The Swiftie and The Scholar - The Tragedy of Miscommunication in Exile

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Continuing along our folklore journey, this episode covers exile, the collaboration between Taylor Swift and Bon Iver. Uncle Jerry teaches us about different types of exile and how they appear across literature and folk tales. We then dig into the poem and Uncle Jerry admits to Angela that he almost cheated and listened to the song because he was so ready to hear how they spoke over each other. Also, ICYMI, we will be finishing the entire folklore album. Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we tackle the remaining tracks and then do a comprehensive overview.Song discussion starts at 19:12*Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!Works Cited:Just Give Me a Reason – Pink ft. Nate RuessThe Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri Gilgamesh, Nature, and CivilizationParadise Lost – John MiltonThe Odyssey – HomerExile of OvidPoems From Exile: Ex Ponto, Book I – Ovid*Frankenstein – Mary Shelley*Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky*Ulysses – James Joyce*Dubliners – James Joyce*A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James JoycePolyphony in Contemporary LiteratureDramatic ironyAssonanceAlliterationIambic tetrameterIambic trimeterBallad meter or common measureSynecdochePhaedrusEpistropheThe Swiftie and The Scholar Grading MatrixFollow Us:Patreon⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Threads⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠Uncle Jerry’s Instagram

Welcome to the Swifty and the Scholar, the podcast where we examine the lyrics, lore, and literary legacy of Taylor Swift. I am Angela McDow the Swifty. I am Dr. Jerry Coates, the scholar. Please have a seat. Oh, class is in session. That is right. Today, it's class. Okay. I'm excited. Are you? Are you really? I am. I am.

I had trouble deciding when I wanted to teach about this poem. And I thought, do I want to make people really bored at the start or really bored at the end? And I remembered when I would teach class, it was usually at the start. Okay. So if you get bored, skip ahead. Just skip ahead. Just say, I don't need this stuff. It's going to hit better, apparently.

Okay. Today, we are continuing along our folklore journey with exile. This is a collaboration with Bonnie Vair, actual name Justin Vernon. We've only done one other collaboration, and that was also with Bonnie Vair, and that was Evermore. So I haven't looked this up. Yes. But why does Justin become Boni Vair? Well, that's like his band name, his performance name.

Oh, so he takes his band name? Yeah, so that's like his musical name is Bonnie Vare. Oh, so kind of like Eminem. Exactly. Okay. And I don't know what Bonnie Bear means. Do you? No.

Does it mean something? Good something. Yeah. This song is my husband's favorite. So. It doesn't matter to me. One leg. Some pressure for you there.

I'm not putting kid gloves on. Written by Taylor, Justin Vernon, and William Bowery, and produced by Aaron Dessner. So you all, just a lot of boys on this one. A lot of boys. And that's kind of it. This one is very fun. I have a fun clip to show you from when this was a surprise song that we'll watch later. Okay.

But yeah, that's kind of all. This is also one that starts not with Taylor's voice, which might be the only one, the only song that doesn't start with her own voice. Yeah. It's a fun conversation. I am actually really looking forward to hearing the song. When I was looking at it again last night, I actually thought about picking up my phone and playing. Trying to cheat. I did.

Well, because I was curious about, you know, the bridge and the outro, you know, and you said, they're really fun, you know, when we were talking earlier. And, yeah, because they had the mixed voices. And I wanted to, I thought, I really want to hear that, you know. Yeah. So I love the song, Just Give Me a Reason by Pink. Oh my gosh, that song is so good, and they're kind of talking over each other. Right, and they go back and forth and like they're talking and not listening and, you know, a lot of what goes on in this, in this poem goes on in that one. Wait, isn't that with fun? Is that collaboration with fun?

Just going to. No. Hold on. But, you know, I'm a huge pink fan. So, yeah, I mean, when I read through this, I thought, oh, this is a little like that pink song. Yeah. But they mix the voices clearly, you know, more intensely at the end of this song. Yeah.

Fun fact, though, about that song, about Just Give Me a Reason, that is a collaboration with Nate Ruiz, who is in the band Fun. And Jack Antonoff was also in the band Fun. What? But Jack Antonoff did not work on this song. Jack Antenov. That man just creeps up everywhere. I knew there was a connection there. I just had to look it up.

Okay. Well, that's kind of cool, actually. Wow, okay. Now I've got that song going in my head. Me too. Why did I even mention that? Okay, back to whatever this one is. Yes.

Whatever. Put some respect on this song's name. I know. Okay, exile. Yes. Angela. Yes. What does the title mean to you?

The exile is like when you're thrown out of somewhere, your banned, kind of another militaristic kind of term, huh? Could be. You're in exile, so you've been, like, shunned, and you're not allowed in whatever it is you're being exiled from again. Can you be self-exiled?

I assume so. Can you? Why not? I don't know. Can you purposefully exclude yourself from the company of others? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right?

So self-exile is possible. Okay. So when I saw the title, because my mind goes this direction, because I have been trained all my life to do this, I thought about exile as a literary symbol and as a literary theme. Okay. It is one of the oldest literary themes in literature. Okay. Or in humanity. Right.

Yeah. It, to me, is fascinating. Actually, my dissertation director on my PhD in history or literature wanted me to write about medieval exile. Oh, okay. Exile and medieval literature and culture. But I went a different direction, but I really did do some research on that because I was interested in it. She was particularly interested. She was a medieval Renaissance scholar who specialized in Italy.

Okay. And Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, which in part is about exile. Okay. It has as one of its major themes. So, yeah, this is the boring lecture part. So what I'm going to do, usually we jump right into the song. Okay, let's look at the first line. No, I really want to foreground this to think about exile as we go into a song that's titled Exile.

Okay. So Exile as a literary symbol and theme. So I wrote down three different types of exile. One is physical banishment. So you're actually forced removal from your homeland. And we'll see an example of that. Something I didn't mention, it just kind of popped in. A biblical exile.

You know, the Hebrews are exiled from the promised land for 40 years as they wander in the desert. Right. You know, so exile can be physical banishment. And it emphasizes sometimes political. repression or divine wrath. There can be psychological or internal exile, self-isolation, alienation, feeling like a stranger within one's own society or culture. Okay.

And we touch a little bit of, you know, I hope if you're thinking about the song exile, and I'm thinking about the poem exile, you know, these are all going to have implications for what's written. There's spiritual exile That's metaphorical banishment From a state of grace Or from innocence or from paradise Such as humanity's expulsion from the Garden of Eden

Okay, yeah Okay, so let's say you thought you were in a perfect relationship But spiritually exiled from that relationship So we've got physical banishment We've got psychological banishment We have spiritual banishment banishment. Now, I said that exile is one of the

oldest themes in culture. And I, you know, I only wrote down about ten examples. Okay. So, we might not go through all of them. I don't know. Depends on how boring. If your eyes start to glaze over. I'll stop. Gilgamesh.

