state of grayce

Personal blog & portfolio of an aspiring poet – emphasis on the 'aspiring'. Really, I'm just a bibliophile, a massive fangirl, and an unashamed romantic. 27 years old, Australia. Call me Kat.

[katyagrayce]

Mumford & Sons ‘Ditmas’ (2015) / ‘Conversation With My Son (Gangsters & Angels)’ (2026)

[katyagrayce]

Mumford & Sons ‘The Cave’ (2009) / ‘Hopeless Wanderer’ (2012) / ‘Rubber Band Man’ (2026)

[expressions-of-nature]

by Biwako

[katyagrayce]

The Fate of Ophelia: A personal gripe

So I’m somebody who likes The Life of a Showgirl as an album but doesn’t like ‘The Fate of Ophelia’ as a song, which feels like a bit of an uncommon opinion. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve wanted to lay out my reasoning & see what other people think. So here we go. For me, the main problem is that Taylor massively oversimplifies the story of Ophelia for her own purposes, to the point where it feels like a misinterpretation, and it’s doubly frustrating because the real story of Ophelia would actually work even better as a metaphor for her life.

Firstly, some basic context. The play Hamlet is about a Danish prince who’s just been called home from university due to his father’s death. His mother, Gertrude, is already remarried to his uncle, Claudius, which Hamlet is hugely upset by. His angst gets even worse when he’s visited by the ghost of his father, who reveals that he was actually murdered by Claudius & demands that Hamlet avenge his death. Hamlet, however, is much more of a thinker than a fighter, and the rest of the play is about him spiralling as he struggles first to confirm the ghost’s story, then to do what the ghost asked of him. At one point, Hamlet pretends to have gone insane as a way to get answers out of Claudius, but he seems to lose control of the act and impulsively kills somebody whom he sees eavesdropping behind a curtain. That person turns out to be Ophelia’s father, Polonius, and after his death Ophelia also goes mad.

At the start of the play, Ophelia and Hamlet are lovers, but by the time Polonius dies they’ve already broken things off. Ophelia was pressured to end the relationship by Polonius and by her brother Laertes, who told her that Hamlet would never marry her because of their class difference & that being with him while unmarried would hurt her ‘virtue’. Hamlet, already furious at Gertrude, takes the break-up as another sign of the ‘fakeness’ of women. When Hamlet then starts to appear insane, Polonius theorises that it’s because of the break-up & he makes Ophelia go back to Hamlet while he and Claudius eavesdrop, but Hamlet sees through the ploy and ends up viciously screaming at Ophelia for everything she’s done. Notably, though, that’s not the point at which Polonius dies and Ophelia decompensates – it happens later, following another incident where Polonius eavesdrops on Hamlet and Gertrude. After that, we see Ophelia onstage one more time, singing bawdy songs about boys taking advantage of girls & handing out flowers that represent flattery, infidelity, and bitterness. The next time we hear of her, Gertrude is telling us that she has drowned herself.

From that recap alone, it should be pretty clear that the fate of Ophelia is way more complex than just ‘love driving [her] mad’ (and no, I’m not putting words in Taylor’s mouth by summing up the song that way – it’s a direct quote from her BBC Radio 1 interview). The reasons why Ophelia goes mad are meant to be a parallel for the reasons why Hamlet goes mad, and that’s due to the awful familial & societal pressures that are pulling them in different directions & forcing them to be something they’re not. Those pressures are also inseparable from the concept of the patriarchy. In Ophelia’s case, her father is telling her that she’s impure for being open with Hamlet, Hamlet is telling her that she’s impure for lying to him, and when she does her best to live by both impossible standards, it ends with Hamlet killing her father & everything falling apart.

And hey – doesn’t all that sound familiar? Isn’t Taylor also a person who’s spent her life struggling with conflicting & impossible expectations, many of them misogynistic? When she has a healthy dating life, she’s a ‘slut’ with ‘nothing on her brain’, but when she focuses on her friendships, she’s ‘starting a tyrannical hot girl cult’. When she keeps to herself outside of music, she’s self-absorbed and ‘should be doing more’, but when she does speak up, she’s performative and detracting from more important voices. Didn’t Taylor just lose a 6-year battle between a partner who wanted their entire lives to be private & a world that kept chanting more? Doesn’t she constantly have to fight to stay afloat in the sea of different people’s desires? And in that situation, isn’t Travis Kelce a lifeline – at least in some ways, at least a little? A man who’s unpretentious & uncomplicated, who doesn’t have time for duality. A man who fell in love with her via her tour, who loves her for her success rather than despite it. A man who is famous himself for a team sport, who knows how to share the spotlight, how to ignore the gossip and glare. And a man who proposed within 2 years, after 6 years of waiting in vain. A man who gave her hope again, after she watched everything fall apart.

That’s the thing – Travis did save Taylor from the fate of Ophelia. It’s just that there is so much more nuance to that statement than Taylor put into the song. And by cheapening that metaphor, Taylor is cheapening her own story, too. The reason why I don’t like it is because it could have been so much better, especially for somebody who describes themselves as an English teacher & who’s made such complex literary references in the past (‘happiness’, ‘The Albatross’, ‘Cassandra’, ‘Peter’… ). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you have to study Shakespeare to be a good songwriter. But – I guess I’m saying that, if you aim at Shakespeare, make sure you don’t miss.

