Kelsea Ballerini and Taylor Swift are Legends

Here’s another song in Kelsea’s catalog where I think she is talking about Taylor, and purposely inserting certain words, themes, and images to reference Taylor. You decide:

Legends

We were golden, we were fire, we were magic

Is Kelsea intentionally using key words from Taylor’s songs?

Taylor modifies how she sees love from passionate, burning red, to golden like daylight. She wants to step out of the woods into the warmth of daylight.

Deep blue, but you painted me golden

The fire is a spark, or a comforting light in the darkness. It’s both warming and dangerous (if not controlled). Taylor also sees fire in a negative light, as being outed, burning the room down. And fire turning to ashes is like a relationship that ends, enkindling both people.

It seems Kelsea is alluding to comforting and warming, as she Wedges “fire” between golden and magic.

Magic is Taylor’s realization of what attraction and love feel like (vs. comp-het). Magic is also the disappearing act her and her sapphic lover are able to pull off thanks to heteronormativity [best friends!].

Yeah and they all knew our names all over town

Taylor and Kelsea are both big names in Nashville.

They have both toured the world and topped the music charts.

Taylor’s description of Nashville:

To Taylor, Nashville has become limiting and artificial, entrapping her in a disingenuous image. Kelsea moved to Nashville as a teen because she had seen Taylor do it. Kelsea wanted to emulate Taylor’s career, and was excited to be in a place where it could happen. So many eager hopefuls travel to Nashville, seat of country music, to make it in the industry.

We had it made in the middle of the madness

A music star has a crazy schedule.

“Celebrity” could be a chaotic life.

Sapphic affairs might cause a stir.

Madness could be rebelling against social norms.

We were neon in a gray cloud

Taylor uses bright color to describe sapphic love (vs. the black and white of straight love):

Taylor is chronically sad and depressed (in part due to being closeted):

Both cheating and sapphic love put Taylor’s relationships in a gray area:

The clouds might signify Taylor pining for Karlie, or trying to get her back:

But Kelsea says they were colorful and gay in the midst of Taylor’s depression, in a confusing situation, and when Taylor’s head is still in the Kaylor clouds.

Yeah, we wrote our own story

They paved their own way because what other two (country) music stars are in a sapphic relationship?

They each literally wrote their story in their songs.

Full of blood sweat and heartbeats

Full of blood?

Is it talking about working toward careers: blood, sweat, and tears? But there were no tears, so the heartbeats are a reprieve from that? The heartbeats signal excitement and passion.

Or is it talking sexy time (pitter patter of the heart then getting sweaty) under a blood moon?

They might have had their affair during the month of a lunar eclipse.

Or the blood moon may signal an infrequent and intermittent affair (twice a year).

Additionally, it could be some October as the full moon that month is called Blood-Moon due to hunting season.

Can we use the moon to pin down the time frame the Taylor and Kelsea might have had a fling?

Months of blood moons:

Based on the Delicate cover and Taylor’s response to it:

and the towels pic:

I think their affair could have happened at least in 2018. March-May 2018 seems more than friends, possibly. Due to the on/off Kelsea’s discography alludes to it could have also been intermittent in years prior or after this too.

Counterfeit:

Taylor wants to resolve Kaylor, but she is anxiously waiting for things to align. While Taylor waits for the perfect timing with Karlie there’s a glitch and she gets with Kelsea.

Beating hearts/heartBEAT:

We didn’t do it for the fame or the glory

Kelsea is contrasting the very public Kaylor to KelSwift. Karlie and the models might have been hired as PR to eliminate the boy-crazy image Taylor hated. Taylor needed a best friend to take away mention of men. Karlie signed on to play the BFF to get more exposure and recognition to bolster her own career.

And Kaylor accidently fell in love.

But Kelsea and Taylor are not together for PR or careers. There was never money exchanged between the two.

They came together more organically.

But we went down in history

Yeah we were legends

That sounds a lot like a closeted sapphic relationship! There are rumors, but no pictures.

It also sounds a lot like the premise of the folklore album.

But notice Kelsea is talking in past tense.

Loving you baby it was Heaven

Another past tense line.

In Cruel Summer, Taylor describes her relationship with (I’m pretty sure) Karlie. The relationship is delicate and fragile for many reasons: Taylor feels conflicted because society taught her that sapphic love is sinful, and she brings up religious figures to show her concern. The relationship is also fickle because Kaylor started out friends with benefits, no strings attached, and Taylor and Karlie caught stronger feelings on antithetical timelines. Thirdly, the Kaylor relationship feels precarious because Karlie can’t commit fully–partially because she had a long-term boyfriend/beard.

During KelSwift, Taylor is still apprehensive about her sexuality, especially in a public forum. Now Taylor treats Kelsea like Karlie treated her at first. She doesn’t want to be serious, and is just looking for a fun fling. Kelsea, however, has strong feelings for Taylor, just like the strong feelings Taylor had/has for Karlie. Taylor has been on both sides of the equation between Kaylor (pining/wanting more) and KelSwift (distracted/non-committal).

What everyone wondered we’d never question/Close our eyes and took on the world together

This line is more strong evidence that this is a different (gay) type of relationship. Why would other people wonder about this couple? Why does the pair need to take on the world?

I think “take on the world” is also talking about their music careers. Kelsea and Taylor and both striving to get their music out to the world.

Do you remember?

We were crazy

Tragic and epic and so amazing

Interesting choice of words…

I’ll always wear the crown that you gave me

The crown. We talked about how Taylor has at least 3 songs that mention a crown specifically in the Homecoming Queen analysis.

Out of Kelsea, her husband, and Taylor who was the first to move to Nashville, and who got signed first?