Okay. In the flood tablets, the story of Gilgamesh, an ancient religious document, you know, we have the flood tablets from around the seventh century from Usherbanapal, but they go farther back than that. Enkidu, who is Gilgamesh's twin, it's his paired best friend. Gilgamesh is half part God, part man, but Enkidu grows up in nature, right?

He's a wild man of the desert. He eats wild honey and locusts and wears animal skins. Okay. When he comes into the city to try to calm Gilgamesh down a bit, he's essentially banished from nature. And so he lives in this perpetual state of banishment, a physical banishment, but also psychological and spiritual banishment in a lot of ways. Adam and Eve are banished. Yes, yeah. And so we read Milton's Paradise Lost.

And it's actually an exploration of the nature of that banishment because banishment exile happens on several levels in Paradise Laws. You know, in book one of Paradise Law, Satan is thrown out of heaven, and you're already starting to glaze over there. No, I'm not. I'm just really listening. I'm just trying to take it all in. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's just so intensely interesting, you know.

Yeah. Satan gets thrown out of heaven with a third of the rebel angels, and he falls all the way in hell, and he is in adamantine chains, and, you know, Beelzebub comes up and says, what are we going to do now, Master, you know, what can happen? and Satan says better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. So, you know, he's completely defiant, even though he's in exile. He's like kind of happy to be exiled. Some of that defiance, I think, leaks through this poem as well.

Interesting. Okay. Have you seen The Odyssey yet? No. No. I'm waiting to see it. Okay. I mean, I can't believe I have to wait this long because The Odyssey is one of my favorite books. And I mentioned last night, I think we've read it 20.

20 times. I've taught it 20 different times. Yeah. And Odysseus is exiled from Ithaca. His exiled, he's essentially banished from his home because he, because of his own hubris, right? He commits some acts against the gods during the Trojan War. And so his, his exile is from his own homeland from Ithaca. One of my favorite poets, Ovid, who wrote the Metamorphosis.

Okay. was exiled from Rome. He's exiled by Augustus all the way to the edge of the Black Sea, which is like the hind end of nowhere. Okay. And so he writes a couple of really important books. The Epistulae exponto, epistula, epistula, you know, are letters. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Well, we learned about this. Right. So there are letters from the Black Sea. And he also writes Tristia, which means sorrows. Okay. So he was exiled from the sea. center of the world, Rome, all the way to the edge of the Black Sea, which would have been the edge of the Roman Empire. So he writes poetry about Dante gets exiled from Florence, and that

exile appears in the Divine Comedy. Mary Shelley writes Frankenstein, and the monster is self-exiling from society because he has no mate. He realizes his solitary nature and his loneliness is imposed on in by difference. Okay. In crime and punishment. Dostoyevsky has Roskalnikov, exile. Roskalnikov who commits murder. And then he's so overwhelmed by the crime that he self-exiles.

Okay. Or one of my favorite books, James Joyce, you know, James Joyce's terrific writer, writes Ulysses. I mean, if you've never read Ulysses, good luck. I never read that. I have read it. And it took me like three. shots. Oh gosh. Okay. It's rough. I don't know if I'm ready for that. But you can read the Dubliners,

which is a series of short stories, or you can read Portrait of the Artist as a young man. The story of Stephen Dedalus is self-exiled. Okay. So all of these are stories of exile. And the question, you know, for you as literary scholars, is going to be, how do these elements of exile play in our poem by Taylor Swift? Okay. So why exile in Nassizabeth? Okay. So why exile in narrative, you know, why does it show up here? One of the advantages of exile is you get the outsider perspective. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Right.

It grants characters and the authors a critical distance from society. You know, if you're in a thing, you don't notice a thing. It's like being in water. You know, if you're in the ocean, you may not understand the vastness of it, but if you're flying over it, it's like, oh, man. Yes, yeah, that's kind of big. That's huge. You know, if you're on a mountainside, you know, the top of the mountain may be completely concealed from your vision.

But if you're flying over it, you know, if you're essentially exiled from the environment, then you have the opportunity to critique the environment and the political or social or personal society that creates that environment. Interesting. Yeah. So being exiled. from a relationship gives you some modicum of clarity in order to analyze the relationship. Oh, which we've talked about with Dear John. She can see it.

I see it all now that you're gone. I see it all now. Yeah. Yeah. So being exalb, it gives you outsider perspective. Okay. It can also give you identity reconstruction. So it forces the character to rebuild that fragmented sense of self.

Right? So it balances the tension between memory of the past and adaptation to a foreign present. So, you know, when you're in the past, when you're in the homeland, say, when you're embedded in that homeland, the homeland, the homeland surrounds you. It embraces you with both arms. Okay. So those of you who know this poem know what I'm talking about. These are lines, literal lines from the poem. So it embraces you with both arms and you don't think about who or what you are. You don't think about things that, you know, things that are necessary to your own self-identity, things that are necessary for your own progress. But when you are exiled from that, then you have the opportunity to reconstruct your identity. You adapt to a foreign environment, say a new boyfriend.

And then you look back on the old. and you have a perspective of distance to reanalyze that previous identity. So it's a way of examining the self. Interesting. It also creates what we call liminal space. Okay, yes. Right? So liminal space.

It represents the in between existence. It strips away all the old class structures, the titles, the protections, the things that inhibit you. It essentially reduces character to its raw. essential humanity. Oh my goodness. Yeah, you think about the why exile, I mean, you think what exile, the history of exile

and the way it's been used historically in all kinds of works of literature. And then you ask the question, why exile, what does it do for me in a work of literature? How does it create perspective? How does it create character? How does it create distance and identity?

And these are all things that we've got to answer, think about in our assessment of Taylor Swift's poem exile. That's really interesting. Okay, good. Yeah, no, that is fascinating, especially, like, the way that it makes you reconceptualize who you are. That's, like, very interesting to me. Well, I mean, it's the only way.

If you're immersed in the ocean, you're all wet. Yeah, you're too close to it. You're too close to it. But if you're out of the ocean, you understand, wait a minute, you know, was I in danger being in the ocean? You know, what things lie under the ocean? What about the vastness of the ocean? Right. Right.

And the same thing is true of your self-identity. Maybe you were too close. And I think it's one of the reasons why people, you know, perpetuate bad relationships, right? Because they're in the ocean. You know, they don't have identity perspective. And it's being exiled from that that gives you identity perspective. It's what happens to Odysseus. in the Odyssey.

I mean, Odysseus is, I mean, so if you've ever read the early in the Odyssey, you know, Odysseus is not the wisest king, but he is the smartest king. To quote the first line of the Fitzgerald translation, he is that man skilled in all ways of contending. Okay. Right. So he's smart. He's clever.

