship. Okay.

I like that. I really like that. In parataxis, they're not connected by an and-but or there's no connective device. You know, the jokes weren't funny. I took the money. They're right there. They seem to be unrelated, but they're related. In other words, she did what she had to, to succeed.

and she accumulated wealth and acknowledgement. Yeah, as people were making jokes about her body, about her craft. They can make jokes about. She can tell jokes with them. She'll laugh, ha-ha. All the way to the bank. You better be writing a check. Yeah.

Yeah, again, this is the maturation process. This is making an adult compromise in order to move forward. Mm-hmm. Right. So I think, you know, we all have from time to time have to make adult. compromises. There have been one or two times in my life when I have not particularly

enjoyed my job. Or when I have had, say, a supervisor who was not the best. I can say, by the way, that I ended my career with the best supervisor ever, ever, ever. That's good. Yeah, I mean, the VP on our campus was absolutely terrific. But

seriously... Not relatable to me right now. No. It is a hard thing. But sometimes, you know, the electric bill comes to you the same day every month. Sure does, yeah. And you have to make adult compromise. It's what the line's about.

The electric bill. Yeah. Paratexas. My friends from home don't know what to say. So all the locals back home, all the Daisy Mays and Little Adners, back home, we're going, oh, what's become of her? So she feels alienated from her previous life. Right.

You know, but again, you make adult compromises. I looked around in a blood-soaked gown. This was a line that really tested me a little bit. I mean, I catch the illusion of Carrie. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Stephen King, if you've seen the movie, yeah, she's standing there. She gets drenched with the pig blood,

and then she stands there just looking, you know, and then the whole place catches on fire, and she burns it down. I really, you know, please forgive me. Call me out if you must. Okay. I believe Kanye said what he said in 2014, and this was written afterwards. Yes.

I think I checked the dates. Okay. And so I wondered if she is recalling standing there on stage when this guy leaps up. Yeah. She was wearing a red dress that night, wasn't she? I don't know. Maybe that was just in the performance. It was red.

Yeah, I think it could be Kanye. I think that whole, you know, that era of 2016, whenever everybody kind of hated her, it could be about, right. It could be about losing her masters. It could be about any of the jokes, you know, the, I mean, I feel like that period, that time period that you're talking about with Kanye, that was like, I think the most difficult when it came to the media and people like making those jokes. and tearing her down, you know. Right. So I think it could be all of that. That's, you know, with the last three words, blood soaked gown,

I thought blood soaked was, you know, clearly battle-worn, battle-proven. She's been through, you know, she's done her time in the parking lot. She's done her time listening or saying bad jokes, you know, but then now she has some personal agency. I also thought that it might be the whole record. Yeah, I think it could be any of that, like, especially with, The reason that I think of the records is because of the next line. Oh, okay.

Oh, yeah. They saw something they can't take away. Because, like, they took away her masters. Like, she can't. She wasn't able at the time to, and when she wrote this, she didn't own an illness. I see. And she's, there's another song on Evermore where she says, I've got my past frozen. No, sorry, he's got his, he's got my past frozen.

Get it right. Because they'll come for you. I know they will. Absolutely. you all are good at correcting um uh he's got my past frozen behind glass but i've got me and that was like talking about him

the the record label like taking all of her work which was like you know her whole life's work just trapping it and holding it there uh huh but she's like but I can I can make this I can make more music like I can re-record these like they they can't actually take it away what I've what I've created you know Right. Right. I like the description of the word gown, you know, because it implies wealth, status, a raised life circumstance. Yeah. So, I mean, again, what you see throughout the whole poem is this progression upward, you know, economic and renowned circumstances.

Agree. So, yeah, it's an interesting line. I wondered if she had more she was thinking about, so I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I think it could be any situation that kind of is like, oh, yeah, that was bad, but like, I'm fine. I've still got my talent and my craft and my work and, you know, and me. And then she says, I saw something they can't take away. Yeah, and so they can take away the record. I didn't write that down. That's a good idea. Yeah.

Yeah, I just wrote hyperbolic cliche. You know, you can't take it. You know, that's cool. Yeah. because, because there were pages turned with the bridges burned. And I wrote a question mark, is this the best line? I do feel like people love this line. It's a great line.

I mean, you've got illiteration, bridges burned, you got internal rhyme, turned burn. It's like the sprinkler line where you've got all those terrific binding elements. And then you've got the symbolism of the turned pages, letting go of the past, creating an ongoing narrative for herself. Right. Again, now she has personal agency. She's turning the pages, self-reliance, you know. And the bridges are burned, kind of an irreversible transformation.

She's not going to go back. All of that's packed up in this line. And that, I think that line could also all be about her work as well. Because we're talking about pages and she's writing stuff. And bridges, we're literally in a bridge talking about bridges being burned. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Hey, that's real good.

I like that. also be like there were pages turned and the bridges burned. Like I've lost these things. I wrote them all down, but then I lost them. Like I can't get him back. Because at this time, I don't think she ever thought she was going to be able to own everything. Well, and you're talking about loss. And the next line is everything you lose is a step you take. Yeah. So I took that symbolically. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Like the step is a step on a road. And, you know, the road is the journey of life. And so it's a very traditional symbol. But it is that idea of self-reliance and building self-confidence. and that sort of thing.

