The Swiftie and The Scholar - The Inquisitive Human Nature in How Did It End?

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

FIXED AUDIO!Call all your friends and cousins, we’re finally covering How Did It End? from The Tortured Poets Department. Uncle Jerry finds tons of beautiful poetics and dark humor in this one, and Angela discusses its connections to both The Prophecy and But Daddy I Love Him. If you want to vote for a specific song for June, join us on Patreon to play along!Works Cited:General Reference PronounAutofiction as a Doorway Into TruthConceit – Literary termCome One, Come All – All Time LowSlant Rhyme"Now give three cheers" – HMS PinaforeThe Telephone Hour – Bye Bye BirdieThe Raven – Edgar Allan PoeAnnabel Lee – Edgar Allan PoeTo -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad – Edgar Allan PoeHyperion – John KeatsOde to a Nightingale – John KeatsA Rose for Emily – William FaulknerThe 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 McDowell the Swifty. Come on, y'all. I am Dr. Jerry Coates, the Scholar. Oh, he's got some energy today. I do. I do. How you doing? I am good. I am excited about this song. Oh. Okay.

Did you hear the excitement in my voice? Yeah. Yeah. This song was chosen by our patrons. Hey patrons, thank you for choosing the song. Yes, so this time, so the first time they chose, we let them vote via like a March Madness tournament, like a bracket tournament.

And this time I had people choose their favorite, or not necessarily their favorite, but the track five remaining that we hadn't covered yet that they most wanted to hear you talk about. Oh, and was this one? Yes, and so this is a track five if you count the tortured poets department as two separate albums because she called a double album.

So we're counting the second half as the second album, this track five of that album. So this is track five number two. Right. The first track five of Tortured Poets Department is So Long London. Oh, okay. Have you noticed I've been putting more comments in our Patreon site? You were all over it. It's so fun.

I did not think that media would be this fun. You know, I've been off. I mean, I started on Facebook. and I got students who always wanted to jump in and friend me and stuff. And I thought, okay, I can't do this. It just violates all kinds of ethics things. And so, you know, I'm not on Facebook, but I'm occasionally on my other thingy. And I like Instagram.

Instagram. And thank you for feeding me the name of the thingy. But, yeah, it's fun every now and then to comment. and people say stuff and I go, oh yeah, that's really interesting. I love what people say interpretively. Me too. It's fun.

Yeah, just getting other people's, the hive mind thoughts. That's right. Okay, so today we're covering how did it end, as discussed in Track 5 from the Tortured Poets Department, the anthology.

This was a written and produced by Taylor and Aaron Dessner, kind of a common theme that we've been seeing throughout the past several episodes, lots of Aaron Dessner. Yeah, Yeah, that's kind of all I have.

This one is, you know, whenever I saw the track title, it was different than I thought it was going to be. So what did you think of the title? Well, may I ask you a question first? Yes. When she sings it, does she sing D-Y-I-N-G? Yeah. Oh, she does? Yeah.

Okay, yeah. Well, I mean, it was hyphenated and capitalized. And so I kind of assumed that's the way it was going to be sung. Yeah. I also have a prediction about the way it's going to sound. Okay, great. But I'm not going to tell you that right now. I'm going to hold you in suspense.

Okay. Like being in a cage. Stay tuned for Uncle Jerry's predictions. My prediction. I have not been wrong yet. That's true. That's very true. Well, I've only made like three, so that's 10%.

Okay, so the title. How did it end, of course, has a general reference pronoun in the word it. There is no noun and a sedent. And so it causes the reader to ask, what is it? Well, knowing that this is a Taylor Swift and Aaron Desner song, I speculated that it was some romantic engagement. Wow. I know.

Yeah. This is a far swing. I know. I know. It's like, she could have been talking about a baseball game. How did it end? Yeah, yeah. Football game.

Could be. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, that fourth quarter comeback. Yeah. No, it's not about that. No. No, pretty much about her.

Yes. So this is, I'm going to give you the literary device once again, auto fiction. Okay. Right. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. She creates a kind of fictional story and narrative.

but this is really about her life. So it's kind of autobiographical fiction. We mash that up and call it auto fiction. And so we get right into it. Yes. First one, we hereby conduct the post-mortem. Okay. Who's the speaker?

It's a collective we or an imperial we. So again, she forces the reader to ask questions. And so I'm going to say this is actually an engaging way to write. Okay. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, in a standard edited paper, you're not supposed to do things like use general reference pronouns with no noun adescedents. I would take a point off for that.

But, you know, creative writers use these techniques in order to engage the reader. Right. So I'm engaged. I want to know what is it. And I want to know who is we. and then we get to the post-mortem, and I think that we know who we are. Yeah. Right?