Kelsea’s husband was signed after she had already been signed for a year.

https://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/music/news/a29259/all-it-took-was-a-tweet-to-make-kelsea-ballerini-an-instant-star/

We will always stay lost in forever

And they’ll remember

We were legends

Like we were written down in permanent marker

KelSwift leaves an indelible mark on Nashville and music. And the couple will always have good memories of their relationship. This line also might be a call back to an early Taylor Swift performance in Nashville:

Kelsea uses “permanent marker” possibly to contrast the word “paint” that Taylor often uses in her own songs. Paint can be RE-painted, or covered up easily. Permanent marker is more difficult to remove or modify.

Not even the brightest sun could ever fade

In Peace, Karlie tells Taylor she is sunshine/fire/friend, and would take away Taylor’s depression and die for her:

To Kelsea, sunshine is Karlie. She is saying even Karlie at her brightest, can’t take away the memories of KelSwift.

Come whichever hell or high water

Taylor thinks fiery hell would be getting outed in a gay relationship:

And the water is Taylor’s team putting out the fire with their damage control:

Kelsea is saying KelSwift could survive despite the closeting (for fear of fire/hell) and the PR damage control (water/flood) that also comes with bearding. Kelsea is also in the industry so she knows how important it is to be descreet. She even wrote a song about keeping secrets, If You Go Down (I’m Going Down Too). Kelsea is commenting that Taylor wouldn’t be outed with her. And Kelsea is saying she already knows the industry and the PR damage control doesn’t bother her.

It was always me and you either way

Hey we wrote our own story

Full of blood sweat and heartbeats

We didn’t do it for the fame or the glory

We just did it for you and me

And that’s why we were legends

I’m not the only one who noticed similarities between Kelsea and Taylor in this song.  Unlike the hater that wrote the following article, I don’t think Kelsea is doing a cheap remake of Taylor’s work. I think Kelsea is intentionally referencing Taylor in order to furtively tell the audience who the subject of this song is–Taylor.

Dancing with our Hands Tied- Smoke is Worry [Part P]

Logistics:

Remember we’re looking at words in the lyrics of Question… to try to decipher who and what and when.

We’ve almost gone through the entire song, pulling lyrics containing the same words to get a sort of consensus or feeling about Taylor’s intention.

Now that we’re toward the end of Question… lyrics, we need to address the central part of the song: Kiss in a crowded room. And the kiss really brings to mind Dancing with our Hands Tied and maybe Kissgate.

We will analyze Dancing with our Hands Tied to see if it parallels Question….

Except this particular line within Dancing with our Hands Tied got a bit long because I really don’t know for sure and there was no solid direction to take the analysis. I will go into it in detail in this post so the guesses don’t overwhelm the analysis of the song as a whole.

And I’ll spell out my conclusions from this post in the full analysis of Dancing with our Hands Tied.

Then we’ll get back to the end of Question…

Was that explanation as confusing as trying to guess who Taylor’s songs are about?

And I had a bad feeling

Taylor is chronically anxious about a lot of things.   Primarily, (and in her words) her house (physical embodiment of her sensibilities) is haunted (gay) (Question…[Part 6].  Taylor feels torn between her “aberrant” sexuality and being seen as the ideal woman, or at least politically correct.  It’s a struggle for Taylor to be authentic to who she is, but also appeal to a wide swath of people to maintain her fame (Question… [Part 12]).  She’s gay, rattled, and drunk, yet she projects hyper-femininity and confidence to be palatable to the masses.   Throughout Taylor’s life her sexuality caused her to hide, panic, and scheme. 

The middle of the night is a time for Taylor to ruminate and contemplate why she is in cages.  Taylor is a super-star. Her every move is published for the world to judge. A primary problem is that Taylor has to retract central parts of her branding if she wants to be open about her sexuality.  If she sticks to the tenants of the Taylor Swift brand, Taylor, the individual, must closet and beard (Question…  [Part 6]).  She has strife about this difficult choice, because Taylor worries that her sexuality will accelerate her losing everyone and everything.  

But Taylor already loses her important romances.  This is part of the reason why, even at the early stages of a relationship, Taylor is terrified to lose the love.  She senses it’s fickle and fears it could go away at any time (Question…  [Part 11]).  Taylor has suffered loss and loneliness with at least Emily, Dianna, and Karlie.  Emily was out of the band suddenly and Taylor felt sorry.  A fake article about Swiftgron went viral and Dianna erased her blog and tattoo then Taylor was only seen with her one more time.  Karlie’s timeline is complicated, but the last four albums tell us they couldn’t get on the same page about how to proceed with their relationship.  For instance, Call It What You Want tells Karlie [I hear her name in the song and can’t hear anything else] they don’t have to name what they are.  It speaks to Karlie being nervous about calling herself Sapphic.  Taylor urges her to just go with it and don’t worry about labels–she just wants this love. 

Yet, in Cruel Summer Taylor still paid a man to be her beard. Taylor’s lifelong defense mechanism is closeting so when she sees a shiny toy, this bad boy with a price, she bought it.  

The night of Kissgate, Taylor went on a Kaylor-liking spree online, signaling some pre-gaming had occurred even before the 1975 concert.  Taylor drinks to calm her anxiety, and anything too gay makes her especially anxious.  She correlates the overwhelming feelings of Sapphic love with drunkeness.  Being drunk is cathartic and freeing, allowing inhibitions to be lowered.  But it can also make your head spin, cause you to go rougue, and can make you throw up (the blurple color shows she’s gay inside) on the street (Question…  [Part 11]).  The night Taylor is talking about in Question…  she was “on something” is both liquor and the high of gay love (Question…  [Part 11]).  

Taylor can’t stand the heat, is constantly afraid of impending fire, and the invisible smoke hangs over her.  The smoke (hint of a fire) is unrealized events that Taylor fears.  The heat of the fire is every time Taylor is overtly gay and too many people notice.  The (anticipated) fire is getting burned by coming out or worse, being outed. The water rushing in is damage control by Taylor’s PR team. 