[sharp-tender-shock-deactivated2]

This is a comment someone appended to a photo of two men apparently having sex in a very fancy room, but it’s also kind of an amazing two-line poem? “His Wife has filled his house with chintz” is a really elegant and beautiful counterbalancing of h, f, and s sounds, and “chintz” is a perfect word choice here—sonically pleasing and good at evoking nouveau riche tackiness. And then “to keep it real I fuck him on the floor” collapses that whole mood with short percussive sounds—but it’s still a perfect iambic pentameter line, robust and a lovely obscene contrast with the chintz in the first line. Well done, tumblr user jjbang8

[headspace-hotel]

I hate that my aesthetic sense agrees with this but everything you just said was correct

[headspace-hotel]

I went back to dig up this post because I was thinking about poetry.

This is one of those non-poem things that are among my favorite poems.

As the OP stated, the use of alliterative consonants is aesthetically just great, especially the placement of the strongest use at the end: “fuck him on the floor.” The use of “chintz” is indeed great word choice.

Because I’m insane, decided to scan the poem:

Not only is the second sentence, indeed, perfect iambic pentameter, the entire poem is perfectly metered, though the first sentence has four iambs rather than five.

There are further things I love about this poem, though: I like the casual connotations of “keep it real” juxtaposed with “chintz.” It causes me to interpret the “chintz” more strongly as meaning something fake, a facade. There is also of course the coarseness of “fuck,” which is a contrast with “chintz” but a different kind of contrast, gutsy and carnal where “chintz” is flimsy and inanimate.

And then there is the storytelling: there is SO MUCH storytelling in just these two lines. To break it down: The speaker is having sex with a married man, in the house he shares with his wife, which is “filled with chintz”—something that here connotes fakeness, in contrast with “keep it real.”

The illicit encounter in the poem takes place within a house filled with facade, the flimsy construction of the wife’s marriage and domestic sphere, but the encounter itself is a taste of something “real.” That’s a story, and it’s just two lines.

This is EIGHTEEN SYLLABLES, y’all. The amount of meaning condensed into these eighteen syllables is stunning, and it is so elegantly done.

From a technical standpoint (and ive taken 300- and 400-level poetry classes so I can say this) this is damn near flawless as a poem.

[agent-octopus]

Kept thinking about this ever since I saw it and had to do something

[headspace-hotel]

there's art now

[jetlaggingbehind]

[questions-within-questions]

Ah dang to go further; the floor is framed as a refuge. As if there is literally no other space in this house that hasn't been populated by his wife with flimsy inanimate fakery. There is no space for this man in this house save for the floor. There is no space for him on the sofa, oon the counter tops, and most notably, no space for him in the marital bed.

[normal-horoscopes]

I’d also like to point out the use of the word “has.” The wife has filled the house with chintz. She isn’t filling the house with chintz. She doesn’t fill the house with chintz. She has filled the house with chintz. Use of the past-tense makes the wife a subtly removed element in the story, someone whose presence we see in the environment, but who is blissfully distant during the actors throes of passion. There is an element of physical as well as emotional separation from the wife that is catalyzed by being fucked on the floor. Use of the past tense is an end to the wife presence in the actors life, a carnal catharsis amid cold fragility and emotional distance.

[stargazing-enby]

This is my new favourite post in the world

[astronomical-bagel]

everyone cheer for the one (1) time tumblr had reading comprehension

[shot-thru-the-art]

Someone just reblogged my dancing ghosts with “#digital art” and it doesn’t matter at all but I’m still fighting the urge to dm them “they are very much not digital! They’re chicken wire, tore my jeans, and left me covered in small, bleeding scratches! I got a tetanus shot about it!”

No computers were used for these - partly because I like using my hands and partly because I have genuinely no idea how to do digital animation anyway. It seems like witchcraft.

These are life-sized because I have very little experience with figure drawing/sculpting so I just used my husband and I for proportion measurements. (Which meant I was chasing him around going “come back! Let me measure your femur!”)

Video description: green light on a chicken wire sculpture of a dancing couple. It’s turning in the wind outside at night so they (hopefully) look alive.

[regicide1997]

So when I was getting dressed today, I very quickly put on a lab coat and some cat ears, not even trying to have something coherent, just wanting to have some kind of costume, and then I used some eyeliner to draw some whiskers on my face, so, yeah, that's my costume, cat in a lab coat, does it make sense? no. who cares. Still wearing the same skirt and striped knee-high socks from yesterday, but that's just my work clothes.

But then when I got to my office in the physics department, one of my colleagues was immediately like, "Oh! Schrödinger's catgirl!"

[bisexualbaker]

It both was and was not a coherent costume until someone observed you and collapsed the wave form.

[katyagrayce]

‘When I said I don’t believe in marriage’: Taylor Swift and the complexity of love in the spotlight

Okay friends, it looks like we’ve reached the stage of Taylor’s career where every album brings an essay out of me, and this is The Life of a Showgirl’s. Honestly, it almost feels like the essay is writing itself, because when someone who’s renowned for both beautiful love songs and devastating break-ups rolls out the line ‘when I said I don’t believe in marriage, that was a lie’, you naturally want to unpack it a little. And the reaction of the fanbase is even more interesting, with people seeming to range from super happy for Taylor, to surprised or confused, to genuinely angry. So buckle up, we’re going for a ride. This is an analysis of Taylor Swift’s attitudes to marriage in her songs, Taylor Swift’s portrayals of love and fame, and exactly why it’s so complicated to be a romantic female celebrity in the current day and age.