A post-mortem is conducted by a forensic pathologist, or it's conducted by a medical examiner or a coroner. So, you know, immediately we set up this narrative structure where the coroner, forensic pathologist, is speaking. We're in a coroner's court. Okay, yeah. Or in a doctor's office or, you know, wherever they hold a post-aulmonary. a post-mortem exam, and someone has died. Yes. Right?

So who has died, you know? He was a hot house flower to my outdoorsman. I love that. Yeah. It took me a bit. It took me a sec. That is fun. I think it's a fun line.

You know, obviously having read through the poem now many times, I, you know, understand. We start off with this fictional setting. of the post-morting exam with the speaker being the forensic pathologist or coroner. But very quickly we realize that's just a metaphor. And we're talking about one of her breakups. Oh, no, never have suspected it. And so the it was her romantic relationship. So we have a series of metaphors all strung together with a single focusing artifice around a post-mortem.

and when you extend a metaphor throughout the entirety of a work, we call that. A conceit. This is a conceit. Yes, a conceit, C-O-N-C-E-I-T, not meaning stuck up, but meaning an extended metaphor. So she calls him a hot house flower and she is an outdoorsman. So why a hot house flower? Well, you know, a hot house flower is supposed to be kept indoors. It's something that can be difficult to raise, finicky to.

grow, you know, clearly, whoever this person was was someone who didn't match her outdoorsman style. You know, she's gender bending a little bit by calling herself an outdoors man. Yeah. But I think that she's also making a comment on the nature of his own masculinity. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And certainly he is a hot house flower because he is more delicate and in a relationship, you know, I think that. that's a metaphor for he needs to be cared for a great deal.

He's a little bit needy. And, you know, we can deal with needy personalities. I mean, I have a little bit of a needy personality. I'll admit that. You know, I like to hold hands. You know, when we go to a movie, I like to reach over and touch my wife's elbow or hold her hand or that kind of thing. So, yeah, I mean, but, you know, after a while. Yeah, there's a line.

There is a line. Yeah, it's like, be alone. Or, where are you going? I'm out. So I liked the line, you know, because of the juxtapositional rhetoric of Hot House Flower versus Outdoorsmen. Yeah, me too. Our melodies were such that we could not cure them.

So she's characterizing the differences between them as illnesses. That would be a metaphor, right? So. Well, yeah, and we're conducting an autopsy. It died. So they died. This is what killed it. Exactly.

So the metaphor slides right into this whole conceit of the postmortem. So I already like this. Yeah. You know, can you tell it's going to get a good grade when it comes to literary devices? Yeah, it's got good poetics. It really does have good poetics. We haven't even talked about the rhyme. So, yeah, the maladies a metaphor.

The curing him is a metaphor. You know, they both work well into the post-mortem. And so a touch that was my birthright became foreign. So, you know, initially the touch of him seemed like it was something that she was born to. You know, there is a birthright is something that you, you know, are naturally, given naturally entitled to you know

it could be a birthright of inheritance you know like you inherit a crown or you inherit a fortune or that kind of thing all of this is what she initially thought but it became foreign anathema to her

okay so then we go back and look at the rhyme and you go wow post mortum outdoorsman and usually I don't like that the two-word rhyme, but this really works for me.

And then them, so post-mortem than outdoors men, foreign. So you see how they all are, you know, alliterative, obviously, in the context of rhyme and not always using the same vowels, but nevertheless they rhyme. Yeah, I liked it a lot. That first verse, the first stanza for me, is a four-line hit. Agreed. Yeah. Okay. then we get to the chorus

and we switch narrators in a kind of a radical direction so she creates this image of the forensic pathologist giving a posthum yeah you're like in like the basement of a hospital or something

you know like in the morgue and then all of a sudden in the chorus we are like not that we're the opposite of that yes we're out in the open it's a carnival barker you know come one come all. It's happening again. You know, so it's like the carnival barker, the circus,

you know, these people can be really irritating sometimes. I do love to go to the state fair. The Texas state fair, if you've never experienced it, absolutely huge and, you know, mildly obnoxious and ridiculously expensive. But so fun. And so fun. Such good food. Yeah. Yes. And, you know, so I've been going since I was really, I've been going for a while now. Just a few years. Like eight or ten years.

And a couple of decades or four behind, before that. Back in the day, they actually did have like a freak show. Yeah, and there was a guy, a carnival barker. Yes, I'm talking to you. You, come on in, you know. It was like, oh, dude, I just want to go throw darts at balloons. Yeah. I just want to win that giant stuffed animal over there.

