Glitch
We were supposed to be just friends…/…Depending on what kind of mood and situation-ship I’m in/And what’s in my system/I think there’s been a glitch, oh, yeah…/…And I’m not even sorry/Nights are so starry, blood moonlit/It must be counterfeit…/…A brief interruption, a slight malfunction/I’d go back to wanting dudes who give nothing/I thought we had no chance/And that’s romance, let’s dance
While he was doing lines
This line heavily implies cocaine use. But I couldn’t find any gossip, articles, or arrests pertaining to drugs for any of our liars. But also, we might not know–it could absolutely be happening behind the scenes.
I then tried to think of the many ways to use “line” that wasn’t drug-associated. Stand in line, run lines as an actor, line your pockets, line of credit, boundary line, line your eyes, telephone line…
And crossing all of mine
Honestly, I don’t think Taylor intended any of the following uses of the word “line” that I found pertaining to Ku$hner misdeeds. But it turned out really apt, and kinda cool, so I wish she had intended to write about him in the following ways:
Lines of credit for Ku$ner businesses that are completely unethical-
Check out this entire article for the conflict of interest of the Ku$ner clan:
Private phone lines that skirt United States security measures-
Natasha Bertrand Jul 24, 2017, 9:18 AM
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, denied in a statement Monday that he suggested setting up a “back channel” communication line to the Kremlin that would bypass US intelligence agencies and persist after Trump was inaugurated.
But Kushner acknowledged in the statement, which came ahead of a closed-door appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee, that he asked Russia’s ambassador to the US in December whether the Trump transition team could use Russia’s embassy to communicate privately with Moscow about Syria. The meeting with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, “occurred in Trump Tower, where we had our transition office, and lasted twenty [to] thirty minutes,” Kushner wrote in an 11-page statement detailing his contacts with Russian nationals during the election and transition period. “Lt. General Michael Flynn (Ret.), who became the President’s National Security Advisor, also attended … I stated our desire for a fresh start in relations.” Kushner said Kislyak, whose tenure in the US ended this past weekend, asked whether there was “a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation” about the US’s Syria policy.
“General Flynn or I explained that there were no such lines,” Kushner wrote. But he said he went on to ask whether the Russian Embassy “had an existing communications channel … we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn.” Kislyak said they didn’t, according to Kushner, and “nothing else occurred.”
“I did not suggest a ‘secret back channel,’” he wrote. “I did not suggest an on-going secret form of communication for then or for when the administration took office. I did not raise the possibility of using the embassy or any other Russian facility for any purpose other than this one possible conversation in the transition period. We did not discuss sanctions.”
Kushner’s statement appears consistent with a Washington Post report published in May that said he had floated the possibility of setting up a secure line of communication between the Trump transition team and Russia — and having those talks take place in Russian diplomatic facilities in the US, essentially concealing their interactions from US government scrutiny.
According to The Post, Kislyak was “taken aback” by Kushner’s request because it posed significant risks for both the Trump team and the Kremlin. But he passed along that request to Moscow anyway. Kushner did not previously disclose the December meetings with Kislyak and the CEO of a Russian bank, Sergey Gorkov, on his security clearance form. He said in his statement that the form was submitted prematurely.
Experts have said that if the Kushner-Kislyak meeting and reported discussion were an isolated incident, then it could be spun as normal back-channel communication arrangements among states.
But Kislyak and the Trump campaign interacted extensively, and Trump associates either kept those interactions secret from US officials or misrepresented them, as was the case with Flynn, who was forced to resign in February for similar reasons.
Scott Olson, a recently retired FBI agent who ran counterintelligence operations and spent more than 20 years at the bureau, told Business Insider in May that it was not unusual for low-level staffers to work between governments and bypass bureaucracy to exchange views and build consensus in advance of higher-level negotiations. But what Kushner appears to have done is “substantially different, in two ways,” he said. “First, he is not seeking a back channel for a low-level staff exchange,” Olson said. “He wants high-level direct-contact communication. This is extremely dangerous because it results in verbal (and therefore undocumented and unwitnessed) agreements, which are binding on governments. Free governments do not work this way. They can’t. If they do, they are no longer free.”