I’ve been a fan of Taylor since Fearless, and I’ve grown up alongside her music and her media cycles. The first song of hers that I remember hearing is Love Story, which literally dramatises marriage as something out of a fairytale, an ultimate end goal that brings joy and resolution to even the most complicated of relationships. Taylor literally goes straight from ‘is this in my head, I don’t know what to think’ to ‘he knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring’, and everything from there is picture-perfect to the point of stereotypes – ‘marry me, Juliet, you’ll never have to be alone / I love you and that’s all I really know / I’ve talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress / it’s a love story, baby just say yes’. It’s all pretty much exactly how you’d expect a romantic 17-year-old to depict marriage – dreaming about it in a far-off, abstract way, conceptualising it mostly through traditions and conventions, focusing more on the proposal and the wedding than on the marriage itself. But the point is, Taylor clearly did dream about it, and her subsequent songs actually continued to portray it as an ideal, just one that she engaged with in more complex ways. By Speak Now, Taylor was poking fun at insincere wedding traditions while still using them non-ironically herself (see: the title track), and she’d started to explore the eternality of marriage across different places & times (see: Timeless). By Red, she was searching for real-world historical examples of the kind of epic partnership she’d been describing (see: Starlight). By reputation, she was acknowledging the limitations of Love Story’s romantic paradigms while still yearning for what they represent – turning ‘it’s a love story, baby just say yes’ into ‘call it what you want’, and ‘all that’s left to do is run… Romeo, save me’ into ‘you don’t need to save me / but would you run away with me?’. Finally, by Lover, Taylor was confident enough to take wedding traditions and re-make them as her own, appropriating them for her relationship with Joe in a way that felt playfully anticipatory. Take the title track – it’s in 3/4 time, the beat of a waltz, and its bridge echoes the wording of traditional marriage vows, ‘ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand / with every guitar-string scar on my hand / I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover’. For good measure, Taylor added ‘my heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue’, a clever twist on the tradition of something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. And if that wasn’t enough, she also wrote It’s Nice To Have A Friend and Paper Rings, which use childhood imagery to combine her new playfulness towards marriage with her pre-existing wide-eyed earnestness. INTHAF does this by drawing parallels between its wedding scene and its school scene – starting with ‘school bell rings, walk me home / sidewalk chalk covered in snow’, progressing to ‘church bells ring, carry me home / rice on the ground looks like snow’ – while the titular Paper Rings directly evoke memories of pretend-play weddings at recess and lunchtime. Moreover, with that childhood imagery, Taylor also takes us back to her debut album and Mary’s Song, where she sung about marriage for the very first time (‘take me home where we met so many years before / we’ll rock our babies on that very front porch’). Long story short, by Lover, Taylor had played with every marriage fantasy in the book – Romeo & Juliet, princesses, presidents, soldiers coming home from war. But the one she always came back to, her favourite fairytale of all, was just a couple of kids in a suburban backyard.

If Taylor had gone straight from those first six albums to The Life of a Showgirl, I really don’t think anybody would have been surprised by it. Honestly, the only differences in her most recent depictions of marriage are that 1️⃣ the suburban imagery is tweaked slightly to her jock fiancé (‘got me dreaming ‘bout a driveway with a basketball hoop’), and 2️⃣ she’s a bit more ~adult~ in her puns (‘girls, I don’t need to catch the bouquet / to know a hard rock is on the way’). If it all seems a bit stereotypical & corny & unrealistic, that’s because it is – because those things are part of the package when you write about marriage through a fairytale lens. The songs aren’t meant to be taken totally literally, and that becomes even more obvious when you consider them in context. Sure, Wi$h Li$t seems to imply that Taylor wants to give up showbiz to have Travis’ babies – but simultaneously, Elizabeth Taylor is saying ‘I would trade the Cartier for someone to trust / (just kidding)’; The Life of a Showgirl is saying ‘I’m married to the hustle / and now I know the life of a showgirl, babe / and I’ll never know another’; and Taylor herself has talked about how of course she’ll continue making music after marriage, and it’s ‘shockingly offensive’ to assume otherwise. Ultimately, Wi$h Li$t is a happy, exaggerated daydream – just like It’s Nice To Have A Friend, just like Mary’s Song. And it seems a bit silly that it’s generating so much controversy when its predecessors didn’t.

That said, although I may not agree with the controversy, I do kind of get where it’s coming from. Because Taylor did have other albums after Lover, and those albums were much more complicated in their views of marriage. folklore, evermore, Midnights, The Tortured Poets Department – they’re what I think Taylor was referring to with ‘when I said I don’t believe in marriage’, and I honestly think they might be most of the reason why Eldest Daughter even exists. Fundamentally, it is a song of explanation, and nothing makes the world demand an explanation more than a woman changing her mind.

Before we start talking about those albums, though, I think we need to talk about 1989. Because that’s the album conspicuously missing from this essay so far – an album where Taylor didn’t write about marriage, and honestly barely wrote about happy relationships at all – and I think it left a lot of loose threads that her later music then pulled. In the prologue to 1989 (Taylor’s Version), Taylor talks about how she deliberately stepped away from dating in that period, hoping to avoid the public scrutiny that it brought. She also talks about how this backfired, the media throwing around terms like ‘feminism’ and ‘girl squad’ as if they were dirty words (this was 2014, they practically were). Credit to Taylor, she responded by vindictively leaning into that persona rather than trying to wave it away, bringing out songs like Blank Space and Shake It Off that later turned into The Man and mad woman. But this did create an oversimplified public perception of her as a ‘strong independent woman who don’t need no man’, and now we’re seeing anger from a faction of fans who think she’s betraying those ideals with songs like Wi$h Li$t – never mind that she never chose to be typecast that way in the first place, and that criticising the most powerful woman in the entertainment industry for also wanting to be a wife and mother is literally just a different flavour of misogyny.