Yes, I really don't want to see the wolf lady. Oh, God. And that's the feeling that you get. I think it's very successful and a really fun shift of narrative structure here. So the empathetic hunger ascends. So it's happening again. So it must have happened before. It's not the first time.

And that performative empathy that people have for me has descended one more time. So clearly it's about a breakup and you get all these people saying, oh, poor Taylor. Yeah. Let's talk about her. But it's hunger. It's empathetic hunger because we got to know. We need to know. And that is, it's, you know, she's using a metaphor, right?

She's comparing this almost to food. You know, this is the kind of thing that feeds the media. It feeds her fans. It feeds her critics. It feeds people who like her. It feeds everyone. So here's my prediction for how this is going to sound. This song, if I'm wrong, I'm going to be really...

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. You're allowed to be wrong one time. I wrote it down. I said piano with descending baseline. Okay. Yeah, it feels like because this guy's dead and he's gone down. And then she literally in the sixth line says, the hunger descends.

Okay, okay. Right? So I just feel it going bum, bum, bum, bum. You know, I honestly, like, can't even tell you if you're right or wrong, but I feel like you are correct. I'm hoping. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

But I haven't. Yeah. You know what? I think you. Okay. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. We'll get there.

We'll hear. But, yes, so I do have to say I love playing this game. you know, since not only have I not heard the songs, but you frequently withhold them from me. Sorry. Yeah, in our last recording, we were watching the Ere Store.

And at the end of the song, she said, oh, and she reached out and stops it. And I go, why did you stop it? What's that? It's another song. She just matches them up. It's like, oh, I'm not allowed. Okay.

So, yes, that's my big prediction. Okay. of a descending line for the piano because this feels like one of her piano solo type things and yeah yeah because it's an ending she tends to like to lament over those and and a piano can be a soulful instrument right she doesn't play trumpet um yet that's yeah that's not that's not much of a prediction really um we'll count it okay so yeah um she's by the way i wrote down um come one come carnival barker, circus. It's happening again.

And then I put song by All Time Low. There's a group called All Time Low. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably pretty. Do you? Yeah. Pretty obscure. Yeah.

And I did like the phrase empathetic hunger. You know, for me, for those of you who listen, you know, I talk about Percy Shelley's use of that expression in his poetic criticism. He says the one well-chosen word. Yeah. This is a well-chosen phrase, empathetic hunger. Oh, we just love you. We want to be empathetic with you. You know, tell us more on eating this up.

Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes along with the last song we talked about. It is. You know, it's the town. They're, you know, the vipers dressed in empaths clothing. While some of it is like coming somebody, coming from somebody like me, it is like, I am like incredibly empathetic. Like, I have like a weird, you know, parisocial relationship with Taylor. and I'm like, that's my best friend, you know. I want her to be happy.

But at the same time, I'm like, well, wins the album so I can learn all the details of what happened here, you know, where I can start piecing it together. And so sometimes it's, you know, it's well-meaning, but it's still like hunger for more, more and more of her, you know. So she still hasn't reached out to you. Stop it. I mean, she's asked me not to share, so. Which, in fact, is the next line. Yes.

We'll tell no one. Yes. And then very ironically, very satirically, she says, except all of our friends. Right. It's like, oh, we got new dirt. Yeah, she's broken up again with somebody, so we're going to spread it again. Mm-hmm. We must know how did it end?

Okay, so, yeah, she breaks up with somebody and the whole world, even her fans, even those like you who love her the most. you just got to know. Yeah. You got to know why. And it does become like a circus, like a carnival, like a spectacle. Like, because the second that, that, you know, that news is released at, like, Taylor and whoever have broken up, it's like one million headlines. Right. Everyone's talking about it.

There's TikToks. There's tweets. There's all the things, you know. And it is literally like this circus life. And, you know, and she talks about in Who's Afraid of Little Little Me, like, the circus life made me mean. like y'all are crazy. Even the well-meaning people, y'all are a little crazy. And you've turned my life into a spectacle.

You know, it's funny because I was reviewing the songs we had covered, you know, in the book, I keep all these notes in the song in this book. And I was reviewing it this week and I ran across that song again. I thought that's such a fun poem. Uh-huh. I love that one. Yeah. So, yeah.

And I mentioned last time that I actually. actually had a church lady come up to me at church now a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, she asked me if I know if they're going to have a baby right away. And I'm going, I didn't, I can't text her. I know. I know she only calls me and she asks me not to share. I have no idea. It's funny that you're like the church is resident Swifty now.

I know. Isn't it the truth? But that's great. So, yeah, she says, we're not going to tell anybody except all of our friends, not just our best friend, all of them. Everyone. Everyone gets to know. And we want to know how and why, which as the end of the song plays out, she does too. You know, and how do we know these things?