And he's dependent on that cleverness to make his way in. life and it's worked right up to now. But it has given him a sense of pride, it's given him a sense of hubris, that he can't be wrong. He can't be affronted. He can't be challenged because he's going to work it out by being smart. Gotcha. Okay. And on his journey home, he uses his wits and his intellect to fool the Kikonese, the Lyshtragonians,

the Cyclops, right? All these people he encounters. He uses his wits and his intelligence to go by the sirens, to go by all these different obstacles. But every time people die, until he's stripped away with nothing, I mean, he literally washes up naked on the beaches of Faikia, totally dependent on someone to help him get home.

Right. And it's only by being stripped away, by being exiled, that he has an internal examination of who he is, and he understands, I've been a real butt here. You know, I have let my pride overwhelm me, and I've forgotten my wife and my son and my responsibilities. And it begins to understand that he's actually the smartest man in the room

just got all of his friends killed. Yeah. And has been away from his family for 20 years. Right. But it's only that distance of exile that allows him to re-requent. configure that. Interesting. So we're going to see how the distance of exile affects our two characters.

Yeah. Okay, so usually in a classroom, right, I would give my opening a lecture like this, and some students would have done some background reading and maybe give a little report, so I wouldn't have to supply the plot structure of something like The Odyssey. And then we would take a work and apply it, and this would be the time when we have a discussion. Okay. I do have one more note, and that is this poem, you know, last week, last week we did epiphany, which I said was an interesting Taylor Swift work because it's non-confessional, right? It's not really about Taylor Swift.

It's about, you know, the world and trying to discover meaning. The lack of epiphany is the epiphany. Right. You know, it's an intense level of irony. this work is likewise different because it engages in polyphonic writing so polyphony so that that would be multiple sounds yeah two speakers there are multiple speakers right multiple speakers in polyphonic music you know um Gregorian chant is monophonic okay right so in the seventh century we have the rise of Gregorian chant and Gregorian

Gagorean chant is symbolic. It's not just performative, it is symbolic. You know, you have one God, one message, one church, and so you have one voice. Interesting. Okay. Right. Of course you would have, you know, if you listen to Gregorian chant, you don't know how many people are singing.

Right. Right. It might be three. It might be 20 because they're all singing with one voice. But then the Renaissance comes along. Right? And the Renaissance says, no, no, we have a polyphony of voices. You know, we have, you know, there's this incredible wide world. And so we begin to fragment the power of the church. We begin to have multiple churches. You have the Protestant Reformation. But it also affects the way we write and the way we sing. So you have polyphonic music. You have a guy like Thomas Talas, who's a composer, a British composer in the 16th century. Can you tell him excited about this? I'm sorry. I really get wound up in this.

I love when this touches a great, greater world of literature and performance. You know, Thomas Tallis writes these wonderful motets where he just stacks voice on voice on voice until he'll have like 40 lines of voices all singing. And you can hear them all because they come in one by one by one by one. And after a while, you just get this world of sound, this wall of sound. I think it's cool that she does some of that here. She has two voices, and by the end, the voices are intermixed. And I literally had to, like, read it and read it and read it to try to figure out, wait a minute. That's why last night I was thinking, maybe I should just listen to it.

Yeah, it is, like, it doesn't translate well to just the page. Yeah. When there's, you know, kind of overlap of voices and they're saying different things. You know, it doesn't translate well. Yeah, he's saying, and then she's saying. and then she's saying and then she's saying and he's saying. And so they overlap and they go back and forth. And that's the fun thing about their, you know, their exiled state, exiled from one another.

They're both introspective about the nature of that relationship and their own character in the relationship. Yes. Line one. Yes. Yes. I don't know. That's a great big bomb. I just kind of dropped on everybody for background.

Yeah. But that helps, though. Yeah, I think it's just, I think it's, it's so fascinating that she is tapping into one of, of literature's great themes. You know, it's a theme, I mean, the Odyssey, for goodness sakes. Paradise Lost, the Bible. Yeah. You know, all wound up in this theme. I mean, think about the, I'm sorry, I'm going to stop at a minute.

but think about exile in the Bible. I mean, you know, think about the self-exile that Judas undergoes and his retrospection that leads to his own death. Right. You know, think about the way people are exiled, that whole groups of people or some people are exiled. Think about the Babylonian exile in the Bible, you know, takes place from the 590s all the way down to 531. when a whole people are forcibly taken and they have to rethink their culture

and rethink their religion and rethink the value of Jerusalem and its symbolic importance to their own religious belief system. Exile is a fascinating theme. So I'm glad she touches on it. Yeah. Okay.

It makes sense for this to be on folklore as well then. That's exactly. That's like you took the... I'm sorry. No, no. You're exactly right. I get excited when students say just the right thing. Yeah, it just makes sense.

Like, I've never really thought of it that way. But yeah, it's like all of those songs are, all of those stories that you're talking about are kind of like the folklore that we have already. So she's just touching on that. Yeah, you know, that's, I am kind of excited to do the whole folklore album. Because, I mean, if you think about last week, you know, Epiphany, you know, how many stories have an epiphany, a moment of realization, you know, when did you realize you were in love? You know, when did you realize that you wanted to move on from your job and you wanted to do something

else? Yeah. And then, you know, when you, when you encounter something that you can't realize, when you can't establish meaning for, how do you handle it? And that's the question that that poem's trying to answer. It's a big question. This is a big question. Interesting. Okay. Okay. Line one.

Yes. I can see you standing, honey, with his arms around your body laughing, but the joke's not funny at all. And it took you five whole minutes to pack us up and leave me with it. Hold it all this love out there in the hall. all, verse one. I said line one.

I guess I had to read the whole thing. Verse one, line one, I can see you standing, honey, alliteration C standing. So, you know, she's opened up her poetry kit and she's going to pull alliteration out. We have the male voice at a, and of course I didn't know that immediately,

I just read Justin Vernon and assumed it's a guy. Yeah. singing at some kind of a social gathering. Right. It's not identified. Okay, so the question we always ask about literature is why. Why doesn't she say at the party, at the birthday party, at the concert, at, why didn't she say it?

Well, because we are just filling it in in our heads. We fill it in our heads. And I don't think it matters to her. Yeah, it doesn't matter where they are. It's that first encounter, right? It could have been at the grocery store. Right? And it could have been.

Maybe it's at the grocery store. Yeah, who knows? Because what's important is he sees her. And she's standing. Okay, you know, if last week in Epiphany, we saw how important her diction is, how minimalistic, how compact, but how seven-eighths of it is under the iceberg effect. Yes. Why is she standing?

It's an image of strength. She's upright. Right. She's not lying. She's not sitting. She's not bent over. She's standing. So she's, you know, on her power.

And maybe that's something that irritates him. He calls her honey. Yeah. It's ambiguous. I know we're already in ambiguity and we're only on line one. Is this a term of endearment? Like has he called her honey as a matter of fact in the past? You know, like honey.

You know? Yeah. Would you hand me that? Yeah. And so does he include honey here as a reflex, something he once called her, or is he using honey ironically? Oh, interesting. Right? Is he saying honey?