The rain is Taylor’s own overcorrections when things look too queer.  It’s rain, a naturally occurring more passive event (vs. firefighting, a planned, aggressive action). Taylor uses rain to describe herself putting out the gay fire to show it’s compulsory and imposed when she yields to her team’s straight-washing. It makes her feel safe, yet contrite.  

Taylor suffers because she loves the gal, but also knows how “out(ed)” celebrities lose their fame and die all alone.

Dancing with our Hands Tied- Drowning in Straight PR is a Comfort to Taylor Swift [Part O]

Logistical Info:

Remember we’re looking at words in the lyrics of Question… to try to decipher who and what and when.

We’ve almost gone through the entire song, pulling lyrics containing the same words to get a sort of consensus or feeling about Taylor’s intention.

Now that we’re toward the end of Question… lyrics, we need to address the central part of the song: Kiss in a crowded room. And the kiss really brings to mind Dancing with our Hands Tied and maybe Kissgate.

We will analyze Dancing with our Hands Tied to see if it parallels Question….

Except this particular line within Dancing with our Hands Tied got a bit long because I really don’t know for sure and there was no solid direction to take the analysis. I will go into it in detail in this post so the guesses don’t overwhelm the analysis of the song as a whole.

And I’ll spell out my conclusions from this post in the full analysis of Dancing with our Hands Tied. But that post was getting very long and I was afraid nobody would read it. So to make things even more confusing each line in DWOHT is going to be its OWN post. But then I’ll do a main DWOHT post with just links to each different post. It’s a whole big thing.

Then we’ll get back to the end of Question…

Was that explanation as confusing as trying to guess who Taylor’s songs are about?

I’d hold you as the water rushes in

Taylor is describing that in her re-do of this kissing in public event, she would hold her lover even with her team commencing operation straight-wash.  The water rushing in (PR and a return to closeting) is putting out the fire (being outed as gay).  Instead of feeling relieved with the re-closeting, Taylor wishes she would have prioritized her lover and embraced their relationship.  

Part of Taylor wants to choose authentic love, and the woman. She started fighting for her love, arguing with her team about downplaying the event that outed her.  “The water [PR damage control] filled my lungs [was big and overwhelming] I screamed so loud [protested against going back into the closet], But no one heard a thing.”  Nobody listened to Taylor and she submitted, “Hung my head as I lost the war.” The war is Taylor’s conflict with her team–she [briefly] wanted to be honest and authentic about the event, but they thought it would be bad for the brand.  

But it is also the conflict within herself.  As the face of the TS brand, Taylor has a lot of power over her image. It’s ultimately her that is conflicted, thus weak at pushing back against her team. Clean describes Taylor’s struggle: “There was nothing left to do…When the butterflies turned to dust that covered my whole room.”  As much as Taylor wants to come out and be free to love her soulmate, her fears of losing everything are stronger.  Remembering how the butterflies crumble to dust and Taylor is unhappy and alone, she had momentary bravery and pushed back against her team’s damage control.  But her fear took over, and in the end she helped the cover-up, “So I punched a hole in the roof, Let the flood carry away all my pictures of you.”   Being open with her sexuality is frightening, unknown territory to Taylor–like the depths that she dreaded and hated in Marjory.  

“And the sky turned black like a perfect storm” shows that hiding won out after the actual event. Taylor’s team jumped in and shut down the gossip, as they’ve done every time Taylor is caught being too gay with a woman (Emily suddenly quit under unusual circumstances, Liz was fired, Dianna’s blog, tattoo, and presence were erased, and Kaylor boarded up the windows, going private).  Taylor’s team literally paid people to withhold quality videos and good pictures of Kissgate from public view.  Taylor transitioned safely back into her comfort zone–the closet. 

Water rushing in is describing the same emotions as the song Clean.  This fire (getting nearly outed) threatened to consume Taylor and everything around her.  Then “Rain came pouring down” and the fire and smoke were being quelled.  “When I was drowning, that’s when I could finally breathe” is saying when Taylor was surrounded by PR, it was a relief.  At least Taylor isn’t anxious about the unknown when she’s cloaked in secrecy within the closet.  She knows what to expect, and feels protected by the familiarity.  Her ruminations were momentarily gone.

Taylor’s team arranged it so the gay event never happened.  “And by morning/Gone was any trace of you”  The internet and the relationship were scrubbed.  “I think I am finally clean’ is the image-rehabilitation that pushed her back into the closet and shut-down her addiction to women’s touch.  The isolation and depression engulf her in gray and Taylor is regretful about her circumstances, but doesn’t see a way to change them (Question…  [Part 13]).

Dancing with our Hands Tied- Taylor wishes she would have embraced her lover despite the fire [Part N]

Logistical Info:

Remember we’re looking at words in the lyrics of Question… to try to decipher who and what and when.

We’ve almost gone through the entire song, pulling lyrics containing the same words to get a sort of consensus or feeling about Taylor’s intention.

Now that we’re toward the end of Question… lyrics, we need to address the central part of the song: Kiss in a crowded room. And the kiss really brings to mind Dancing with our Hands Tied and maybe Kissgate.

We will analyze Dancing with our Hands Tied to see if it parallels Question….

Except this particular line within Dancing with our Hands Tied got a bit long because I really don’t know for sure and there was no solid direction to take the analysis. I will go into it in detail in this post so the guesses don’t overwhelm the analysis of the song as a whole.

And I’ll spell out my conclusions from this post in the full analysis of Dancing with our Hands Tied. But that post was getting very long and I was afraid nobody would read it. So to make things even more confusing each line in DWOHT is going to be its OWN post. But then I’ll do a main DWOHT post with just links to each different post. It’s a whole big thing.

Then we’ll get back to the end of Question…

Was that explanation as confusing as trying to guess who Taylor’s songs are about?

Swaying as the room burned down

Taylor continues the fantasy of what she wished she would have done in her regretful re-do of the situation:  Taylor would have kept dancing (other songs told us this means uninhibited/free and romantically affiliated with her lover) (Question…  [Part 17]).  Taylor, despite fears of her career going up in flames, would have embraced her lover openly, indifferent to everyone looking.