But we'll get there. Verse two. Can you tell I'm having a fun with the song? I mean, this was such a, I don't know, it was lighter and playful. even though it is sadly about a breakup and about how we just seem to feed on that kind of news. Yeah, she fills it with such fun imagery, though. She does. So, verse two, we were blind to unforeseen circumstances, which is a kind of humorous redundancy.

It is oxymoronic. That is an oxymoron because if you're blind, everything is a, unforeseen. Right. You know, so we didn't know. Well, you know, maybe she didn't know. Maybe she didn't see immediately that he was a hot-house flower and she was an outdoorsman. You know, why in the world are you worried about it?

We learned the right steps to different dances. Okay. Favorite line. Okay, I think of mine too. Is it? Yeah. It's so fun. I think it's fun.

And it takes me back to Peter where she says, what does she say something about under the same moon in different galaxies Right, yes I love that image of her flying one direction Peter flying another It's kind of the same thing

But I love the metaphor of the dance I mean it's an old metaphor to compare dancing to a love relationship or sexual activity That's why they just barely let you do dance down in Baylor. Yeah.

They used to definitely not. For 99 years. Yeah. You could not dance on campus. Yeah. University of that Baylor. We had to dance my freshman year. Oh, of course you did.

It was off campus, though. Yeah, you went to the south side of Waco so you could drink beer, didn't she? No, I didn't like beer? No. Wait, what did? So the line is, we learn the right steps to a different dance. It's a method. metaphor. She loves to use juxtapositional rhetoric. And I love this image that he's learning a waltz

and she's learning a two-step and then they try to put it together. And that just ain't going to work. It's not going to happen. No, it's not. I mean, and actually it gave me a concrete visual image. I imagine. Yeah. Yeah, it really did. I imagine two people at a dance and one of them is trying to, you know, to do a waltz and the other one is trying to. trying to do a, you know, a two-step. Yeah, like a line dance or something. Yeah, they're kicking and boot scooting. And instead, this guy is flowing to three beats per measure.

It's just not going to work. Yeah. But poetically, it works perfectly. I love that. Yes. Yeah. And fell victim to interloperer's glances. So, you know, people who probably shouldn't have cared or shouldn't have been there

I shouldn't have seen, kept looking over, looking over, and watching them as they frayed apart. Lost the game of chance. So now we're comparing love to a game. You know, again, that's kind of an old metaphor, but it's fun here because she uses the cliche, what are the chances in using the cliched metaphor love is a game of chance. Yeah, typical Taylor. It is typical Taylor. Yeah, you remember that list of typical Taylor I made? This is one of them, metaphors that are truncated or changed or jammed with other metaphors,

cliches, excuse me, cliches that are truncated, jammed, or made with other metaphors, altered in some way. She's doing it here again, and it works. Yeah. Yeah. And soon they'll go home to their husbands, smug, because they know they can trust him. Well, of course they can't. They have her happy little home and their happy little life, don't they? That poor girl just can't get it together.

Yes. Thank God that's not me. I better call Edna and tell her. So they feverishly call their cousins. They're feeling, you know, safe and better than. And so let's talk about La Cohn and the creation of the others. Foucault and no, okay, we don't have to do that. There are a number of schools of philosophy and psychology that say we love to create others and that othering is what.

Oh, oh, okay. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So my life is this and they're that and mine's clearly superior. You know, you can't just say I have a good life. No. You have to say mine is good and better than theirs. Yeah, take it up a little extra notch.

Right. Yeah. So, you know, again, not forgetting other elements of poetics like rhyme. Circumstances, dances, really nice rhyme, glances, chances, husbands, him. And you hear how they kind of resonate without being direct rhyme and then cousins. Yeah, husbands and cousins is not a thing that you would think could work there. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of slant rhyme primarily. based on the alliterative ends,

but it really works as rhyme. And it just hangs that whole second verse together. It is beautifully done. Can you hear a very, very high grade for the poetics? I mean, I really can see why the Patreon folks chose it. Me too. And I love the way that, you know, I think I would learn by now, and maybe I will now going forward now that I'm saying this,

but I love the way that verse two sounds when you're listening to it. and I'm now realizing it literally is just because of those rhymes. Yes. You know, and okay, so I have to be forthcoming and honest. Okay. And say, I read through this couple of times. And I did have a momentary sigh and say, it's another breakup. I knew you were going to, especially when I gave you these two back to back.