Yeah, I'm being snarky about it. Yeah. And do we know? No, we don't. Because he is not inside that relationship. He's forced to be outside. He is in exile. with his arms around your body.

Okay. Really nice assonance. She just, she's popped out alliteration. Now she's reached in a grabbed assesance, repetition of vowel sounds with his arms around. See the A's and the eyes. So you've got these really nice poetic techniques working. The arms are around here, her.

Okay, why both arms? why not arm why not holding a hand because it's like she's fully she's been fully taken in by another person yeah i mean think about that again she's got she's got really nice diction she's because she understands word economy she understands what words mean she doesn't say his his you know right forefinger rested lightly on her arm you know she says his arms around your body okay arms possesses You know, okay, so, and if you're a perceptive reader, and you understand that iceberg effect. Yes. Think about possession.

So when he was prior to his exile, was this was one of the problems possessiveness? Definitely could have been. It could have been. And I wonder about that. I mean, she doesn't say it explicitly here, but the arms bother. him, right, that somebody else has her. Somebody else has possession. Right.

It could also be, ambiguity, it could also be protectiveness. Oh, okay. Right, both arms protecting her. So they notice the old boyfriend over there. They know that it wasn't a happy breakup. And so he puts his arms around her to protect her, to offer her emotional, physical comfort. And that bothers him. Yeah.

Either way, he's bothered by it. It doesn't matter which, really. Right. Or maybe it's both. And she says around your body, very physical imagery, very sexual imagery, very sexual, right? I mean, it's not just his arm around your shoulders, his arm around your neck. It's around your both arms around her body. And that, I don't know, that.

Like your whole, like the whole of her. Like, yes. Like all. of her is now given over to another person. And I don't mean to characterize her as being passive, the female, in this poem. You know, it could be that she has given all of herself. Right. Yeah, but we're just looking at it in this verse is from his perspective. So he's just seeing it from, because he's exiled.

He's seeing it from the outside. And I wonder if his possessiveness is part of the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Laughing. So they're laughing. but the joke's not funny at all. Laughing?

Okay, so now we're juxtaposing she's happy. He, not so much. No. And the joke's not funny. Is that because the joke is on him? Yeah, it's like, why isn't, why, is he saying the joke's not funny to him? Or is he saying you're laughing and it's fake because it's not a funny joke? And I know you're faking because I know you even from over here.

Yeah, and I think he's wondering that too is, is this, is this something that you're faking? You know, like, like if you saw the old boyfriend, you wouldn't want to appear to be sad. Right. All of a sudden, you're just like. Right. Yeah, so, so, you know, who's, the joke's not funny, but, but why, you know. And it took you five whole minutes. Okay, that's hyperbole.

So she's, you know, throwing things out of her poetry kit. We've got assinence. We've got alliteration. We got hyperbole. We've got ambiguity. So five whole minutes to pack us up and leave me with it. So now she is using a metaphor, right, comparing their relationship to like a suitcase. Right.

And it may be a literal description as well. Yeah, like moving out of a house or. Yeah. I'm getting my stuff. I'm leaving. Yeah. You know. And I think one of the reasons why he doesn't know what the joke is,

and he doesn't understand why it took her. She left him in such, you know, an alacritous manner. She is because he's exiled. Right. He can't know. Every line underscores that idea of exile. And we haven't even seen the word yet. No.

Yeah. And he doesn't say to pack yourself up. he says to pack us up oh who's to blame for the loss of their relationship well it's her clearly well yeah it's always it's always the girl and leave it leave me with it so he's left holding that metaphorical bag

so I think she's got some really fun language going here because she's packing up a suitcase and leaving him holding the bag leaving him holding the last vestiges of their now deteriorated relationship. Yeah. Holding all this love out here in the hall. It's so pathetically melodramatic. Yes, yes.

Right. And so, you know, I think as a reader, you've got to think, oh, you know, this is dramatic irony. Yes. Right? Because we know more than maybe he does. we see his melodrama and his blame and his angst a little bit better than he does. Yeah. We've talked about this before, but she uses hallways quite often.

It's like, you know, the passage from one kind of situation to another. Like we talked about down that passage in time. What song is that? We just did it. Chloe or Chloe Chloe, Chloe, Chloe in the gang. Like where it's like that's like a passage of time. and we were characterizing it as like a hallway in her apartment. And then we've talked three or four other times about how she uses hallways as like a passage into something new.

So if you're writing your thesis or your dissertation on spatial imagery and the use of space in the poetry of Taylor Swift, this is certainly one I would hit on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because, well, I mean, let's go back to the poetry. Work kit. She uses alliteration, right? Holden, here, Hall.

Right. See all the ages. She uses a cliche, holding the bag, an implied metaphor. Yeah. And then the spatial structural imagery of Hall, you know, the hallway is outside the room. Right, right.

So you're exiled into the hallway. Exiled into the hallway. Yeah. And you can't sleep and you can't use the bathroom or probably shouldn't. And so, you know, Exiled from the relationship on the outside of the relationship. So the spatial structural imagery is really interesting. And that's all there is in the first verse.

That's just a chill, easy, easy time. Just idiotic. And then the chorus. And he continues to sing the chorus. And notice the use of rhyme in the chorus. You know, if you look down the N-lines, you'll see before, any more, before, and then now, out. Mm-hmm. So nicely rhymed.

But something you may not notice immediately is the use of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iemic trimeter. No, I didn't notice that. Yes. You remember, IAMs are the unstressed stressed syllables, babam. And so the first line has four of them. The next line has three of them. The next line has three of them. Oh, okay, okay.

This is called ballad meter. Okay. And I've done this before. That means you can sing it to any ballad. Yes. Yes, yes. You want to hear me sing it to the Yellow Rose of Texas? Yeah.

I think I've seen this film before and I didn't like the ending. You're not my homeland anymore. So what am I defending? Now. I know. She's got to hang over his soul. And I'm going to bet that's exactly how he sings. This is exactly.

It's a real like song. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad I hit that one. right on the head. I knew I would. But I think it's worthy of note that she's writing with a very

intentional metrical pattern. Yes. She's not just throwing words down on a page. So I think I've seen this film before. So she introduces one of the functional metaphors of our poem, that film is like a relationship. A movie is like a relationship.

She also uses asinens, I, Ives, this film. Yeah. Yeah. And then she goes, and I didn't like the ending. So the ending of the film, she's extending the film metaphor. So it becomes a conceit. A conceit.

Yeah. So then he says, you're not my homeland anymore. This actually introduces another metaphor. Okay. Yeah. Right. The homeland is metaphorically their relationship. Mm-hmm.

You know, so it examines the cliche home is where the heart is. Yes. Right. So you're not my homeland. I'm not inside that space anymore. Like Dante is not in Florence anymore. He has been exiled from it. Right.