Yeah, and if you burn these bridges, just go and make some new ones, you know? Like, just keep trucking forward. Right. Yeah. So, you have one of those big signal words that pop up. So. So, here's a conclusion, folks.

So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it. So you have nice alliteration with a tea, got advice to readers to band together, right? Simble. The bracelets of them. circle, a circle of the continuation of community, friendship, giving a bracelet as a choice. You get to choose your friends.

You're not like she was in adolescence waiting to be noticed. You're saying, here, let's be friends. It also has sensory imagery. Take the moment and taste it. Remember it. So good. Right? It's a great line.

Such a good line. Yeah. So, oh, we're at the end. You've got no reason to be afraid. And I wrote, that's a little hyperbolic. There are plenty of reasons to be afraid. But you can face it. I know, I know.

You can face it. So she turns to us, the reader. And, you know, again, we have this really interesting semantic turn, semantic turn, where she uses words that are exactly the same with another meaning. you're on your own, she tells us, yeah, you can face this, you're on your own, kid. You always have been. And you'll notice a use of an Afra,

clearly addressing her audience this time. And we're at the end of the poem. Yes. There you go. So good. I should say that this was not on the Ares Tour set list, but she played it 11 times as a surprise song. Oh, wow.

Okay. Like, girl, just put it on the set list. You know, it's, it's, It's clearly autobiographical. It's clearly intended as advice for us. My I wrote a general remark. I said the poem follows a story arc, symbolic seasonal arc that lets slip near the end of the work and a narrative arc. We go with youth as innocence.

We go disappointment and desire. We go sacrifice and achievement. And then we have acceptance, wisdom, lessons learned, and advice. Yeah. Right. So I say childhood. fantasies of popularity, romance, fame give way to the realization that growth is achieved through sacrifice, pain, practice, and endurance. Each person must discover an inner resilience.

Beautiful. It's my summative remark on the poem. I love it. Okay, but I haven't graded it yet. Uh-oh. I know. Do you want to hear, or you got more? No, I'm ready to hear, and I'm interested to hear how this sounds, you know.

usually often have a guess on how they sound. I don't really have a guess. Yeah, this one is very, this one, I think when I look back at the songs that we have covered from Taylor, I think this one stands out a little bit. Oh, yeah. And sound. And it's like it builds beautifully and this bridge and chorus just. I mean, I could get the building sense because she's maturing.

She's getting more self-agency. She's getting older. She's getting more prepossessed of her own, you know, vitality. But I don't know how it sounds. Okay. So play it for us. Okay. Let's listen.

going to watch the lyric video and then I think we're going to have to watch one of those times that she played as a surprise song. It made it into the Aeros Tour movie. Okay. It's how many, how important it is, I guess. Okay, so we will, if you're on Patreon, stick around. We're going to listen. And if you're not, we will be right back. Okay. So tell me, Angela McDowell, why is this song important to you? I mean, I think that it, this song to me, this song to me, feels very like girlhood. All of these feelings are so relatable. Like you're kind of on the outside.

You're yearning for some boy or some friendship or something. And you are, I don't know, it just feels very like adolescent girlhood, like talking about, like, with the friendship bracelets. It's like, yeah, like, we are on our own, but we're on our own, but you have a choice to, like, make the community, make the friends to bolster your dreams in your life and keeping you moving forward, even though at the end of the day you really do only have yourself. You know what I mean? Right. Yes.

I don't know. It just feels very like teen girl to me. And I think on the very first episode of this podcast, I was like, we all still have like a teen girl inside of us, including yourself. Apparently, because I read Hunger Games and liked it. Yeah. So, I'm, you know, I hope this isn't going to make you upset. But, no, it's, so the, I'm not going to say I have a problem with it. My only, the only reason why I am like withholding just, you know, being all over complimentary of the work is I've read this before.

Okay, okay. You know, there are a. I mean, I guess, yeah. Yeah. There are a ton of poems about people who are, you know, who are young and make mistakes, but they learn and grow, and then they give advice at the end. Yeah. There are a ton of them.

Yeah, it's like a trope, basically. It's a trope. Yes, this is a very famous trope. It's a very famous kind of poem. It's the advice poem. You know, I'm the older person. Let me give you this advice. You know, Kat Stevens wrote a really great.

poem, a great song in which he's talking to his younger son, to his young son, you know, telling him, you know, take your time, you know, grow up, maybe you'll meet someone, maybe you'll want to get married. It's a beautiful song. It's this poem. So if I wanted to make fun of it, you know, not that I would ever want to make fun of it, I would read to you, Frank Levy Stanton's poem, Keep a going. Okay. If you strike a thorn or rose, keep a going.