I was like, he's going to be exhausted by this, but I think he's going to find some gyms in there eventually. Yeah, you know, I mean, I mean, come on, empathetic hunger. Yeah. It's pretty great. And that image of the right steps to different dances. That is so fun.

And then just the poetics of what she does with metaphors and clichés and how she spins out the conceits. And the rhyming is just superior in this one. You know, and I do from time to time say, oh, that's a questionable rhyme. And I've never actually called her out for having a bad rhyme. Yeah. Yeah, you just questioned them. Yeah, the jackals and the hackles. Jackals and the hackles.

It does kind of make me laugh, but, yeah, but they're just a little hard. But this is really superior work. Yeah. So, yeah. The chorus. Yes. Guess who we ran into it at the shops. Okay, so now she's called her cousins.

Yes. And all her cousins' friends. Actually, I was reminded from a song from Gilbert and Sullivan where he said, It's from HMS Pinafore. They're cousins who are numbered in the dozens. That's a fun rhyme too. Here's a fun rhyme. So they called all their cousins who are numbered in the dozens.

Dozens of cousins. That's right. Guess that we ran into it at the shops walking in circles. Yeah. Like she was lost. Didn't you hear? They called it all off one gasp. And then how did it end?

So we get both sides. the conversation. Uh-huh. You know, it's like we're listening to Bye Bye Birdie. Yeah, she's on the phone. We're just listening in.

They're all on the phone. Morning Glory. I don't know if you guys know that. Bye-bye Bertie. I was in that musical. Of course you were. Yeah, I played Conrad Bertie, you know,

the singer. So she's walking in circles. Okay, so literally walking in circles means you're lost. Uh-huh. But, you know, when you walk in a circle, you wind up right back where you begin. Right. So in her romantic love life, she seems to just keep winding up right where she began.

Well, that's interesting. Yeah. That's fun. I think it is, too. Yeah, so I kept thinking about circles as having different meanings, right? Yeah. So she's lost, but also she lost her lover. So the word lost has two meanings.

The word circles has two meanings. Yeah. She was lost. Like every time. Right. Come one, come all, it's happening again. Again, she lost that and she's lost. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I keep using the word ambiguity. But I think I'm going to have to say, I think sometimes with Taylor Swift, it's misapplied. I think it's intentional multity of meaning. Okay. Yeah.

I think we really are supposed to think of walking in circles as being pointless ambling. But I think we're also supposed to remember that if you walk in a circle, you wind up right where you began, you know, looking for a guy. And if you are lost, you are literally, you know, bereft of direction. But if you are lost, you have lost him again. Yeah. And I think that's intentional. These aren't accidental moments in her writing. So, again, are we giving her a really high?

grade for the poetics. I think so. And once again we have this repetition of the last line of the chorus. How did it end, right? Everyone wants to know how it ended. Well, she does too. Yeah, this is like, you know,

talking a few weeks ago about the prophecy, some of the comments, there were a few comments that really made me go like, oh, wait, we didn't like really pick up on that when she said it was written, I got cursed like Eve got bitten. A lot of people were calling out there, like those two lines to them makes it makes them think that Taylor is saying, I wrote this prophecy for myself. Because I started out writing, like my career has been based on writing these songs

about love and losing love. And so that is, and because I chose this career, I wrote this prophecy for me, never being able to like find a relationship. And then that makes me think of because she has written the prophecies such as like this relationship's going to end and then I'm going to have to write about it. She has made us have that empathetic hunger and made us ask that question. So she has she has cooked that meal and is feeding to us. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's like she's almost like I kind of feel like this is all my fault because I have trained people to like. like be interested in my relationships and how they fall apart. Right. Yeah. Well, you know, and at the end of last week, I talked about the, how she uses a series of romantic tropes in song after song after song. I think that's got to be intentional, right?

I think that she's clicking them off. She's applying them to her own life. She's inviting us listeners, readers, to also apply them to our lives. You know, just like I said, I could see these people dancing. to different steps to, you know, using the right steps to different dances. You know, I think that's intentional.

Yeah. Okay, Bridge. Yes. Are we breathing? Yes. Say it once again with feeling. I love that. It's like, you know, the lack of earnestness

is, yeah. Retel, it's like trying to retell life or life circumstances as if it were a performance, right? Yeah. You know, so, I mean, like I said, I've been in a play. I've been in a musical.

And sometimes you have to go through five or six performances and you just have to remember every night, it's a fresh audience, every night you psych yourself up to giving them your most original, you know, your freshest interpretation. Yeah. It's so fake. Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah. But I'll just act in. Yeah, it's just acting. how the death rattle, rattle breathing, silenced as the soul was leaving the deflation of our dreams. Then she repeats, leaving me bereft and reeling my beloved ghost in me. And you know who I thought of when I was reading these? I thought of Edgar Allan Poe. Okay.