And so we have spatial imagery. The homeland is of the heart. So the, and this is like personal in a very macro manner. So, you know, I should be part of that entire place, right? But I'm not. I'm outside of that entire place. So what am I defending now? You know, so she takes inside the film metaphor,

she takes the homeland metaphor and extends that another line. And she says, you know, why would I defend the homeland that actually he says? Yeah, yeah. She's writing. Yeah. She writes, why should I defend our old relationship? Yeah. If I'm exiled from that, then what am I?

Right. Why would I defend it? There is no why. You were my town. Now I'm in exile, seeing you out. Okay, so first time we introduced the word exile, title word. And this is spatial imagery. Okay.

So we've tightened the focus from the entire homeland, down to the town. Just a little town, yeah. Right. So now we have more personal. So we went from the macro description of homeland to a kind of micro image of town. You know, but somehow you're gone from that smaller space or I'm out of that smaller space. So in this big world where we have found each other and created a relationship, I'm outside of that relationship.

I think I've seen this film before. So we have a little repetition. Yeah. And that's the end of our male voice. Yes. I just said to you before we started that I had an epiphany about this song on the way here. Right. And I did not have a chance.

I was driving, so I didn't have a chance to look up and see if anybody else has talked about this. But whenever, for some reason, I was listening today and I heard home in homeland, my brain went to my tears ricochet, which is like the first song we ever covered on. on this podcast. Oh, yeah. And that song is about her losing her master recordings. Mm-hmm. And she's kind of fighting Scott Borchetta in that song, who is the owner of the record label? Now, Borchetta, is that where you take, like, bread and put tomato and...

Yes. Scott Brousquetta. But in that, in that song, she says, I can go anywhere I want, just not home. Oh, that's cool. And so I started, for some reason, I, I've had, I've been listening to this song for six years, but for some reason today, I was like, wait, is this whole song a metaphor, like a conceit, I guess, inside where what looks like a, like a relationship, like a dating relationship? But it's actually her and Scott Borchetta fighting about her leaving the record label and him then selling the masters away and her having to, before he sold them away, she left and went to a new label because he was. wouldn't give her what she wanted.

I don't know. Yeah, so I was just like, and I don't know if anybody else has like talked about this, so. But you're kind of, I'm sorry, you're putting other ideas in my head too. No, that's really interesting. Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah. First of all, I think we should do a word search on her discography to see where she uses the word home. But also I'm thinking about when she goes home, you know, for Christmas. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And she talks about how she's no longer a part of that environment.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really interesting. Or when in the trilogy, you know, when we, when we get to Cardigan, we move outside of that environment. Right. So is that a form of exile, self-exile from the home? And is that why Cardigan is such an interesting poem because she's looking back and she has that,

she's reconstructing her persona, her identity. Which you do what you were talking about. When you're exiled, you can finally see all the things. Right. You're finally out of the ocean and you can finally see it all. That's really interesting. Yeah, and so I don't know. I haven't had time to sit and think that through,

but if y'all have people who have talked about that, please let me know or if you have an idea about that. But then I just started thinking like, oh, that could be so interesting, especially like when we get to the ends and they're talking over each other. And I could just imagine, you know, like Taylor and Scott Borchetta, Taylor was the first person signed to his record label. And she obviously, like, was successful pretty early on. And then she became big machine records. Like, that was, you know, she was the biggest name on that label.

And she wanted to stay. Like, they had been together since she was, like, 15 or something. And I think she hated having to leave, but she didn't feel like she had a choice. and so she left, went to a new record label, and then he decided to, like, sell all of her masters to someone else. And so I'm just thinking, like, it really does kind of fit with this entire metaphor. Like, she, like you're saying, can you be self-exiled? She had to remove herself from that situation because it wasn't serving her anymore.

And I'm sure at the same time, Scott Borchetta is like, well, my moneymaker's leaving. You know what I mean? Right. So, I don't know. It's, you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to start. my head for the other images of home. You know, we get a little touch of that in Marjorie where she remembers her life as a child at home

and her interactions with her grandmother. And now later as a performer, she can look back with introspection and realize those fragments of her own personality that were shaped by her grandmother. Yeah. Which has nothing to do with Scott Borchetta. No, but it's all just like...

The home image is interesting in all these different ways. Yeah. How does she carry a home forward? Yeah. Hmm. Wow. That would be a really interesting paper to write. Yeah.

Yeah. So maybe I have time for that kind of stuff now. So we'll get busy. We'll get to working. I don't know. Get busy. Wow. All right.

Yeah. So I don't know. But it's an interesting thought I had on the way here. Yeah. You're making me listen to these songs differently. No. That's really good. Yeah, I like it.

Hmm. Okay, verse two. Yes. Finally, we get some Taylor in here. Well, I feel like I need to go sit in a dark room now and just think about that for a while. You pull your Maiters Ruricey notes down. Right, and pull them up and take a look at how she uses home elsewhere. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, now I'm thinking back to the nature of home in exile, you know, I mean, to Dante, Florida. as home to Odysseus, Ithaca's home, you know, to Enkidu being embedded in nature as home, you know. Yeah, you think about how that participates in that great, you know, formative literary discussion of what exile is. Yeah. Okay, I can't go on there. You must. Verse two.

Note the interlocking rhyme in verse two. Honey, study, me, and jury. Oh, yeah. Right. And then chances, branches. So she's not forgetting her poetry. Yeah. And so the female voice says,

I can see you staring, honey. Okay, parallelism matches first one line one. It feels like irony or sarcasm matching. It feels now to me like false endearment. Agreed. from both of them. Yeah. But I don't know.

Yeah. Or they're just falling back into this film that they've been in before, you know. I mean, I would say if like I'm going with like 90% sarcasm. Okay. But it is indeterminate in the text. Like he's just your understudy. Okay, we're back to the film conceit, right? The movie conceit.

It's a simile like. and understudy. It's the conceit, the extended film metaphor. And we kind of have a new element of the metaphor. The new guy, the one who has both of his arms around her, is an understudy.

Yeah. And she says, the way you're looking at him, you think he's an understudy. Well, does an understudy actually get to make it to the screen? No. You know, so I, I, I, she says, I know what you're thinking.

You think he is less. than you. Yeah, you think this isn't real. Which if you really think about it, it's interesting for later in the song, because what is the disjunction later in the song is he says they should have known each other's thoughts. Right. But here she's reading his mind. She's like, I can read your thoughts. Right. And you're wrong. And you can't read my thoughts because he's not my understudy or your understudy. Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me. Okay. it didn't take me but about, you know, point two seconds to remember from the Great War. You know, my knuckles were bruised like violets.

Yes. So imagery. You know, would you really want to get into a fight? And so now I went back to Dear John, you know, about you look like the kind of guy who'd get beaten up in elementary school or whatever. Chloe. Oh, Chloe, I'm sorry, yeah. So she doesn't believe he'd start a fight. But I don't think that the knuckles getting bloody are necessarily, you know, realistic.