He added: “Second, he asked to use a foreign government’s communication facilities. This is way beyond a private server. This is doing US government diplomatic business over a foreign government’s communication system. It’s not an off-the-record conversation. It’s a conversation recorded by the opposing party. This shows a staggering lack of understanding of the US and its place in the world. Actually, it shows a staggering lack of common sense. When he negotiates a business deal does he use the other guy’s notes?”
It also struck many experts as odd that Flynn, Kushner, and Kislyak would want to conceal discussions about Syria from the US’s national security and intelligence communities. “Why in God’s name would they want to conceal plans on Syria strategy from the US military?” asked Susan Hennessey, a former attorney for the National Security Agency. “Even accepting their Syria spin, what Kushner tried to do was blind the US government on incredibly important national security matters. That’s not how it works. That’s not the behavior of someone who recognizes America is still, at its core, a common endeavor.”
Egregious disregard drawing up boundary lines between Israel and Palestine-
Alas, I don’t think it is actually what the song is about because Jo$h’s brother Jared isn’t crossing boundaries of Taylor’s as far as I know. He’s a criminal POS, but at most his politics are disagreeable to Taylor, and his brother “stole” the love of Taylor’s life. But that line worked out pretty well with many of the Ku$hner crimes.
I
Someone told his white collar crimes to the FBI
Closest thing to Michelle Pfeiffer that you’ve ever seen, oh
So that could be who she’s talking about in this particular line…
This will not be an exhaustive list (I do have a job) just a smattering of problematic items.
I’m not sure why people are acting so surprised. Taylor has some sketchy decisions in the past, loser “boyfriends” and is an integral cog in the capitalistic wheel.
I didn’t really know about any of these in real time. So I feel about detached to it all looking at it historically. I think it’s sexist to blame Taylor for the behaviors of her boyfriends, especially when I see her called out more than them. But she does have a platform, and she doesn’t tend to use it for advocacy, so the scales aren’t balanced.
Problematic Age Differences?
Abuser “Boyfriends”:
Taylor dated Jake Gyllenhaal who is a pretentious prick at best and an abuser of young powerless women at worst.
Calvin Harris:
John Mayer:
Race:
The Netflix Show:
Environment:
https://time.com/6223774/vinyl-records-cimate-impact-taylor-swift-midnights/
Capitalism:
Eras Tiks
Arizona Prices (Ticketmaster):
I don’t want to sound like I’m giving her a pass. But being under a microscope your whole life will let people SEE more of your mistakes, just statistically. I wouldn’t want all my horrible moments and bad decisions to be ubiquitous in the public’s consciousness. Taylor, being as visible as she is, will be held to higher standards. Unrealistic beauty and aging standards, the pressure of being a constant role-model, who she dates and how often, not to mention the quality of her writing, singing, persona, promotion, street fashion, albums, fitness, costumes, concerts, and all the numbers (sales, charts, etc, etc…). It’s a lot. Don’t take this as a defense, just some concerns that most people don’t have to deal with.
And now, this guy:
Like, nobody is saying it, because it’s not woke to “body shame” but let me state the obvious: He’s not on her level. Let’s just say it doesn’t make sense to me: Taylor Swift is a prodigy at writing, a smart business-woman, master marketer, successful beyond imagination, about to be a billionaire, and beautiful. I truly don’t understand how fans/media can think her self-esteem is so low, her morals so absent that she’s actually attracted to this dude. We’ll discuss it in the 3rd and final installment.
Considering recent events I would be remiss not to address the whole 1975 guy and Taylor “dating” so I’m just going to briefly pause the Taylor Swift’s Gay Moments series to talk about it. I have the next 2 posts all ready to go when we resume.
But before I get into that let me give you a history of my exposure to Taylor Swift:
It’s hazy (excuse the pun) when I became a fan of Taylor Swift. I just vaguely remember her being there. She sort of snuck into my life through hearing her singles at the grocery store, or on the radio on the way home from work. I wasn’t really her target audience- I was a bit older than her, just a peripheral country music fan, and I don’t like dudes.