This has been a lifelong struggle for Taylor, and she sings way back in 2008 that it’s bothering her.  Taylor feels lonely at her new apartment in Fifteen.  When Taylor is saying never grow up, it’s interesting she brings up being burned and scarred by love as her primary concern.  Does Taylor wish she never grew up, because when she was little (seven and prior) she didn’t know she was gay?  She was just her, no stigma, and she wishes she could go back to that?  In the song, Taylor spirals into the anxious thought that everything she has will be gone at some point.  Taylor fears that her sexuality will accelerate her losing everyone and everything (Question…  [Part 10]).

The Archer further substantiates that Taylor has struggled with her sexuality long-term, and she closets to cope.  “The room is on fire, invisible smoke” is talking about that struggle.  The fire is the worst outcome–It’s getting burned by coming out or worse, being outed (Question…  [Part 16]).  The smoke is a whiff of what could happen–it precedes fire.  She has to be very, very sneaky about hiding the gay-affair, or he (a husband, prying eyes, the media) will burn their house of love down. 

The kiss in a crowded room was an important, life-changing event.  But it’s not the only event where Taylor was nearly or partially outed (a fire) and she panicked and shut it down to salvage her image and career. This feared fire is talking about getting outed in any scenario, Taylor just uses this specific example for Dancing with our Hands Tied and Question… because a specific story makes for better writing than talking in generalities.  This sentiment is bigger than any single moment in time.  

When Taylor is caught kissing a woman, her fears come to fruition.  She imagines the worst outcome, and is anxious, but the consequences are all in her mind so far. That’s the smoke.  A prelude to the actual bad event.  It’s Taylor’s anxieties and fears.  Taylor can’t stand the heat, is constantly afraid of the impending fire, and the invisible smoke (ruminations of the worst case scenarios) hangs over her (Question…  [Part 16]).  Every time Taylor is gay on main and too many people notice– the smoke becomes perceptible.  

When there’s only smoke, there is time to quell any fire.  That’s the damage control by Taylor’s PR team and Taylor’s own overcorrections when things look too queer.  She wants to keep her fans and fame, but the recompense hurts her relationship with the woman.  When Taylor pushes her straightness by lying and amping up the bearding, her lover is hurt by the closeting.  For instance, Karlie stares at Joe like he’s an understudy, knowing that she would fight (Bad Blood) for Taylor. A million lies and many chances are breaking the branches that this relationship so carefully balances on.  All the closeting and hiding chips away at the love.  Taylor’s smoke ruins her most important romantic relationships every time.  Recently, Karlie suggests in Ivy that Kaylor take a risk and stay together.  Even with the “husband” in the picture (“drink my husband’s wine” = Jo$h’s wine). 

But Taylor is afraid of being out.  In Delicate Taylor also says she doesn’t wanna share, and the politics of it would hurt Taylor’s image.  Consequently, Cardigan talks about how Taylor’s secret lover finally “ran like water” “steppin’ on the last train” because of Taylor’s stipulations (must be private, and it’s me or him) (Question…  [Part 16]).

Which brings us back to Daylight:  “clearing the air I breathed in the smoke.”  The smoke Taylor breathes in when trying to clear the air is Taylor holding onto imagined negative outcomes.  She is hypervigilant about running damage control and overcorrecting any even slightly gay situation.  The pain of picking closeting over the love of her life, time and time again, makes Taylor feel asphyxiated (Question…  [Part 16]).  

Question… Kaylor-Politics Fear, Fire, & Smoke. Many Songs are Tied Together [Part 16]

Taylor wins the pronoun game.  I’m not even going to try to untangle the speaker/recipient/changing characters in this song. Ok maybe just a little in this section. It was written so convoluted that I haven’t even seen a satisfactory answer to this yet.  Instead, I took lyric snippets from other songs featuring the same word, to get a feeling about Taylor’s sentiment and even subject. Don’t get overwhelmed with the length of this post.  The word I’m trying to point-out from Question… lyrics is highlighted. 

In Question… the next verse has a change in Taylor’s tone of voice.  It sounds almost sarcastic when she sings:

And what’s that, that I heard, that you’re still with her?

You’re still with her.  Who is Taylor talking to?  And who is HER?  This is a main reason why I wasn’t going to play the pronoun game with this particular song.  I think Taylor wrote it in a way that couldn’t be decoded.  She didn’t call and tell me.

Is the “you’re” Taylor is talking to, Karlie?  If so, it implies Karlie is with (dating?) HER.  And I don’t know who that could be.  It doesn’t seem plausible that Karlie would “marry” Jo$h, have a baby with him, leaving Taylor in the process. All to just get a different secret girlfriend?  I mean, IF Karlie wanted a WLW affair, Taylor has made it more than clear that her door is still open to Kaylor.

Is the “you’re” Taylor speaking to Jo$h?  I don’t think it can be, because immediately preceding this line the lyric is, “Does it feel like everything is just like second best after that meteor strike?”  In the last entry we showed through other celestial lyrics that the meteor strike is this otherworldly, untouchable love.  And Jo$h was not involved other than as an antagonist, threatening to burn the house down. What would be second best to him?  Taylor is referring to Klo$$ner(?!) AS the thing that’s second best to Kaylor.

The YOU’RE must be Karlie because the meteor is definitely Kaylor.  But I really don’t think Karlie is with another woman (HER).  So even though it seems random and out of context, I do think Taylor is using Hillary Clinton’s unofficial slogan to make fun or mock Karlie’s feeble “I tried” tweet, hence the sarcastic singing voice in this verse.

That’s nice, I’m sure that’s what’s suitable

And Taylor does mention “fuckin’ politics and gender roles” in the verse right before this one, so it could make sense for the song to allude to Karlie’s political hypocrisy.  [Sidenote: “counterfeit” and “faithless” are both synonyms of “hypocritical” and Taylor uses those in other songs, which could be talking about this very matter.]