You know, Edgar Allan Poe has, I mean, just read The Raven or read you. Eulalum or read Annabelle Lee, you know, that the kind of rolling rhyme, you know, how the death rattle, breathing, silenced as the soul was leaving. And silenced as the soul, the alliterative, the elinist, the deflation of our dreaming, the D's, leaving. And now we're starting the sentence with the same. The I and G. Yeah. Yeah, with the same rhyme we ended the previous line with bereft and reeling, my beloved ghost and me. And then she almost trivializes all that by saying, sitting in a tree, D-Y-I-N-G.

Yeah. I'm sure she doesn't sing it that way. But she... Yeah, but it's like we're taking like a children's... Yeah, it's that children's... K-I-S-I-N-G. Yeah, sitting in a tree of K-I-S-S-I-N-G. first came love, then came marriage.

You know, and it's like, yeah, children have this idealized version of the world. You know, unfortunately, the rest of us have to live in reality. Right. But yes, I actually got a little Edgar Allan Poe. Yeah. Because Poe, I don't know if he's a great poet, but he does understand how to use poetics, and he does know what Essinence and Ruff.

rhyme and alliteration and all those things work. And his poetry is fun to read aloud. I think that's why kids love reading it. I mean kids, I mean, junior high, high schoolers. Right, love reading it because it has a beautiful sound. This bridge has a beautiful

sound. Yeah. And it extends the conceit of the post-mortem. Right. Yes. And it uses metaphorical referencing the death, rattle, breathing, the last breath of the relationship metaphor and then it was silenced as the soul

was leaving you know that moment the soul leaving is that my last ounce of love that I ever had for him this metaphor the deflation of our dreaming so they had dreams like

we are going to we are going to fill out that childhood sitting in a tree K-I-S-I-S-I-N-G you know first comes love then comes marriage. So you've got this little lockstep sequence. Yeah.

The same path that we talked about last time that you're supposed to travel down. That was our dreaming. Uh-huh. But all of that came to deflation. It's, you know, it's all like, and she uses this breath imagery, and she does it really well, and it starts in the previous stanza. Because in the chorus, she says, one gasp, and then how did it end? Yeah.

Right? So we're gasping for air. and then she says, death rattle breathing, that was silenced, the soul is leaving, and then our lungs are deflating so that the dreaming leaves us. So doesn't she work that whole notion of breath in? That's interesting, yeah. You know, and breath, it has such an extended metaphorical meaning in its own right. You know, so if you read ancient literature, if you read the Bible, you know, there are lots of places where breath is a symbol for the spirit, literally the soul. Okay.

Okay. Okay. So, you know, in spirit, so the word breath, you know, can comes from a Latin word that means spiritus means spirit. Like respirate? Like respiration. Yes. or inspiration to have this, the breath of God upon us, right? Inspiration, right?

I had no idea. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, poets have always asked, where do great ideas come in poetry, in literature, in fiction? You know, Keats speculates on it in Hyperion. He speculates on it in Ode to a Nightingale, you know. So the question is, how do great poets, how do they discover these? amazing phrases that inspire us, you know, and they have their own inspiratous. Yeah, because it gives us life.

The art gives us the life, our breath. So that Holy Spirit, Spirit, spirit, right, is this breath of life. It's the breath of God that fills us up and inspires us. Well, sorry. The deflation of our dreaming leaves me bereft and reeling. So, yep, that ship has sailed. That boy is dayed. Yeah.

And he is not breathing anymore. So once again, that's kind of the reason why I wondered if this was going to be a bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, kind of a sound. Because, you know, not only do we have this thing about descending, but now we have deflation. Uh-huh. Yeah. Right. I'm only just now realizing that the relationship died. That's why we're having a post-mortem.

autopsy. And then her and her beloved ghost are sitting in the tree. And the beloved ghost is the dead relationship or the guy? Yeah, that's what I put in my note is the memory of lost love. Okay. Okay. It's the ghost. I mean, I mean, come on when you, when you love someone, yes, I'm going to mention Valentina. Lots of conversations about Valentina happening on Patreon if y'all are interested and you're not there yet. I know. So, I mean, poor Valentina, she's probably happily married with grandkids and, I don't know, but it's a great compliment to her that I still think of her.

I have now memorialized her. I mean, I hope immortalized her. Oh, my gosh. I actually need to, like, see if she's on Facebook, see if I can find her. No. I won't say anything. I just want to see her. But it's so funny because I do.