During reputation and Lover, when Taylor was happily in a long-term relationship with Joe, people seemed to accept that things had changed for her since 1989 & they didn’t hold her to the same outdated standards. But then – even if we didn’t know it yet – her relationship with Joe started to crumble. You’re Losing Me may only have been released in 2023, but it was written in 2021, and the lyrics make it clear that things were deteriorating for a while before then (‘we thought a cure would come through in time, now I fear it won’t’). With how bitterly Taylor sings ‘I wouldn’t marry me either’, I think it’s inarguable that she wanted to get married whereas Joe didn’t – and that then gets corroborated by The Tortured Poets Department, in So Long, London and loml (‘you swore that you loved me but where was the proof? / I died at the altar waiting for the clues’; ‘you shit-talked me under the table / talking rings and talking cradles / I wish I could unrecall / how we almost had it all’). When Taylor was writing folklore, evermore, and Midnights, those are the things that would have been running through her head. I think that that context is absolutely essential for understanding the depictions of marriage in those albums. And I think that one reason they get so heavily misused in discourse is because they were a lot of people’s first serious exposure to Taylor – after all, they were the focal albums of the Eras Tour – and those people approached the songs with no context except a vague memory of Taylor’s loud media coverage from 1989.

Before folklore, I can’t think of a single song where Taylor portrayed marriage negatively or even ambiguously – it was either altogether positive or altogether absent. The first hint of greyscale is in peace, when she sings about loving Joe enough for marriage and kids (‘you know that I’d / sit with you in the trenches / swing with you for the fences / give you my wild, give you a child’), but also knowing that this doesn’t guarantee their happiness (‘would it be enough if I could never give you peace?’). In evermore, we then start to see fictional stories about marriages and engagements that aren’t quite right – the soul-crushing complacency of tolerate it, the vicious affair of ivy, the shattered proposal scene of champagne problems. Finally, we get to Midnights, with its hyper-personal marketing as a diary of Taylor’s sleepless nights. And suddenly, we have four separate songs where Taylor describes marriage as entrapping, not just in the abstract but personally, for her. First, there’s Lavender Haze: ‘no deal, the 1950s shit they want from me... all they keep asking me is if I’m gonna be your bride / the only kind of girl they see is a one-night or a wife’. Next, there’s Midnight Rain: ‘he wanted a bride, I was making my own name / chasing that fame, he stayed the same / all of me changed like midnight’. Thirdly, and more subtly, there’s Sweet Nothing, which creates its romance out of the fact that Joe isn’t demanding any commitment: ‘outside they’re push and shoving / you’re in the kitchen humming / all that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing’. And finally, there’s High Infidelity, which is back to being explicit in its imagery: ‘storm coming, good husband / bad omen, dragged my feet right down the aisle... your picket fence was sharp as knives / I was dancing around, dancing around it’.

Honestly, we could talk for hours about how each of these songs is so much more complicated than just ‘I don’t believe in marriage’. We could talk about how Lavender Haze is more a criticism of public scrutiny than of marriage itself. We could talk about how Midnight Rain is a nuanced exploration of the tension between love and fame – actually, we will talk about that one later. We could talk about how Sweet Nothing is very much a product of its time – a song written at the edge of the COVID apocalypse (‘they said the end is coming’), when long-term plans became null & void anyway and romance meant staying together despite that. And we could talk about the layers of storytelling in High Infidelity, the way that it’s almost a more reflective ivy, or an inverted illicit affairs. But for the sake of simplicity – and because Taylor herself sang ‘I said I don’t believe in marriage’ – we’re going to take the songs at face value and assume that that’s what they’re about. In that case, yes, there is an idealogical gap between them and songs like Wi$h Li$t. But we don’t actually have to guess what changed for Taylor in that gap, because that’s exactly what Eldest Daughter is trying to explain.

Eldest Daughter is one of those songs that I think you might not get unless you’ve also experienced it. It’s a song about growing up just slightly ahead of the curve of modernisation – watching social media rise, watching local communities crumble, being placed under more and more pressure while having less and less support, and eventually ending up at the edge of a generation that’s so oversaturated with things to care about, it stops caring all together. It’s a song about having to toughen yourself up to survive and losing yourself in the process. (As a side-note, this is also why the people cringing at ‘bad bitch’ and ‘savage’ are totally missing the point – those phrases are meant to sound awkward, because Taylor is literally singing about them as manufactured ideals that she can’t make herself fit. But that’s a discussion for another day). You fake it till you make it, like ‘first lamb[s] to the slaughter... dressed up as wolves’. If you ache for something you can’t have, or regret something you can’t fix, then you simply pretend that you don’t. If, for example, if want to get married but your boyfriend doesn’t, then you simply pretend that you’re chill with that. What’s the point of marriage, anyway? It’s oversentimental and outdated, 1950s shit. Apathy is hot. You phrase the argument so well, you almost convince yourself – and you do convince your fans. You pull on loose threads, ignoring how it makes things unravel. You say you don’t believe in marriage, even if it’s a lie.

Of course, we all know how that story ends. Even the best lies can only hold together so long. Eventually, you and your boyfriend break up, and the idea of marriage & kids becomes even more complicated for you – still a dream, but one that’s painful to even imagine, one that you can only sing about mournfully (So Long, London and loml), or jealously (How Did It End: ‘soon they’ll go home to their husbands / smug ‘cos they know they can trust him’), or ironically (The Tortured Poets Department, But Daddy I Love Him, and imgonnagetyouback: ‘at dinner, you take my ring off / my middle finger, and put it on the one / people put wedding rings on’; ‘I’m having his baby / no I’m not, but you should see your faces’; ‘whether I’m gonna be your wife or / gonna smash up your bike, I / haven’t decided yet’). You try to move on, try more faking it till you make it, but you’re doing it with a broken heart. Then – one day – something changes. You meet somebody, and he’s different to the guys you’ve dated in the past. He’s more straightforward about what he does & what he wants in life, less of a tortured poet. He dreams about that suburban ideal too, even ‘says [you’re] the girl of his American dreams’. And suddenly – suddenly, you’re Fresh Out The Slammer, ‘running to the house where [he] still wait[s] up and that porch light gleams… the park where [you] used to sit on children’s swings / wearing imaginary rings.’ You’ve come full circle again – you’re back in your favourite marriage fantasy, kids in the suburbs. And finally, the tension around it is gone. Because finally, you’ve found somebody who’s meeting you there from the beginning.