More and more I was hitting repeat on my ipod on her songs. I especially like what I consider her red marker songs. All the ones with anger and bitterness and revenge as the main themes. I don’t know what that says about me, but my insurance only covers 3 counseling sessions per year, so I guess I’ll have to wait to find out. Anyway, I was especially moved by You’re not Sorry, Mean, and Should’ve Said no. I listened to those over and over (no literally, as the song was ending I would push that left side of the circle and play it again) in the car to and from my IVF appointments.
Sidenote: I had to drive 2.5hr from my college town to Kansas City to get paps, blood tests, and hormones as an egg donor. Each session was 3 or 4 months, and the appointments would start out every 3 weeks or something like that, but as it got closer to harvest the appointments could be as many as 3x a week. I was doing a LOT of driving! And Taylor was with me the whole time.
So I have a lot of sentimental attachment to Taylor’s songs. I did not really know anything about Taylor the person, or even marketer. I was a college student with a job so I legit didn’t have that much time to check it out. Also, I couldn’t afford like a TV package with good channels (this was before streaming was mainstream), had a purple Razor, no data (this was before iphones), and I was on Myspace (hated) Facebook, so you had to proactively search people, they didn’t just fall into your feed. Also, it was during the Limewire and Frostwire days (I wasn’t fancy enough to be able to engage with Apple except for my little ipod) so getting music was a whole ordeal.
When Taylor didn’t have Red on Spotify, I really lost track of her, except for hearing the ubiquitous songs out and about. I knew nothing of her personas, eras, fashion, friends, or concerts. I was working and studying (and poor) most of the times, OK? I sort of heard scuttle about her dating constantly, but didn’t know the specifics. Just heard the misogynous comments around school or in the media.
When I saw the rainbows, butterflies, and adorable aesthetic of the Lover era I re-engaged more than ever. That was my jam. The Me! video (not song) is SO ME. It’s everything I ever loved and I wanted EVERY interview, behind the scenes video, and easter egg decoding. I never even knew the easter eggs were a thing before that.
In searching for content I saw these Kaylor compilation videos on YouTube. Before that moment I had not heard of Kaylor, did not know who Karlie Kloss was, didn’t even know what “shipping” was and was completely oblivious of stanning and fan culture. Boy, did I get an introduction! I clicked on the video because Taylor and a model looked very pretty on the cover. As I watched I was agog. As a lesbian, I knew THE LOOK and the way these two looked at each other, the body language, the chemistry–was undeniable. Nobody told me about Kaylor, I had never read about this, but I could see it. After that I found two very interesting podcasts: Taylor Talk and TayDar. I loved the song analysis, and was very curious to find out about everything I had missed over the years (hint: everything but the popular songs). I got on Tumblr, went to Reddit, and Googled a lot of power-points. I was down the rabbit hole.
Then I became obsessed, as you’ve seen. Part 2 we’ll discuss what’s happening now.
Stars in eyes speaks to a desire for fame or a drive to be something more. What do all the other stars in Taylor’s catalog mean?
Taylor compares the 9 year old to stars.
Something special, untouchable, and unattainable. Beautiful and magical, but out of reach.
She confirms how stars are something unattainable 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 shiny, bright, sparkling, but inconceivable. 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.
Stars aligning signify perfection and idealistic happiness. Which did not occur in this particular situation.
This other person saw Taylor’s past hurts, traumas… scars. And they surrounded that pain with something beautiful and otherworldly. Taylor is incredulous this person cares for her (stars are distant and out of reach) because this type of relationship was previously unthinkable. She is invigorated by the improbable magic (it’s impossible to touch stars) that happens when this person is close. This love is healing and is all Taylor needs. Except after the person left, Taylor is without the salve on her scars and suffers a new fresh wound.
House seems to be a physical place where someone lives.
But Taylor also uses “house” as the embodiment of a person and their sensibilities.