And right, but tonight

There aren’t common lyrics in the song I’m about to reference, but I do think there is a connection. The political talk and the word “tonight” reminds me of Daylight. 

Daylight

Is it Karlie that “ran with the wolves” (the Ku$hners, her neighbor and sister in-law Ivanka, by extension the Trumps) adjacent and complicit to republican evil?  It’s also interesting that Question… could be addressing the subject matter of Daylight because it goes with our overall thesis that Taylor’s central problem is closeting.  

Daylight came out [ha!  Accidental pun] in 2019, the year Taylor turned 30 years old.  Twenty years prior to that it was 1999 and Taylor was around 9.  In Seven Taylor says, “picture me….before I learned civility, I used to scream ferociously any time I wanted.”  At 7 years old Taylor acted viscerally, shouting her truth and paying no attention to anybody else’s expectations, or to social rules.  But as she aged she learned manners/tact/compliance…  She was molded to be socially acceptable, and in this patriarchal, heteronormative world, that means being a (straight) young lady (with feminine qualities).  It corresponds to the next year of age entering into a dark night, sleeping on her queerness for the sake of etiquette.  The stuffing down her innate sexuality, denying her attraction to women, and closeting when she couldn’t repress herself.

In 2016 Taylor “became the butt of the joke” when her reputation was ruined.  She met Karlie and fell deeply in love, which helped Taylor see past the drama-induced pain.  The enthrallment also reminded Taylor of her innate queerness.  During the lover era, Taylor may have planned to come out.  Precisely because Kaylor prompted Taylor to wake up from the dark sleep of hiding her sexuality (maybe even from herself).  Taylor was so happy about being in love and seeing daylight that she wanted to share her feelings with the world.  But the master’s situation foiled that plan at the last minute.

Afterglow might be alluded to in the next line of Daylight, “I wounded the good [Karlie?] and trusted the wicked.”  Afterglow explains that Taylor thought she had reason to attack.  She pinned Karlie’s hands behind her back, and made her feel helpless, hopeless, ambuscaded.  But it turns out Taylor blew things out of proportion, and it was Taylor who burned them down. 

I don’t know what happened.  Did Taylor think Karlie’s first wedding was legitimate and an ambush to desert her?  Or is this lyric indicating Taylor felt Karlie betrayed secrets to Jo$h and or $cooter which enabled them to buy her masters at exactly the wrong time for an official coming out?  I don’t know, because I’m not sure any song is specific enough to untangle it.  What we do know is that whatever Karlie may have done, Taylor says she overreacted.  

Daylight continues, “clearing the air I breathed in the smoke”

Let’s talk about the connotation of smoke. Again, I’ll right-align the songs that contain the word since “smoke” is not in Question…

Cardigan and The Archer talk about the smoke left behind from the fiery Kaylor break-up:

Cardigan

The song speaks to things pertinent to our discussion:

1. Taylor knew she was Sapphic back at Seven even though adults assume you are just in a phase or confused as a young queer.  Especially fathers, according to Mary’s Song, where the daddies were notably absent from the fantasy wedding, which might explain the “leavin’ like a father” in Cardigan.  She compares herself to Peter Pan, who never grows up.  Taylor wants to be like that 7 year old freely getting close to the girl with the braids.

2. Karlie impacting Taylor forever (like a tattoo) is mentioned again.  Kaylor will haunt Taylor, and she will curse Karlie.  I will put the part about how Taylor regards her gayness like a curse, and says she’s haunted to mean she’s sapphic as a reminder of what we previously decided:

3. The 3rd pertinent thing in Cardigan that ties back to Question…, Daylight, Afterglow, is the smoke remaining after the fire.  In Ivy it was Taylor who pushed Karlie away and told her to run. 

These lines are from Karlie’s point of view:  

Ivy

This perspective shows Karlie suggests Kaylor take a risk and stay together.  Even with the “husband” in the picture (“drink my husband’s wine” = Jo$h’s wine).  But Taylor doesn’t wanna share, she says in Delicate.  And so Cardigan talks about how Karlie finally “ran like water” “steppin’ on the last train” because of Taylor’s stipulations (me or him).

Smoke is mentioned in The Archer, where Taylor is talking about her struggle with the closet.  She wants to keep her fans and fame, but it hurts her relationship with the girl. The song The Archer also mirrors the 3 items we talked about in Cardigan:

The Archer

1. Taylor never grew up and is still playing Peter Pan.  She wants to be regarded as the ‘good girl’.  Taylor can’t let herself go rogue, and come out of the closet for fear of losing everything.

2. Taylor views her queerness as a curse and haunting.  She paces like a ghost, unable to sleep because of the anxiety. But Karlie got under her skin and will impact her forever.  Taylor knows it’s unfair to ask Karlie to closet with her (“who could stay?”) but desperately wants to hold onto her (“help me hold onto you”). YOU is Karlie and the fans.

3. It’s Taylor who pushes Karlie to run, and take the last train.  It’s Taylor who jumps off the train and rides off alone.  She can’t stand the heat, is constantly afraid of the impending fire, and the invisible smoke hangs over her.

The heat is gay rumors and Karlie’s decision to remain with Jo$h. 

The fire is getting burned by coming out or worse, being outed.  The fire is the terror of Ku$hner-power hurting her to quell Kaylor.  The fire is Karlie’s “family” situation conflicting with Taylor’s own ideas of a fairytale life. 

The smoke is unrealized events that Taylor dreads.  The smoke is every time Taylor is gay on main and too many people notice.  The smoke is damage control by Taylor’s PR team and Taylor’s own overcorrections when things look too queer.  

Taylor suffers because she loves the gal, but also knows how “out(ed)” celebrities lose their fame and die all alone.