And just in case that metaphor wasn’t clear enough – just in case your fans are still confused – you give them a direct explanation, too. You give them Eldest Daughter, and most of all, you give them its bridge. ‘We lie back / a beautiful, beautiful time lapse / Ferris wheels, kisses and lilacs / and things I said were dumb / ‘cos I thought that I’d never find that / beautiful, beautiful life that / shimmers that innocent light back / like when we were young.’ You literally say: when I’m with him, my life is full of cheesy romance tropes. They’re things that I used to call dumb, because I thought that I couldn’t have them. But it turns out that I can. I can, and they’re beautiful, and they remind me of the dreams that I had as a kid – innocent and glowing. And those are the dreams that he had, too. Kids in the suburbs, the two of you. Growing up felt like being in the wild, but now you’re home.

Of course, not everybody will relate to this particular journey of Taylor’s. Some people will genuinely see marriage the way that she described it in her darker albums, that’s totally fine. But I do think it’s unfair to be critical of her for finally getting what she’s dreamt of, especially when she’s released multiple songs asking everyone to butt out of her personal life. I’ve already written a whole other essay about this, and Wi$h Li$t itself gives the topic a mention: ‘we tell the world to leave us the fuck alone and they do’. (Come to think of it, the ‘they do’ alone should have been enough to tell us that the song is a fantasy). And that leads us very nicely into the second part of this essay, looking at how Taylor’s music juggles her love life against her fame.

Even when we take fame out of the equation, there is a tension in love between the public and the private. Most people in happy relationships want to show that off to the world, but they also don’t want the world interfering with what happens in the relationship. When you then add fame to the mix, the problem is that you don’t have as much control over what the world sees or says, so maintaining the right boundary becomes incredibly difficult. And the specific problem with Taylor’s kind of fame is that she got it by selling songs about her personal life – I mean, The Life of a Showgirl is literally marketed as ‘a look behind the curtain’ – so her relationships sit at the very centre of her spotlight, where they have to withstand a lot of heat.

Given all that, it’s not surprising that Taylor often sings about losing relationships in the pursuit of fame. The character she most commonly plays in that narrative is the small-town girl leaving her love to chase better things – that’s the story of her very first single, Tim McGraw, and then of Fifteen, and ‘tis the damn season & dorothea, and You’re On Your Own, Kid, and Midnight Rain. (True, Tim McGraw might not explicitly state what the narrator did before coming ‘back for the first time since then’, but it’s written between the lines – when Taylor sings ‘when you hear Tim McGraw, I hope you think of me,’ does she mean when you hear Tim McGraw, her favourite artist? Or when you hear Tim McGraw, the country hit she just wrote?). The second character Taylor sometimes plays is the badass ‘girl boss’ calling out relationships for dulling her sparkle, like in Lavender Haze and Bejewelled. And the third & final character is the tired woman really doing her best to balance everything, who sees her partner falling behind her in the rat race, but can’t quite reach him when she stretches out her hand. She’s the one who’s been afraid of this since peace, who warned that ‘the rain is always gonna come when you’re standing with me’. She’s the one who apologises in coney island, ‘sorry for not making you my centrefold’, ‘when I walked up to the podium I think that I forgot to say your name’. And she’s the one who mourns in The Prophecy, when all of it is over, when her fears have come true. She’s the one who wants love, and hates that fame won’t let her have it.

It goes without saying at this point that the attitudes to fame & love in Taylor’s music are massively mixed. Even if when we ignore her later characters, who have more moralising built into them, there’s still so much variation in how she portrays the small-town girl. Some songs seem written to empower her, celebrating her fame as the hard-earned right choice – ‘in your life, you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team’; ‘and he never thinks of me / except when I’m on TV’; ‘you’re on your own, kid / yeah, you can face this’. But other songs ache for what she left behind, and even the affirming ones tend to have at least an undercurrent of sadness to them. Sure, You’re On Your Own, Kid is a beautiful anthem about Taylor’s power to ‘make it’, but there’s also something heartbreaking about just how much she sacrifices in that bridge, just how much she had to face alone. ‘tis the damn season and dorothea have this terribly gentle grief to them, like the characters both know fame won’t make Dorothea happy, but neither will giving up her dreams (‘and if you’re ever tired of being known for who you know / you know you’ll always know me’; ‘and the heart I know I’m breaking is my own / to leave the warmest bed I’ve ever known’). Even Midnight Rain, despite all its bravado, ends with a hint of regret – ‘we all get just what we wanted’ quickly turns into ‘we all get some kind of haunted,’ and Taylor ‘never think[s] of him / except on midnights like this’. It really feels like, by the time of The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor believed that she couldn’t have a lasting relationship and was going through the stages of grief about that, from the denial of But Daddy I Love Him, to the bargaining of The Prophecy, to the depression of I Can Do It With A Broken Heart. But over the course of her writing that album, something very interesting happened. She also gave us The Albatross. And that’s a song with ideas about love & fame that are so different to Taylor’s usual, you’d be excused for missing them all together.