Realism, I think it might be metaphorical. Yeah, like you're looking at him like you would fight for me, not necessarily actually fight, but like you're going to try hard to get me back. Right. But you weren't fighting for me when we were in this relationship. So, you know what he would do is he'd walk up in the grocery store and say, hey, have you got a new hairdresser? Or is this the new guy?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, or he just tried to say something snarky, which would be getting his knuckles bloody. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Second, third, and hundredth chances. Okay, you remember he was hyperbolic. Well, she's hyperbolic.

She said, you know, I gave you multiple attempts to fix this relationship. We engaged in multiple attempts. the hundredth time around is when I exiled you. Right. Right. So I don't know if it's the hundredth time. And maybe it is. Yeah.

You know, maybe that's the nature of a relationship is it's not the first thing. It's not the third thing. It's the 128 thing. Right. It really gets you. Yeah. You know, they did a classroom behavioral study at Indiana State University once that I read. and it said that the teacher gets angry at the seventh thing.

They had like 18,000 hours of a video on a classroom, on several classrooms actually to show why do teachers get upset with students. Okay. And it's not necessarily the one thing the students said. It's the seventh thing. Yeah, but that person maybe is the first time they've said something. So they think it's like, well, why did you just blow up on me? But it's actually like a, the strong thing.

they broke the camel's back, so to say. Yeah, I think it's pretty great. So, yeah. So you see Janine chewing gum. You say, Janine, get rid of the gum. And you see Larry, he didn't have his book out. Larry, get your book out, you know, and it just goes on down the line. And it's poor like Sammy Schmuck, you know, and he's the seventh thing.

And Sammy, what are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. Maybe that way with relationships. But it is hyperbole, you know, and I think, again, you have to engage. in dramatic irony and say, we know more than she does at this point.

Yes. So they were balancing on breaking branches. A really nice metaphor. Yeah. And alliteration. Alliteration, yeah. Yeah. But a really nice metaphor comparing their relationship to a tree

where they're precariously out on teetering branches. So their relationship was just hanging in. there and she says those eyes add insult to injury so synecdoche representing the part for the whole it's not just his eyes it's his whole being yeah I can just tell by the way your whole body is standing there looking at me yeah yeah also we use the cliche insult to injury which is implications of physical damage. Mm-hmm.

You know. So, just because I know it, I have to ask, do you know where the expression comes from? I do not. So it's this great little story. This guy named Fadris, Gaius Waius Fadris,

who's a first century Roman writer. Okay. He was all like Esau. You know, he wrote a whole bunch of a little moral tales. Okay. So one of the tales he writes is about the fly and the bald man.

Okay. So he says, this fly lands on a bald man's head, and the bald man reached up and slaps his head hard trying to kill the fly. And the fly buzzes around and he says, well, you missed me. And he said, you know, why did you slap yourself like that? He said, I was trying to get you. The fly said, well, you just added insult to injury. Interesting. Yeah, kind of fun.

Yeah. There's your story for the day. Share that with the kids. Who knew? Or go and get fadry. book and read through them. They're fun. So that's her chorus.

Yes. That's her verse. And then she sings chorus. I think I've seen this film before and I did and like the ending. Okay, I won't do that. But I really want to. We could do it to the ballad of Jed Clampett called List and a story about a man named Jed. I think I've seen this film before and I did.

like the ending, I'm not your problem anymore, so who am I offending? Now. Same rhythmic pattern. Okay, why? Well. Because we've seen this film before.

We've seen this film before. Yeah. And he has the same, I mean, the irony I think of the poem is they have a lot of the same thoughts. Right?

He's blaming her for ending for packing up and leaving the relationship. She's blaming him for the way he looks at her and thinks this guy is, you know, just a, you know, a second fiddle to him. Yeah, yeah. And then they sing virtually really the same chorus. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. In literally the same rhythmic pattern.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so it's like they're walking down the same steps they always walked in their relationship. It's like they can't get out of that relationship. But then she does something interesting. She says, you were my crown.

Crown metaphor for love, adornment, the epitome, so it's on the top. Okay. Yeah, I've always wondered like you were my crown because in the top it's you were my town. Right. And so I've always wondered like what crown could actually mean in this. Yeah, I think I think it's a metaphor for you are the epitome, the top in my life. You were a crown is an adornment. You were the thing that I was most proud of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The crown also is signifies. It's a sign. Okay. We'll hear about signs later. Yes, yes. It signifies that she's reached the top, you know, and she is like the queen. Gotcha.

Okay, yeah. But now I'm in exile seeing you out. So exile metaphor removed from the relationship. And then we got the ambiguity of that same phrase, seeing you out, which is ambiguous, I say, because it does have two very different meetings. Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing because we didn't talk about it the first time, but now I'm looking at it. And it's like, oh, they're seeing each other out and about. Right. Like they are physically seeing each other at the grocery store or whatever.

But also, like, I'm seeing you out the door. Like, I'm watching you leave or walking along with you to leave. Walking you out the hall. Yeah, down the hall. Yeah, you're literally exiling as you're exiting. Yeah. Right. So which is it?

And I think it's both. You know, I see you out and about wherever it is they see one another. And I saw you out, you know, of that relationship. Yeah. I think I've seen this film before. So I'm leaving out the side door. I do think this is a part of that film conceit. Okay.

You know, I mean, side door could be a metaphor for, you know, exiting the nearest exit or exiting, you know, not the front of the house, not the back of the house, but sliding out. Yeah. Kind of secretly almost. Secretly. Yeah. But also theaters have side doors. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, you know, sneaking out of the theater. Yeah. I've seen this before, and I'm out of here. This is another, actually, now that I'm thinking through this, this is another, could be another tie to My Tours ricochet, because in that one she says, I didn't have it in myself to go with grace. So she's like leaving.

Right. And sneaking out. Or she's like, maybe that's kind of the opposite, where if you're sneaking out and going out the side door, whereas if you couldn't leave with Grace, you're kind of making maybe a scene about leaving. But that's interesting. You're going to make me go back to that home.

Tears like Ricochet. You know what I thought of was I thought of champagne problems. Okay. You know, because they're out in public. It's like at a party. Where she turns them down, yeah. Right. Yeah.

Interesting, yeah. Yeah, so I think maybe there are echoes of that as well. Maybe so. Oh, Lordy. We got more to unpack from this one. Yeah, this is way too much. So we're going to be coming back next week. The bridge.

Yes. Note the bridge abandons the alternating voices. Yes. note the bridge engages in epistrophic writing epistrophe okay epistrophe however you want to say it whether you're English or American you see the number of time the word signs appears so many yeah and sometimes yeah and the word out but particularly signs and sometimes it appears at the end of the the line and then it's included in the parenthetical inclusion Right? So it's kind of double-ended.

And also we have juxtaposition or parallelism where you have these opposing statements throughout the bridge. Right. Okay. Step right out. There is no amount of crying I can do for you. I'm over the tears. Step out, echoes, you know, step right up like you're a carnival caller. This time, step right out. Yeah, because we're being exiled.