Daylight

Which brings us back to Daylight.  The smoke Taylor breathes in when trying to clear the air is Taylor holding onto imagined negative outcomes.  Running damage control and overcorrecting any gay situation.

The pain of picking closeting over the love of her life time and time again makes Taylor feel asphyxiated.  

Question… Planets, Stars, & the Moon-Nothing Compares to You [Part 15]

Taylor wins the pronoun game.  I’m not even going to try to untangle the speaker/recipient/changing characters in this song.  It was written so convoluted that I haven’t even seen a satisfactory answer to this yet.  Instead, I took lyric snippets from other songs featuring the same word, to get a feeling about Taylor’s sentiment and even subject. Don’t get overwhelmed with the length of this post.  The word I’m trying to point-out from the Question… lyrics is highlighted. 

Does it feel like everything’s just like second-best after that meteor strike?

There are no other meteors in Taylor’s songs, but the word seems significant.  We already talked about the stars in the eyes of Dorthea and Cowboy Like Me, but there are other celestial words from Taylor’s catalog.  I’m not including “sun” because there is such a strong tie to Karlie Kloss.  Paper Rings uses moon to talk about friends, and we know Taylor relegates her lover’s friends to the background so I omitted that song as well.  Let’s see what the other words tell us about how Taylor regards space stuff.

The Moment I Knew

The million stars aligning are used to show something sublime and ethereal occurs if Taylor’s lover makes it.  But instead she says, it’s The Moment I Knew the relationship was over.

Today was a Fairytale

Untouchable

Mary’s Song

The word “planet” is used in Today was a Fairytale to proclaim how extraordinary this person makes Taylor feel.  She says everything made sense after she saw this person (because they were a gal).  I think Taylor’s perplexing (gay) feelings were put into context when she felt considerably more for this person compared to other crushes she’d had.  This revelation is continued in Untouchable.  Taylor doesn’t know why she’s so caught up in this girl.  But she uses words like diamond sky, sun, and a million stars spelling this person’s name to show how they are unattainable.  This girl makes Taylor feel like she’s coming undone because she has this strong attraction, but knows she shouldn’t act on it, that it wouldn’t be reciprocated, or it would be forbidden.  Taylor appraises the girl as precious and impossible to get near like the pretty stars in the sky.  And the adults notice the love between the two.  

The song starts, “SHE said I was 7 and YOU were 9.”  She = Mary, You = Taylor.  In this fantasy of Taylor’s, the daddies never believed they would really fall in love (because they’re both girls).  The end of the song says, “And I’LL be 87 and YOU’LL be 89.”  And I’LL still look at YOU like the stars that shine.  Taylor is tricky with pronouns, and she never gives the love interest a gender or name.  I think it could be the girl with the braids from Seven.  I hypothesize the arc of this song is young Taylor wishing she could live heteronormative milestones with a girl.  She wants to love, fight, marry, have children, and grow old with someone (a female) she loves.  Taylor sees the mothers as knowing, and wishes the entire community would celebrate their love (even though they are both female).

I’m Only Me When I’m With You

Seven

We know from before that Taylor uses the word “paint” to show being encapsulated by a feeling.  Painting pictures in the sky is both stargazing and the way Taylor’s love feels enormous and vast to her.  It’s why Taylor feels like I’m Only Me When I’m With You.  She is all-encompassed by this person who she knows everything about and can’t live without.  Seven talks about this childhood love too.  Taylor uses moon and Saturn to try to put into words the magnitude of love she feels for her girlfriend.  Interestingly, the moon is the mother of the zodiac (the sun is the father).

Taylor says the love is substantial, and denotes the individual she loves has feminine, yin energy like the moon.  She even says that she currently still has love for this girl she was so close to as a child.

Tim McGraw

Remember the line “If you asked me if I loved HIM…  I’d lie” in the song, I’d Lie?  I think Taylor is telling on herself again in the 1st and last verses (notably the only verses this nameless, faceless HE is mentioned) of Tim McGraw.  She tells the audience that she made up a fictional moment with some boy to create plausible deniability and wrap the real verses of the song in heteronormativity.  We have no description of this guy, except the dismissive “just a boy.”  Heck, we know more about the truck–it’s a Chevy, it drives backroads frequently, it gets stuck often–then we know about the guy.  And all the way back to Taylor’s first single she was using he vs you.  She had a throw away make-believe boy talking romantically about eyes as stars, but he’s just a red herring.  The actual subject of the song is this third (female) person, YOU who is wearing a little black dress.  Taylor reminisces about how she (wearing faded old blue jeans) had her head on this girl’s chest.  It’s the girl Taylor is missing.  It’s their memories Taylor brings up hoping the gal will remember her by them.  The boy under the stars–that’s a lie.

Cardigan

I know we’re inside the Question… lyrics looking for words contained in other songs to try to get an understanding of Taylor’s meaning.  I’m going to complicate it further by bringing yet more songs into it to try to put “you drew stars around my scars” into context.  I will right-align them so these songs don’t get confused with the celestial lyrics we’re interpreting.  Bear with me.

The entirety of Look What You Made Me Do speaks to Taylor’s problems, issues, and drama.  Snakegate, celebrity beefs, people using her–Taylor’s image was taking a beating.  In Delicate Taylor sings, 

Even though Taylor was being drug through the mud during this time, this person she met didn’t listen to all that negativity.  And Taylor knew for certain that this person wasn’t just someone trying to gain clout by being with her.  At that time, it would be seen as negative to be involved with her.  Taylor was seen as problematic, boy-crazy, playing the victim.  Hoax also talks about this time when the media, the general public, even “fans” were “pulling her apart.”  It was a very painful time.

And in Dress Taylor describes how this secret relationship has left a mark on her that’s indelible.