The house in Seven (is Taylor, I think, but could be the childhood friend) is haunted (gay? conflicted? imperfect?)
being haunted/gay makes the homophobic father mad.
Enter hiding in the closet-a lifelong defense mechanism.
passing by your house can mean both riding on a skateboard past someone’s home, and James passing by Betty, the person.
Taylor is in a conservative city. Country music is “traditional” and constrictive. Taylor has religious imagery in some songs so her family might abide by the Bible, and that makes her feel conflicted about her sexuality. She does not see her queerness as positive, she deems it a curse or jinx–she’s haunted.
There’s nothing to figure out with a boy. That’s “normal”, accepted, expected. It’s not difficult to figure out if a boy likes you that way.
But if the love interest is a girl–is she friendly or flirty? When Taylor can’t breathe in this gal’s absence, she knows it’s love.
Taylor discovers she loves a girl–she’s haunted. She knows she’s gay.
When Taylor dares to act on this haunted part of her, there are real fears the husband will harm his wife (Taylor’s lover) and her. She has to be very, very sneaky about hiding the gay-affair, or He will burn their house of love down.
House = place of residence, including body or sensibility
Haunted = LGBTQ (in an internally homophobic person, or a person in a homophobic environment)
Don’t worry, I’m still working on the gay moments for each track on evermore. I’m at Ivy and it’s very research heavy, so enjoy another snippet while I compile everything.
I feel you no matter what, the rubies that I gave up
So ruby comes from Latin for Red, which Maroon is talking about a lot.
Is Taylor just saying that she gave up the scarlet passion, raw emotion, and love in choosing the closet/fame over Karlie?
Perpetually burning fires? Like a Leo’s fire. Or the comfortable home life? Taylor gave up both.
I’m sure that the healing has nothing to do with this song, but we’re learning so I still included it.
Taylor gave up Karlie (the sun). Ruby is gemstone of…the sun?! It has a MAROON aura!!!
I mean, did this exact paragraph inspire the song, or what???
closure
It cut deep to know ya/Right to the bone…/…I’m fine with my spite/And my tears/And my beers and my candles…/….I know I’m just a/Wrinkle in your new life/Staying friends/Would iron it out so nice/Guilty, guilty reaching out across the sea/That you put between you and me/But it’s fake/And it’s oh so unnecessary
Ummm…. Unintentional find that’s pretty on the nose:
Neurochemistry:
The Dumper:
The Dumpee:
We know Taylor drinks wine. And she’s talked about liquor, like whiskey. But I’m not sure beer is her go-to choice of beverage. You know what makes a lot of sense to me in a song to her ex? bearDs. She’s telling her ex that she’s fine with bearding and crying because she chooses her career over love. And no, it’s not wishful thinking or a reach. This phenomenon is repeated several times in the TS catalog.
CLOSURE
beers/beards
There are several more words that Taylor pronounces in a way that could mean two distinct words:
THE 1
pennies/panties
BIGGER THAN THE WHOLE SKY
asia/angel
HIGH INFIDELITY
city/CD
MIRRRORBALL
tall(est)/toil(est)
https://englishphonetics.net/english-phonetics-academy/what-are-minimal-pairs.html
This next one is a bit of a different phenomenon:
This song has additional auditory illusions because the main lyrics have a backing echo layered with it.
My program won’t transcribe proper nouns so I subbed “car lee” for Karlie. It shouldn’t make a difference as the phoneme, syllables, and stress are the same.
Auditory Illusion:
Your expectations of which words you’ll hear—coupled with the low-quality audio—do the rest. “When faced with an acoustic signal which is somewhat ambiguous because it is low-quality or noisy [or layered with backing vocals], your brain attempts a ‘best fit’ between what is heard and the expected word,” Valerie Hazan, a professor of speech sciences at University College London, told The Telegraph.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/545157/beyond-yanny-laurel-other-aural-illusions-how-they-work
Theory of Speech Perception:
Now taking the speech and language sciences you just learned, here’s some homework for you:
Do you hear “good” every time? Do you ever hear “girl” instead?
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Catty Remarks