Remember the exhilaration of that relationship. I remember the absolute despondency when my best friend started dating her and kissing her in the back of the band bus. I can't believe anybody would do that to you. Behind the drums. I know. Those percussion kids, you know, percussion is a little wild. And they would stack the drums up in the back of the bus and then get behind them. You didn't want to know what was going on behind the drums.

I don't think that was happening on my band buses. The parent chaperone nor any of the band directors wanted to know either. Just stay back there, please. Right. But, yeah, it's that ghost of the relationship. Yeah. The ghost of that lost love. I mean, we never really forget it.

Right. I mean, you let it go in many ways, and hopefully you let the pain of it go, but the memory of it remains. And then she almost, she gives a kind of wistful remembrance to. the ghost of their expectations by sitting in a tree. But instead of K-I-S-N-G, it's D-Y-I-N-G. It's dying. What happened again? It.

How did it end? I can't pretend I understand. How did it end? I like the way she repeats it. And this time, when I read, read it. I read with a different inflection. Okay. You know, like I really do read it.

You know, it's happening again. How did it end? Like, everybody wants to know. I can't pretend that I understand. And then I think she would literally say if she were reading, how did it end? Yeah, she's asking that question of herself now. Yeah. She really. And, you know, that was my note. She's, she's telling this to herself, asking it of herself. You know, how did this end? Yeah, that's kind of fun. Like the people are asking it at the, the beginning of the song, and now she's asking it, because she also doesn't know. Yeah, but, I mean, their intrusiveness, they're, that fan culture or societal cruelty,

however those things work, you know, however that works, you know, they want to know through their intrusivity because they just, they had that hunger. Yeah. I think she would earnestly like to know. Right, right, yeah. Yeah, why am I? She's like, how did it end up here? Like, right.

Yeah. Yeah. And should I have known, I mean, should I recognize that he was a hot house boy? No. The chorus. Come one, come all. It's happening again. The empathetic hunger descends.

We'll tell no one except all our friends. But I still don't know how did it end? And again, kind of echoing, asking yourself. Yeah. Major themes? Yes. Human nature and inquisitiveness. I think it's human nature to want to know.

Yeah. Right? That's why we have news programs. It's why somehow news programs went to 24 hours. Just always on. I know. And now CNN and Fox and MSNBC, they've got to fill 24 hours with something. And so you get all this, you know, the entertainment, the infotainment.

Yeah. That is modern news. I think that's human nature. and I think that she is examining that. The desire to know personal details of private lives. We just want to know what goes on behind the curtain. Or we never know what's going on next door. And I've mentioned this one before.

And I'm always reminded of William Faulkner's short story arose for Emily, where Emily was supposed to get married, and then the guy suddenly disappeared. from town. Oh, yes. Everybody talked about that. Everyone wants to know what happens. Everyone has speculations.

And when Emily died, they go into her house and, oh, they find the dead body. Yeah, he was just in there. Right. He was always there. He never really left him. But we don't know. We don't know that can be the most pleasant couple next door. But when the curtains are drawn and the lights go out, we don't know what happens over there.

And I think that's a big theme. One of Faulkter's themes. We don't know from our, well, let's see, we don't know from our own ability how to engender the well-being of others, other than from our own need to gossip. Interesting. Yeah, you know, it's, I mean, you can't do anything for Taylor Swift. You can't fix her life. It's her life to fix. So what's the next best thing?

you talk about it with someone else. Call your cousin and say, this is what I think Taylor should do. Yeah, or here's what I think happened. Or, yeah. But I think that the big theme is sometimes we don't know ourselves. Right.

She admits that at the very end. And I don't know if she admits it. I don't think it's an admission. It's more of an examination. Agreed, yeah. Because it is a post-mortem, yeah. Right. And so we have a professional forensics.

pathologist examining the body and he's coming to some conclusions as she is but she's still trying to examine that ghost that never quite leaves her yeah yeah so i think that sometimes we we don't know our own selves and that's that's kind of an interesting and important theme yeah yeah why do we do those things that we do You notice I avoid saying do-doo. Yeah, I did not that one episode, and you called me out on it. I know. Yeah, that's so interesting.

I don't know. I feel like I wanted to do these two back-to-back to do, but Daddy, I love him from last week and then this one. Because I do feel like they're kind of two sides of the same coin with, like, you know, it can't, we're obviously talking about Taylor, but I think both of these songs can be applied to like anyone living in a small, you know, in an area like with your group of friends or like at a school or, you know, in a small town or whatever. Like you don't get to just exist and live out your life and make your mistakes without people judging you. Right. And judging.

Or thinking that they know you. Uh-huh. Yes, exactly. Yeah, two different sides. Like I know you did this so I'm judging you for that. But it's like, do you really know? Yeah, because sometimes we don't know. Yeah, ourselves, yeah.