Right. Being exal. Internal rhyme out amount. Ambiguity, out of town, out of the relationship, or simply out, out. We don't know. All this time, we always walked a very thin line. So all this time could be hyperbolic, maybe not. Yeah, maybe it has been for the entirety. Right.

The whole relationship has been flawed. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We walked a very thin line alliteration. We walked. And then metaphor and cliche, the prolonged instability of the relationship, you know, is this thin line. So the one misstep equals disaster. Right, right.

And, you know, I don't know about you, but I do recall in my very early years having a relationship or two. And I also know that even in, even now, even now, I've had moments where I've had to watch what I do and say. Yes. Because my significant other has certain expectations and requirements. As we all do. Yes. Sometimes it's just something as simple as put your dishes away. Yeah.

But, I mean, obviously, that's not this huge flaw in the relationship, but they must have had a flawed relationship throughout. You didn't even hear me out. You didn't even hear me out. Okay. So I'm guessing they're singing in two voices, right? And one sings it, one sings it. So it's the same thing. They both make exactly the same accusation.

So from our reader perspective, we get a lot of dramatic irony through the bridge. Yeah, because it's interesting because at the beginning, you feel like, They are angry about different things. Mm-hmm. And it seems like they just haven't been able to, like, get on the same page almost. Yeah. But then once we get down here, it does kind of feel like, oh, no, we're actually angry about the same things. Right.

Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. It's just more miscommunication. The very first thing they say is hearing me out miscommunication. Yeah. Right. You don't listen to me, and she or he says, well, you don't listen to me.

Yeah. You know, you never gave me a warning sign. I gave you so many signs. I gave so many signs. So, you know, the use of the word sign, of course, makes me think semiotically, the study of signs. And I've mentioned that before. Yeah. Kind of be interesting to look at her use of signs.

And here they're literally talking about signs. Yeah. All this time, I never learned to read your mind. Never learned to read my mind. I want to know who's seeing wit. You know, because I'm anxious to hear this all. I mean, so does this mean that lovers in a real relationship should be able to read minds? I'm putting read and air quotes.

You know, or is it an unrealistic expectation on both of their parts? That's a good question. Well, thank you very much. That just made me go. But I do think, like, if you're in a relationship and you're actually in it and you're paying attention, then you just understand enough about the other person where it does kind of seem like you're being able to read their mind. See, I would like to think that. But in my long life, I have from time to time misinterpreted a sign from my spouse.

Absolutely, yes. Yeah, I have misinterpreted a sign from my spouse from time to time. and I would like to think that I understand them and know what they're thinking, and sometimes I just don't. Yeah. But that's just like a once and every so often. Well, it is true. Yeah.

And I feel like in this, and maybe I'm, you know, iceberging it like you're talking about earlier, but like maybe this isn't actually there. But it's like, it seems like this is like every time I was giving you a sign you weren't getting it. Yeah. And I think you're right. Yeah, I do. I think this implies that lovers in true relationships should be able to anticipate one another's thoughts and needs. Yeah.

Yeah. And you use the word iceberging it. Is there I needed a verb? That can be part of our new Swifty and the scholar vocabulary. She's iceberging it again. I like it. That belongs on a T-shirt. She's iceberging it.

I couldn't turn things around and you never turn things around. You know, and one implies I tried and the other one implies you didn't try. You never turned things around. Yeah. Or your attempts weren't good enough at least. Yeah. So it's like one of them at least retrospectively, you know, engages in some self-blame. But the other one is all about blame.

So again, who's singing what? Because you never gave a warning sign, and then I gave so many signs. Clearly miscommunication. Yes. And semiotics. So many signs, so many signs. You didn't even see the signs. Never saw those signs.

I know. I saw the sign. And it opened in my eyes. I know. I love that song. That's back in my eyes. wheelhouse. Okay, the chorus.

Oh, Lordy, they're going to sing it again. This time is both of them. Or was it both of them before? Yeah, no. No, the first time it's just Taylor, I think. First time it's just Justin Vernon. The second time it's just Taylor, and this time it's both of them.

So me, do I have to read this whole thing? What am I defending now? I think I've seen this film before, and I like the ending, you're not in my hometown anymore. So what am I defending now? You're in my town. Now I'm in exile seeing you out. I think I've seen this film before,

so I'm leaving on the side door. And I just really love the way she remixes this chorus. I think it's so fun. Yeah. And, you know, you can see what she's doing. She's mixing the voices. She's mixing the thoughts. She's mixing the emotions.

Exactly. Yeah. And the irony is, why didn't they do this during their relationship? Right, like why aren't you just chatting about this? Right. If they're literally seeing this chorus together in the same rhythmic pattern with some of the same ideas, yeah, why didn't they take an hour go into that dark room and just have a conversation about this?

And then we have the outro. So step right out. There is no amount of crying I can do for you at this time. always walked a very thin line. So we have a lot of repetition. You didn't even hear me out. Didn't even hear me out. Didn't wait for a discussion and answer, you know.

Yeah. You didn't give a, you never gave a warning sign. I gave so many signs at this time. I never learned to read your mind. Never learned to read my mind. I couldn't turn things around. You never turned things around. I mean, this could be either voice saying either one.

Because you never gave a warning sign I gave so many signs Just get the eye roll You never gave a warning sign All this time And I love the way she She wants to repeat But she tricks you

And says nope, we're gonna go Change it up this time Yeah So many signs I never learned to read your mind So many signs I never couldn't turn things around I couldn't turn things around

So this is both of them realizing Now they couldn't turn it around around. Right. Because you never gave a warning sign. You never gave a warning sign. You never gave a warning sign. So I wrote a little note.

I said the outro serves as a final emotional echo. It doesn't resolve the conflict. The listener is left with the tension between these two perspectives. You know, we don't know. Yeah. And they don't know. And it's, you know, I think that's a lot of times with the relationship, the way it breaks down.

It's like, it's not, sometimes it's not anybody's. fault it's just it's just not right you know well and so go back to Jerry's lecture on exile you know we have physical exile we have emotional exile I think to a certain extent we even have a kind of spiritual exile I think that they're both spiritually impoverished you know by their inability to resolve if not their relationship then their feelings about it okay about each other yeah you know it it's a hard thing to that to resolution and maybe that's part of her message.

Yeah. So I need to hear the song. Okay. Okay. I think today we're just going to watch the lyric video and then I'm going to play just a little clip from the Ares Tour when this was a surprise song. This happened a couple of times when she played this as a surprise song, but in Edinburgh, Scotland, she played it.

and the she's alone like you know bonnie bear's not there and so the crowd kind of comes in and does the other part they do the other part and she just gets the biggest smile on her face like she's having the best time hearing the crowd do this so that's just a little clip but I think we'll just listen to the um the lyric video for this one okay we'll be right back okay well I just you know I love the polyphonic storytelling. Yeah, me too. That's what makes this one so fun, I think, is just that the way it does build, like, through the bridge

and that last chorus and the outro, and they're just saying the same things, but slightly differently and over each other and back and forth, and it's just perfectly emblematic of what it is, I think. Of what, yes, a broken relationship sitting on tree branches would be like, yeah. I love the metaphors. I think the tree branch metaphor works really well. The thin line, even though it's cliched, works really well for this instant.