If it hails or if it snows, keep a going. Take no use to sit in wine when the fish ain't on your line. Beat your hook and try again. Keep a going. When the weather kills your crop, keep a going. When you tumble from the top, keep a going. Suppose you're out of every dime. Being so, it ain't no crime

Tell the world You're feeling prime Keep a going When it looks like all is up Keep a going Drain the sweetness from the cup Keep a going See the wild birds on the wing

Hear the bells That sweetly sing When you feel like singing Sing Keep a going Now everybody in the Taylorlands Just said That's not that song

Well I know It's not exactly but... Kind of is. If you want a little bit more serious version, there's a poem If by Rudyard Kipling. And I was actually made to memorize this once. Oh, my goodness.

If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting, too. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting or being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated, don't give way to hating,

and yet don't look too good. nor talk too wise. And it goes on if, if, if, if, if. And the last line is, and which is more, you'll be a man, my son. So this is like the masculine version. Yeah, the masculine version

of the fringe and bracelets and the body image issues. Yeah. So, but, but, but, please know that I'm talking tongue and cheek here. Of course. Yeah, the, the, the Stanton poem is just one of the worst poems there.

Keep me going. Keep me going. And the way that I read it, by the way, if you actually look up the Stanton poem, you will see, it is typed that way. It is literally this old late 1800s American poem spoken in a country dialect. So as a matter of fact, one of the characters from Rowan and Martin's Laughan used to read this on talk shows. Funny. Because he thought it was so funny.

But this is a trope. Yeah. Yeah. This particular poem is a very famous trope about how, you know, you've got this narrator who grows up, becomes wise, and then passes her wisdom onto the rest of us or to another person or to a child. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not highly original.

Right. For me, what makes it, what makes it a really good poem are some of the lines. You know, I just, I love from sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes. Yeah, and if the page is turned and the bridges burn. Yes. Yeah. I like the petals being picked and the blooming. I like the fact that for three lines, she gives us this sort of floral imagery or reference.

Yeah, very cohesive writing. Personally, I love the use of indirect discourse. So she, in the first verse, and for a little bit afterwards, she slides us into the vocal tenor of an adolescent. Yeah. And I think that's very definitely handled. Yeah, which we talked about as she's done before. What song was that that we talked about? about where she...

Oh, Betty. Betty, from James' perspective. Yeah, where she's like talking like a teen. That's good. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's still going to get a really good grade. But it's not something you haven't heard before. Yes, but do understand that the only reason why I am not, like I'm withholding my efflusion

is that I have, I kind of feel like I've read this full before. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Okay. You ready to grade? Ready. Grat it out. Okay.

All right. lyrical strength 98 oh geez okay I agree got some great lines yeah I agree okay narrative and structure

98 oh my goodness I know it's really good I mean you know we it is a full it's the full live and I love the opening line I keep using that we're the

the verbal economy of it right the syntactical economy is just great summer went away still the yearnings days and that's my life that's the whole thing yeah that's the whole thing Yeah, that's the whole thing.

You know, yes, I am, I am not that man that I once was, you know. That's actually from Ulysses by Alfred Tennis. Yeah. But, you know, to seek to strive to find and not to yield is what I, I'm, you know, going to continue trying to do. Yeah. That's also from Ulysses. Because you're on your own kid. This is exactly right.

That's what this is. Yes, yes. So I like to, go ahead. Okay. Production and Atmospheric. The song, I. You know, I mean, it was nice. I liked the way it bills, bills, bills, bills.

94. Okay. Lore and literary references. She does mention Daisy May. Yeah. So I'll say, yeah, 92. Okay. Yeah, I feel like we should maybe change that to like literary, like devices and references.

I don't know. Emotional impact. Okay. I think because I have read it before, it didn't have that big an impact on me. I'm going to say 90. Okay. But what grade would you give? I would give it like a 99 for emotional impact.

Yeah. I wondered about that. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think it's just me. I think that sometimes, you know, I think I mentioned I heard Kurt Vonnegut speak once. This was before he died. And, you know, he mentioned he majored in chemical engineering and that's the best thing for a writer to do.

You know, don't major in English because you'll get overwhelmed by all the stuff you have to read. I think I have been tainted. Yeah, you know all the stories. I read all this junk. So it did not have that strong and emotional impact on me. Yeah, I also feel like it maybe is like very, I mean, this feels just so like feminine to me. It is slanted, I think, to the feminist perspective. Yeah, yeah.

So that makes sense to me. That doesn't mean it should be more or less relative to me. I mean, I should be a discerning listener. Well, sure. But the emotional impact is kind of like. Right. That's where you get down. kind of hits you or it doesn't.

It does. I was with the boys smoking anyway. Exactly. So it's not about you. I know. I didn't even notice you, Taylor. Sorry. That guess it's 94.

Oh, that's good. Yeah. It's very strong work. Yeah. I like that. Okay. Anything else? I think that's what I got.

I think you're on your own, kid. Okay. Yeah. We all are. Okay. Thank you for being here. We will be back with another song. We're taking it back in time a little bit on the next

one. So come back for that and make sure you're following along. Uncle Jerry's, you know, he's an Instagram star now posting all the time. Posting. And such cogent, such meaningful material. Yeah, really deep stuff on there. So make sure you're following him on Instagram at Dr. Uncle Jerry. You can follow me at Angela Wyatt McDowell. You can follow the podcast on Instagram and TikTok at Swiftie and Scholar Pod. And yeah, we'll see you next week. Bye.