Right, we don't know sometimes why we do those things that we do. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's life is a journey of self-discovery. Okay. All right. You ready to listen? Yes, I'm going to look for that piano going bum, bum, bum, bum. Okay.

And, you know, I do, I like this very much as a poem, just as a poem. just as a poem. You know, I do from time to time say, what was it, a couple of weeks ago? I said you could just take this stanza and publish it as a poem. And not that the rest of the poem is good, that's just greatness.

This is really good. Yeah. I love the way it sounds. It deserves to be read aloud. Okay. Or song. Okay, so I think what we're going to do on this one is just watch the lyric video.

She did play this one in its entirety for us as a surprise song. on the Aeros Tour, but maybe we'll get to that eventually. Okay. So we are going to watch the lyric video and we'll be right back. Wow, that's nice. It's pretty. It's a pretty one. Yeah, it's pretty.

I love the piano. Yeah, I love the, I still like the gasp and the breathing and, you know, the deflation. Yeah, I never picked up on how all of that goes together. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I really like the way that she sang like she was lost. You know, it's just, I don't know.

It's interesting that, you know, she's walking in circle like she was lost. So they're speculating on how and why when maybe the person involved doesn't even know herself. Yeah. She's living with a ghost, just a ghost of a memory. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like to get biographical with it, we all thought when the tortured poets department came out, when this album came out, we thought it was going to be all of these songs breaking down how that long-term relationship she was in, how it did end.

Like, that's what we thought we were getting. And that's not really what we got at all. There's a lot more of this other guy in there and there's a lot more of other things in there. And it's almost like this song is her answer to that being like, I can't give you that album because I also don't know. You know? Right. Like, I'm still trying to figure it out. Right.

Yeah, sometimes we live a whole lifetime and we really don't know why Valentina chose Derwood over me. I don't know. Can't figure that out? I can't even. I mean, it doesn't bother me anymore. Not at all. Okay. Anything else?

So you're ready to grade? I'm ready. So you can go have your crisis without Valentino. Yeah. I'm ready. All right. How did it end? Tortured Poets Department.

Lyrical strengths. I'm going to say, reminiscent of Edgar Allen, beautiful use of alliteration. Lovely rhyme. I just, I love the way this sounds. so and almost better reading aloud than the music.

Yeah, it's kind of just, I don't know, the words, we've talked about this a little bit. Like, I think Taylor just wants the words to stand out, like she wants us to hear her stories. And like this one, it really is, like the poetics are just so pretty that you kind of almost don't even need anything else. No. But it is a very simple song.

Like the piano in the background is just kind of is what it is, you know? Yeah. Yeah, the rhyme of circumstances, dances, glances, that's just greatness. Yeah, so I'm always reluctant to give a hundred, but I don't know. I liked this very much. I read it aloud two or three times to myself, and I keep doing it, don't I? I still love that bridge, you know.

I just, I feel like I want to read, you know, how the death rattled, breathing, silenced as the soul was leaving, the deflation of our dreaming. Yeah, that's 100. Okay. Narrative and structure. Yeah, I mean, I got it. I liked the conceit that metaphorical examination extended throughout the work. She didn't spank the fan culture too badly. Yeah.

You know, the previous one, she came down pretty hard. She did. She was really angry at us. And not just on the fan culture, everybody, all that, you know, the media, the, those as I braids it earlier, the societal cruelty of a person's life analysis, just hard.

So, yeah, it was good. It was 96. Okay. Production and atmosphere. I'm so glad I got the piano sound. Yeah, you nailed that. So, yeah, I mean, I like the sound of the song, 96.

Okay. lore and literary references Not a lot of literary references Lots of technique Lots of poetic technique going on here Yes Certainly it belongs in the poets department So 99

Okay and emotional impact You know I have long forgotten Valentine She is the slimmest And most vacuous of ghost of ghosts in my life. You barely ever bring her up. Very happy. 94.

Okay. And that's a 97. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you to the patrons. Patrons. That was fun.

This was a good read. Yeah. This was a, yeah, I keep saying, what a beautiful sound. Mm-hmm. So fun is poetically. Love it. Okay. Is that it?

That's what I got. Okay. then we will be back here next week. Make sure that you are subscribed everywhere. Go ahead and rate and review us wherever you listen. Just help us get more ratings and reviews so that more people can find us. And then make sure you're following on Instagram and TikTok at Swiftie and ScholarPod. You can also follow Uncle Jerry at Dr.

Uncle Jerry. You can follow me at Angela White McDowell. And we will be back next week. We will. Bye.