I like the film metaphor. You know, I just, I like it. Yeah. Yeah. I really liked the use of exile, you know, that they're both exiled. They're not only exiled from each other, but they're in some ways exiled from their own feelings. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.

And so how does, you know, how many different ways, you know, not only is he physically exiled from homeland or home or in the hall, you know, so you've got the whole spatial architectural thing going on, but, but, you know, how are you exiled from your own reconciliation of where your identity is?

Yeah. Right? Because clearly they don't have enough time to get some perspective. Like, I really am okay with Valentina now. Are you sure? It was eighth and ninth grade. But, yeah, but, you know, I mean, but I wasn't, you know, when I was still close to, you know, I think proximity has a great deal.

Right, like, you're still close to the situation, like, in time and close to the situation in, like, I'm still going to this school with this person or something, you know, it's like kind of different. Yeah. She was in band. Yeah. Yeah. So I still have to see her. Yeah. Yeah, but and her best friend still pestered me, but, and my best friend was her new,

new boyfriend. Oh, my God. But her boyfriend. Just an understudy to this day. That's right. Maybe I'm not over there. Yeah, I am. I'm okay.

But yeah, I mean, that's the thing with the nature of exile. So I think it would be a fun paper to write the nature of exile in exile. Yeah. I want to hear my summative state. I do. We all do. Here you go. Swift creates something closer to a dramatic scene than a conventional pop song.

The outro leaves listeners with an uncomfortable but deeply human truth. Sometimes relationships do not end because one person stops caring. Sometimes they end because two people can no longer translate their feelings into something the other can understand or even hear.

That is why exile, feels less like a breakup song and more like a tragedy a story not about the absence of love but about the heartbreaking limits of human communication. Oh, yep, miscommunication.

Yeah, and Mr. Communication. Don't forget him. I'm so stupid. Loved it. Okay, great. Love the whole thing and the joke. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Let's just grade it. Okay. Exile from folklore. Lyrical strength. Lyrical strength. Oh, man, polyphonic, storytelling, use of ancient, you know, thematic elements brought all the way into popular songs. Boy, that's a 99.8. What? Okay.

Okay. Okay. narrative and structure yeah narrative and structure I loved the verse and chorus by him verse and chorus by her and then the taking the polyphonic storytelling technique and then literally

overlapping it so you know as a reader it was very difficult and I still need to go back and listen to the song and like okay and plot them down boy girl and just and plot them and I think I honestly

think I would understand it better. Probably, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But still, gosh, 99. Yeah, pretty great. Okay. Production and atmosphere.

Oh, you know what? You know, like on Epiphany, I gave it hundreds because it was really exceedingly well written. And then, I mean, the song is okay. Yeah. I really like this song, you know. And I compared it to Pink a little earlier, but it's nothing like that song. Yeah. It has a little different vibe.

Gosh, I liked this song. Like I said, I would listen to it again. So 99.9. Oh, my goodness gracious. Okay, go ahead and put 100. Are you sure? Yeah, go ahead. Oh, my God.

Chase is going to be so happy. Lore, literary references, and literary devices. Yeah, I see why Chase likes it. Yeah. Literary devices, she opened up that kit, just was throwing them out. Yeah, so I'm still curious about the use of the alternating lines of iambic tetrameter, imbitrimeter, you know, traditional ballad line. But maybe she uses traditional ballad line because she's telling a story.

And I just came to that while I'm talking. Maybe I need to think a little earlier next time. Yeah, that's pretty good. She uses ballad stanza, and a ballad usually tells a story of love or death. And in this case, the death of a love. Uh-huh. Oh, that's interesting. Dang.

We're just finding all kinds of stuff. Yeah, that's fun. Well, that's why, you know, as we talk about this stuff, I do go back and look at a song from time to time. And I think, oh, yeah, I completely missed that. Of course, yeah. It's just impossible to get it all. Wow, that's good.

Yeah, so I guess I was going to give it about a 98, but I guess maybe if I can explain that and say it's ballad because it's a ballad, that's 100. Oh, my gosh. This is getting such a high score. I'm trying to make Chase happy. I like Chase. He's a good guy.

Emotional impact. You know, it did make me think about relationship. I mean, it made me think about relationships with my spouse. You know, I mean, not because the failed romance, but because it's almost, it should almost be a warning sign. Exactly. That's what I was just hard to say. It's like, it makes you think like, oh, are there signs I'm missing? Right.

Am I doing something wrong? Yeah. And maybe those times when I think. think she's being petty and picky. Maybe she's not. Maybe I'm the one who's just missing the sign, and I need to buck up. Oh, goodness. Yeah.

So can I say 99? Yeah, but that's going to give this a really high score. That's okay. That's okay. Oh, my gosh. I think this was a masterpiece of storytelling. I really do. Okay.

You love that for you and for us, for all of us. That's a 99.5-6. that technically can round up to 100. I don't round up scores. I do. I'm in charge of the score sheet. She's in charge of everything, though. I just sit here and talk about stuff.

99.56. I was not expecting that. Yeah. Yeah. It is a masterpiece of storytelling. Yeah, I think, you know, if it's probably, you know, easier to walk up and take something like album of the year than it is to figure out a relationship. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's kind of what she's saying in this song. Exactly. Yeah. Like I can do that in my sleep, but figuring out men, that's different. Yeah. Okay. All right. Practically perfect score for exile.

Practically perfect in every way. Okay. Anything else? No. I hope you're happy, Chase. Okay. Make sure you come back next week. Should we just stick with folklore?

Maybe we just need to ride it out. I've been talking about doing this for a while and I keep not doing it. So maybe we just need to do it. Let's do it. Let's do all the folklore. Okay, we're just going to do it. Okay, so what I'm going to do, I'm still going to play with the order, though. We're going to mess it up. So y'all still don't know what's coming next.

But it will be from folklore. I think we maybe only have like five or six left. Well, eventually they will know. Yes, when there's only one left. Okay. Then make sure you're following us everywhere. Make sure you subscribe to stick around for folklore so then we can have a bonus episode about Uncle Jerry tackling the album as a whole.

Oh, we can do that. That would be fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can tell us all the things. you find in there and all that. And you can follow along on Instagram and TikTok at Swifty and Scholar Pod. You can follow Uncle Jerry on Instagram at...

Drunkle Jerry. Drunkle Jerry. Thank you. My mind is my blank. And you can follow me at Angela Wyatt McDowell. And we will see you next week. Bye.