The Albatross is packed with metaphor and reference (it draws heavily on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge), so it can be hard to know exactly what’s happening in it. But as far as I can tell, it’s the story of a man who falls in love with an infamous woman, and everyone claims that she’ll be his downfall, but she ends up being his salvation instead. He finds himself caught in his own storm of public opinion, and her experience and independence are what get him through (‘and when that sky rains fire on you / and you’re persona non grata / I’ll tell you how I’ve been there too / and that none of it matters’). For once, the woman’s fame doesn’t cripple their love story – it’s actually essential to it. It’s the reason why the man even knows who she is, and it’s the reason why the two of them survive.

Technically, The Albatross isn’t the first time that Taylor’s written about fame enhancing love. That was back in reputation, where she celebrated being infamous because it revealed people’s true intentions – ‘this is for the best / my reputation’s never been worse so / you must like me for me’. But the caveat back then was that Taylor’s relationship seemed to be happening despite her fame, whereas in The Albatross, it happens because of it. I don’t think it’s a totally autobiographical song – the narrative is much too specific, the imagery much too dense. But bearing in mind that The Tortured Poets Department was the era where Taylor met Travis – an also-famous man who fell in love with her via her tour, and got widely criticised as not good enough at the start of their relationship? I don’t think it’s totally non-autobiographical, either. And I’ve become even more sure of that because now, we have The Life of a Showgirl, and this album’s views on love & fame are totally different again. Sure, Taylor may sing ‘I just want you’, but she’s saying that as somebody who already has ‘that yacht life under chopper blades… those bright lights and Balenci shades’. Wi$h Li$t is a song about wanting contradictory things – fame and love, bossing up and settling down – and that’s Taylor’s fantasy now. For the first time ever, she’s daring to sing about having it all.

Of course, there’s a big difference between singing about something and actually having it – just like there’s a big difference between getting engaged and actually making a marriage work. There’s no way that Taylor & Travis’ relationship is 100% anxiety-free, and you can hear that loud and clear in Elizabeth Taylor. With ‘tell me for real, do you think it’s forever?’, Taylor is asking a woman who was famously engaged ten times (and married eight times) how she sees this relationship going – whether her experience has taught her red flags that Taylor missed, whether she also struggled with constantly expecting the other shoe to drop. For a moment, it even seems like Taylor might be describing love & fame as incompatible again – ‘all the right guys promised they’d stay / under bright lights they withered away’. But at the last second, the metaphor changes, because Travis ‘blooms’. Their relationship may not be perfect, but it gives Taylor something that she’s so rarely had in her songs before now. It gives her hope.

Honestly, you can think whatever you want about Taylor, and you can think whatever you want about her album. There is so much discourse I haven’t even touched on in this essay, some of it legitimate and some not so much. But when it comes to how she talks about love & marriage, the bottom line is that she’s a woman in the spotlight who grew up doubting she could ever have an enduring relationship, and now she finally feels like she might. In that context, her opinion is the only one that matters. Congratulations, Taylor. May all this be yours, to have and to hold, forever and always.

[paper--machete]

it bothers me that you often don't really hear about people having a "favorite album" the way they might have a favorite movie or favorite video game

[paper--machete]

fuck it. reblog this and tell me in the tags what your favorite album is

[katyagrayce]

Okay, I don’t think I have enough followers for this, but I really want to try. Please reblog this post with your single favourite Taylor Swift lyric added to the end. If your favourite lyric has already been listed, then just reblog the post as it is and mention which lyric was your favourite in the tags or the replies. The aim is to end up with a reblog chain that compiles all Taylor’s best lyrics. I’ll start:

You kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath

– ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (From The Vault)’, from Red (Taylor’s Version)

[katyagrayce]

So I have decided to be the change I wish to see in the world. Here, in roughly chronological order, are what I consider to be the best lyrics that Taylor has written. My offer to reblog the post with your own favourites absolutely still stands 😊

He’s the reason for the teardrops on my guitar / The only one who’s got enough of me to break my heart

– ‘Teardrops On My Guitar’, from Taylor Swift

He’s got a one-hand feel on the steering wheel / The other on my heart

– ‘Our Song’, from Taylor Swift

The way the tyres turn stones / On old county roads / They leave them muddy underneath / Reminds me of you

– ‘You All Over Me (From The Vault)’, from Fearless (Taylor’s Version)

Like the dollar in your pocket / That’s been spent and traded in / You can’t change where it’s been / Reminds me of me

– ‘You All Over Me (From The Vault)’, from Fearless (Taylor’s Version)

Held out, and held on / God knows too long

– ‘You All Over Me (From The Vault)’, from Fearless (Taylor’s Version)

Now every breath of air I breathe reminds me of then

– ‘You All Over Me (From The Vault)’, from Fearless (Taylor’s Version)

‘Cos I hear he’s got his arm ‘round a brand new girl / I’ve been picking up my heart, he’s been picking up her

– ‘Mr. Perfectly Fine (From The Vault)’, from Fearless (Taylor’s Version)

Get me with those green eyes, baby, as the lights go down / Give me something that’ll haunt me when you’re not around

– ‘Sparks Fly’, from Speak Now

I think her ever-present frown is a little troubling / She thinks I’m psycho ‘cos I like to rhyme her name with things

– ‘Better Than Revenge’, from Speak Now

They didn’t teach you that in prep school so it’s up to me / But no amount of vintage dresses gives you dignity

– ‘Better Than Revenge’, from Speak Now

You might have him but I always get the last word

– ‘Better Than Revenge’, from Speak Now

All that I know is I don’t know how to be something you miss

– ‘Last Kiss’, from Speak Now

You can plan for a change in the weather and time / But I never planned on you changing your mind

– ‘Last Kiss’, from Speak Now

Emma met a boy with eyes like a man / Turns out her heart fits right in the palm of his hand

– ‘When Emma Falls In Love (From The Vault)’, from Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)

I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to

– ‘All Too Well’, from Red

‘Cos there we are again in the middle of the night / We’re dancing ‘round the kitchen in the refrigerator light

– ‘All Too Well’, from Red

I’d like to be my old self again but I’m still trying to find it

– ‘All Too Well’, from Red

Did the twin flame bruise paint you blue? / Just between us, did the love affair maim you too?

– ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (From The Vault)’, from Red (Taylor’s Version)

We ditch the whole scene / And end up dreaming / Instead of sleeping

– ‘22’, from Red

Back to a first-glance feeling on New York time / Back when you fit in my poems like a perfect rhyme

– ‘Holy Ground’, from Red

New to a town with a made-up name / In the angels’ city, chasing fortune and fame

– ‘The Lucky One’, from Red

And they tell you that you’re lucky but you’re so confused / ‘Cos you don’t feel pretty, you just feel used

– ‘The Lucky One’, from Red

Don’t you see the starlight, starlight? / Don’t you dream impossible things?

– ‘Starlight’, from Red

I know the bravest thing I ever did was run

– ‘Better Man (From The Vault)’, from Red (Taylor’s Version)

And my cheeks are getting tired / From turning red and faking smiles

– ‘Nothing New (From The Vault)’, from Red (Taylor’s Version)

How did I go from growing up to breaking down?

– ‘Nothing New (From The Vault)’, from Red (Taylor’s Version)

I bet you couldn’t believe / When you realised I’m harder to forget than I was to leave

– ‘I Bet You Think About Me (From The Vault)’, from Red (Taylor’s Version)

But you know what they say, you can’t help who you fall for / And you and I fell like an early spring snow

– ‘I Bet You Think About Me (From The Vault)’, from Red (Taylor’s Version)

Walking through the crowd, the Village is aglow / Kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats under coats

– ‘Welcome to New York’, from 1989

I can make the bad guys good for a weekend

– ‘Blank Space’, from 1989

‘Cos darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream

– ‘Blank Space’, from 1989

We decided / To move the furniture so we could dance / Baby, like we stood a chance / Two paper airplanes flying, flying, flying

– ‘Out of the Woods’, from 1989

We’re a crooked love / In a straight line down / Makes you wanna run and hide but it makes you turn right back around

– ‘I Wish You Would’, from 1989

You keep his shirt / He keeps his word

– ‘You Are In Love’, from 1989 (Deluxe Edition)

One night, he wakes / Strange look on his face / Pauses, then says / ‘You’re my best friend’

– ‘You Are In Love’, from 1989 (Deluxe Edition)

‘Cos baby, I could build a castle / Out of all the bricks they threw at me

– ‘New Romantics’, from 1989 (Deluxe Edition)

You were so magnetic, it was almost obnoxious / Flush with the currency of cool / I was always turning out my empty pockets / When it came to you

– ‘Suburban Legends (From The Vault)’, from 1989 (Taylor’s Version)

When you hold me, you hold me together / And you kiss me in a way that’s gonna screw me up forever

– ‘Suburban Legends (From The Vault)’, from 1989 (Taylor’s Version)

I broke my own heart ‘cos you were too polite to do it

– ‘Suburban Legends (From The Vault)’, from 1989 (Taylor’s Version)

Let’s fast forward to three hundred awkward blind dates later / If she’s got blue eyes I will surmise that you’ll probably date her

– ‘Is It Over Now? (From The Vault)’, from 1989 (Taylor’s Version)

Baby, for you I would fall from grace / Just to touch your face

– ‘Don’t Blame Me’, from reputation

Dark jeans and your Nikes, look at you / Oh damn, never seen that colour blue

– ‘Delicate’, from reputation

Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time

– ‘Look What You Made Me Do’, from reputation

The ties were black, the lies were white / In shades of grey and candlelight

– ‘Getaway Car’, from reputation

I woke up just in time / Now I wake up by your side

– ‘Dress’, from reputation

Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you

– ‘New Year’s Day’, from reputation

Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognise anywhere

– ‘New Year’s Day’, from reputation

Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes / And if I bleed, you’ll be the last to know

– ‘Cruel Summer’, from Lover

I don’t want to keep secrets just to keep you

– ‘Cruel Summer’, from Lover

And I scream, for whatever it’s worth / I love you, ain’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard?

– ‘Cruel Summer’, from Lover

My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue / All’s well that ends well to end up with you

– ‘Lover’, from Lover

I never grew up, it’s getting so old

– ‘The Archer’, from Lover

My heart, my hips, my body, my love / Trying to find a part of me that you didn’t touch

– ‘Death By A Thousand Cuts’, from Lover

Holy orange bottles, each night I pray to you / Desperate people find faith, so now I pray to Jesus too

– ‘Soon You’ll Get Better’, from Lover

You know the greatest films of all time were never made

– ‘the 1’, from folklore

But we were something, don’t you think so? / Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool / And if my wishes came true / It would’ve been you

– ‘the 1’, from folklore

Holding all this love out here in the hall

– ‘exile’ (feat. Bon Iver), from folklore

And if I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake? / Cursing my name, wishing I’d stayed / Look at how my tears ricochet

– ‘my tears ricochet’, from folklore

We gather stones, never knowing what they’ll mean / Some to throw, some to make a diamond ring

– ‘my tears ricochet’, from folklore

I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace / ‘Cos when I’d fight you used to tell me I was brave