This person came into Taylor’s life when she was at a low point, but saw her for who she is.  The lover treated Taylor with warmth and got under Taylor’s skin (like a golden tattoo).  And the feelings go both ways.  Karlie(?  I’m assuming is the person) shares her perspective in Peace and in Ivy:

Peace

Ivy

These lyrics show Karlie is just as serious about the relationship as Taylor.  It’s not clout-chasing, phony, or a fling.  In both songs Karlie even says she would die for Taylor.  That’s heavy.  And to sum up what I think “you drew stars around my scars” means to Taylor is Death by a Thousand Cuts:

Karlie came into Taylor’s life at a low point and offered emotional and physical love, gaining Taylor’s trust.  There was mutual adoration and devotion for every part of the other–in private.  All the sadness, all the drama of 2016, was rectified and regaled to the background by the intense romance these two shared.  The stars in Cardigan symbolize positivity, warmth, and love.  The scars are still there, but those positive feelings were able to supersede the pain.  

OK, back to the words relating to sky for Question… dissection:

Ivy

Ivy speaks to an affair Taylor had with a married woman (your husband’s wine).  The song starts with “in from the snow” telling the audience that Taylor met this person in the winter.  Probably the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show which was in December.  The affair lasts into the spring, as the clover signifies:

Clover also signifies something invasive and difficult to eliminate (like Kaylor’s impact on each other):  

Like this love affair.  It’s another way of talking about the metaphor of the golden tattoo.  Forever.  Clover spreads quickly, like the love affair that took Taylor by surprise and grabbed every piece of her in no time.  Clover puts down roots.  But it is considered a weed.  Taylor put roots in Karlie’s dreamland (her arranged marriage/bearding contract with a billionaire man) and Karlie can’t emotionally extricate herself from the situation. This beautiful love that so easily blooms is a weed to both parties’ life program.  It creates complications.

Ivy is an escalation of the intrusiveness of clover.  Ivy is aggressively imposing.  Taylor gets increasingly desperate to save her relationship with Karlie, even though the “time is near.”  This is a known  prearranged event on a date foreshadowed by spring.  Karlie feels torn by the love she would die to keep, and the urgency of her imminent premeditated engagement.

Ivy blocks the sunlight. It chokes trees. Trees could be both ruining Kaylor and exposing or jeopardizing Karlie’s straight marriage. Something is approaching that causes everyone involved to feel tension and act audaciously.

Here, “Crescent moon, coast is clear” indicates it’s night, but darkness is illuminated by the moonlight.  They are sneaking behind the husband’s back, because they cannot stay away from each other.  The moon is mentioned as a light source, but it’s not a random choice in Ivy:

The crescent speaks to the changing phases of the moon that show time has passed in this affair, it shows the affair must change with time, and the moon phase shows the end of this romance is imminent due to the upcoming event.  It ties to the changing seasons Taylor is already pointing out.  Changing heart and vacillating resolve are also perfect descriptors of the characters in this song.   

Crescent is one phase from being away from the sun. In darkness. The song Ivy takes place in the spring, one phase away from the summer event that spells the end of Taylor and Karlie’s romance. Taylor will be away from sunshiny Karlie, in the dark depths of depression.

The looming event?  This “second wedding” or “celebration of the Oct wedding” seems pivotal.  Was it the final contract being signed?  A covenant?  This is what spring presaged, and this June date is when the affair would be in jeopardy:

Very Cowboy Like Me.  It’s a little on the nose, in my opinion.

Interesting choice of movie.  Gay.  Cowboys??!

Reminder of the Question… lyrics:

Does it feel like everything’s just like second-best after that meteor strike?

Karlie’s life with Jo$h can’t compare to the Kaylor affair.

Together, Taylor and Karlie are otherworldly. The love makes Taylor who she is, and gets into her being, permanent like a tattoo. And the love was reciprocal. Karlie would die for Taylor. And like clover and ivy, the love covered everything, impacted both of their lives.

Coney Island

Taylor knows she left her lover (Karlie?) hanging.  She knows Karlie used to be happy, but she made her depressed.  Even though this is the central person in Taylor’s life–it’s Karlie she pictures in a crucial moment–she never acknowledges Karlie as her soulmate publicly.  Taylor uses “universe” to show how far away she seems to her lover.  Taylor’s priorities are misaligned pertaining to Kaylor, and that hurts Karlie.  It makes Karlie feel depressed, neglected, lonely, awkward, and forgotten when Taylor does her celebrity thing (and the closeting that goes with it).

That’s what helped Karlie make her decision. Not only was there a prior obligation, but Taylor’s closeting was making Karlie heavyhearted. So the prior obligation won out in the end. Karlie “married” the guy or commissioned this heteronormative life. Now both Taylor and Karlie are dead inside, cold lifeless hands reaching out (“do you wish you could still touch her?”) grieving for the living.

This is such an eventful and impactful time

I don’t know if everyone of a certain age feels this way, but I feel like I’ve experienced a lot of huge events in my lifetime.  Here are some (obviously not all) history I have lived through:

RICO laws essentially ended the reign of mobs in America

Exxon Valdez oil spill

San Francisco earthquake

The Berlin wall came down

The Soviet Union/USSR turning back into Russia

Rodney King beating –> LA riots

computers started entering households

The Waco standoff

The Oklahoma City bombing

The OJ Simpson trial

President Clinton’s sex scandal(s)

The Columbine Massacre

cell phones began to go mainstream

Florida (hanging chad) ballot cheating

9/11

meth is a big thing

Hurricane Katrina

smartphones

a great recession

the 1st black president

BP oil spill

Hurricane Maria

The Camp fire

and now a global pandemic that’s shutting down business in the U.S. like I never imagined was possible.

 

I omitted most spree killings, hurricanes, tornadoes, most fires, terror attacks on planes, and food recalls because there has been an overwhelming amount.

I suppose that every generation feels this way–I’ve seen those decade series produced by Tom Hanks.  It’s just strange to feel like I’m seeing large historical events that will shape us in the future.  What a weird thing to see in the first person and live through events future kids will have in their textbooks…

Embarrassed of my Classmates

-don’t start packing your stuff up while a guest speaker is talking.
-it’s rude and impolite and reflects on our whole program.
-it makes the speaker feel worthless and rushed.
-I wish I had a forum to send a friendly reminder to my class.

 

This was a draft I started (during the semester, obviously) but never had the time/motivation to finish.  The sentiment is clear, and my opinion the same.  I didn’t like that day because the speaker seemed a little nervous to talk to college students.  Which, you can tell a person has never attended university if they are nervous, because it’s not all hard-core and students in non-ivy-league classes are generally just happy not to be taking notes off the power point for a second.  We aren’t judging guest speakers harshly, or even giving them much thought at all.  I speak collectively–I’d like to think I care about the people.  But based on the actions of my class, who packed up their items noisily right at the strike of class-over–they don’t.  It was just another day, another lecture to them.

But I guess that’s all you can really do with that topic.  Here’s some more about my day today:  I woke up with the intention to be highly motivated and productive in my AuD application tasks.  I wanted to really hit it hard and FINISH things.  My computer had other plans.  The internet didn’t work.  After much troubleshooting the internet itself worked, just not my browser–the one with all my dozens of bookmarks I require to DO the applications things.  And it was S-L-O-W.  Also, I couldn’t get anything application to work properly.  It was just a long, arduous process of trying things.  Uninstalls, download helper apps, run scans, push buttons randomly, delete things, dig deep into programs.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  That did not stop me from entering into a frenzy of desperate maneuvers to right my computer scene.

I think the problem eventually corrected itself.  I don’t think any of my actions helped matters.  But a full 5(?) hours later, I had a functional computer and internet once more.  Mostly–now my laptop wants to overheat.  How do I take advantage of this Acer Aspire recall?  Is it too late?  They put the fan on the bottom, so it sits against the table.  Or I have to prop it up, then it wiggles as I type.  It hasn’t been my technology day.

And I was really mad, because despite having real motivation to accomplish things, I couldn’t.  I HATE that.  So it’s operation call this day a loss, go to bed early, and hope tomorrow pans out like it’s supposed to.  Well, now there’s thunder and lightening as a real message to quit looking at screen today.

Tomorrow!

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Inspirational Women: Molly Brown

http://the44diaries.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/little-known-black-history-fact-molly-williams/

A female firefighter?

A black woman?

Check and check.  Williams was way before her time!

• The first woman firefighter was an African American.  Molly Williams worked along side the men of the Oceanus Volunteer Fire Company No. 1 of New York City in 1818.

Even as a slave, Williams had gained the respect of her fellow firefighters. Her story and strength paved the way for other women, including one the first paid Black female firefighters and the most tenured in the country – Toni McIntosh of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who served for over 11 years.

And such is typical–I can hardly find anything written about her.  To me, this is a big deal and you’d think there would be many books on the first female firefighter.  Who is also a black woman.  But I really can’t find very much aside from those facts, which just goes to show who records history and makes me wonder how much more of MY stories have been left out?  How many other woman did amazing things that we’ve never even heard of because some white man didn’t deem it important to write down?  It’s a real shame.

Here’s what I can find:  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/dianne-ochiltree/molly-golly/

A children’s book.  That’s it.  Don’t get me wrong, that’s great and all, but I was hoping for a biography with substance–or at least a compilation of important historical firefighters or something like that.  How disappointing!

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Maine Coon for Brains

Poor little Choco-Luv is cold.  We don’t use the (fire-hazzard) baseboard heaters in the apartment, but we have space heaters in the living room and in the bedroom.  They’re nicer because you can set them on a threshold, heat just the room you are in, and if they get knocked over, they automatically turn off.  It keeps utilities down, and makes me feel safer.  And we supplement with electric throw blankets, goose-down comforter, and infrared light in the bathroom.

But Choco-Luv is much less active because she is glued to the heating blankets.  So to help her we bought a pink puffy jacket.  It’s absolutely adorable.  She HATES it.  We put it on her and she became half a milimeter tall and wiggled out of it.  So we have kept it out, put it on her during naps, petted her with it.  Just tried to get her used to it–to little avail.

Today, while I was outling my textbook, Cool put the jacket on her and tried snuggling and petting her.  She had angry tail, and sad meows.  She also sort of stalked around the kitchen in the jacket, with Cool following.  Goose, was on the other side of the wall, and looked alarmed.  He saw some pink creature walking funny in HIS apartment, and peeked around the corner to look at it.  His eyes grew wide, and as she ran away (from the jacket) he chased (the moster).

Chco-Luv now had 2 problems:  A horrible outfit on her back.  A brother who didn’t recognize her and wanted to kill!  She hid behind the couch and he sat in the center of the living room staring toward “the pink monster.”  Goose started looking uncharacteristically puffy and like he was about to either aggress or defend.  He didn’t look as mean as the time he bared teeth at Cool (she scared him) but I’ve never seen him get so big!  I was worried we might have an actual-fight on our hands, and I’d have to take one or both to work for abscess repair(s).

Choco-Luv finally shed the jacket and ran toward her brother (for play/grooming) as she often does.  He looked like he might give her the teeth & claw and she veered around him at the last minute, running to the bedroom.  He chased after her (NOT in the usual playful way, then realized the monster was gone.  He stopped being in fight-mode, but still watched her with much suspicion, thinking she was some sort of shape-shifter.  As she relaxed and became less stressed and normal again, he stayed across the room eyeing her.  I could tell he was stressed and scared and pretty certain she would turn into the strange monster and get him.  

We had to coax both kitties to come into the same vicinity, and when they did, Goose sniffed Choco-Luv thouroughly, trying to identify her.  When she smelled eight, he circled the apartment sniffing and looking for the stranger who had just been here moments before.  It’s been about 30 minutes and just now are the two of them bent back INTO shape!  Silly kitties.

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