– ‘my tears ricochet’, from folklore

And I’m still a believer, though I don’t know why / I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try

– ‘mirrorball’, from folklore

They told me all of my cages were mental / So I got wasted like all my potential

– ‘this is me trying’, from folklore

I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere / Fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here

– ‘this is me trying’, from folklore

Don’t call me kid, don’t call me baby / Look at this godforsaken mess that you made me / You showed me colours you know I can’t see with anyone else

– ‘illicit affairs’, from folklore

Our coming of age has come and gone

– ‘peace’, from folklore

And you know that I’d / Swing with you for the fences / Sit with you in the trenches / Give you my wild, give you a child

– ‘peace’, from folklore

My only one / My kingdom come undone

– ‘hoax’, from folklore

How evergreen, our group of friends / Don’t think we’ll say that word again / And soon they’ll have the nerve to / Deck the halls that we once walked through / One for the money, two for the show / I never was ready so I watched you go

– ‘champagne problems’, from evermore

I won’t ask you to wait if you don’t ask me to stay

– ‘tis the damn season’, from evermore

And the heart I know I’m breaking is my own / To leave the warmest bed I’ve ever known

– ‘tis the damn season’, from evermore

I made you my temple, my mural, my sky / Now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life

– ‘tolerate it’, from evermore

I haven’t met the new me yet

– ‘happiness’, from evermore

There’ll be happiness after you / But there was happiness because of you / Both of these things can be true / There is happiness

– ‘happiness’, from evermore

Now my eyes leak acid rain on the pillow where you used to lay your head / After giving you the best I had / Tell me what to give after that / All you want from me now is the green light of forgiveness / You haven’t met the new me yet / But I think she’ll give you that

– ‘happiness’, from evermore

And if you’re ever tired of being known for who you know / You know you’ll always know me

– ‘dorothea’, from evermore

Will you forgive my soul when you’re too wise to trust me and too old to care?

– ‘coney island’ (feat. The National), from evermore

And the old widow goes to the stone every day / But I don’t, I just sit here and wait / Grieving for the living

– ‘ivy’, from evermore

My house of stone, your ivy grows / And now I’m covered in you

– ‘ivy’, from evermore

Now you hang from my lips / Like the gardens of Babylon / With your boots beneath my bed / Forever is the sweetest con

– ‘cowboy like me’ (feat. Mumford & Sons), from evermore

Never be so kind, you forget to be clever / Never be so clever, you forget to be kind

– ‘marjorie’, from evermore

The mark you saw on my collarbone / The rust that grew between telephones / The lips I used to call home / So scarlet, it was maroon

– ‘Maroon’, from Midnights

I don’t dress for women / And I don’t dress for men / Lately I’ve been dressing for revenge / I don’t start shit but I can tell you how it ends / Don’t get sad, get even

– ‘Vigilante Shit’, from Midnights

All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing

– ‘Sweet Nothing’, from Midnights

You know there’s many different ways that you can kill the one you love / The slowest way is never loving them enough / Do you really want to know where I was April 29th? / Do I really have to tell you how he brought me back to life?

– ‘High Infidelity’, from Midnights (3am Edition)

Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first

– ‘Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve’, from Midnights (3am Edition)

Now the sun burns my heart and the sand hurts my feelings

– ‘Hits Different’, from Midnights (Til Dawn Edition)

A wrinkle in time like the crease by your eyes / This is why they shouldn’t kill off the main guy / Dreams of your hair and your stare and sense of belief / In the good of the world, you once believed in me

– ‘Hits Different’, from Midnights (Til Dawn Edition)

You say ‘I don’t understand’ and I say ‘I know you don’t’

– ‘You’re Losing Me’, from Midnights (Late Night Edition)

Stop / You’re losing me / I can’t find a pulse, my heart won’t start anymore

– ‘You’re Losing Me’, from Midnights (Late Night Edition)

I love you, it’s ruining my life

– ‘Fortnight’ (feat. Post Malone), from The Tortured Poets Department

I saw in my mind fairy lights through the mist / I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift / Pulled him in tighter each time he was drifting away

– ‘So Long, London’, from The Tortured Poets Department

How much sad did you think I had, did you think I had in me?

– ‘So Long, London’, from The Tortured Poets Department

I didn’t opt in to be your odd man out / I founded the club she’s heard great things about

– ‘So Long, London’, from The Tortured Poets Department

You swore that you loved me but where was the proof? / I died on the altar waiting for the clues

– ‘So Long, London’, from The Tortured Poets Department

Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all

– ‘But Daddy I Love Him’, from The Tortured Poets Department

God save the most judgemental creeps / Who say they want what’s best for me / Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see

– ‘But Daddy I Love Him’, from The Tortured Poets Department

You ain’t gotta pray for me / Me and my wild boy / And all of this wild joy / (He was chaos, he was revelry)

– ‘But Daddy I Love Him’, from The Tortured Poets Department

Years of labour, locks and ceilings / In the shade of how he was feeling / But it’s gonna be all right, I did my time

– ‘Fresh Out The Slammer’, from The Tortured Poets Department

Here, at the park where we used to sit on children’s swings / Wearing imaginary rings

– ‘Fresh Out The Slammer’, from The Tortured Poets Department

The hurricane with my name, when it came / I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away / Barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine / Well, me and my ghosts, we had a hell of a time

– ‘Florida!!!’ (feat. Florence + The Machine), from The Tortured Poets Department

Little did you know your home’s really only the town you’ll get arrested

– ‘Florida!!!’ (feat. Florence + The Machine), from The Tortured Poets Department

What if I roll the stone away? / They’re gonna crucify me anyway / What if the way you hold me is actually what’s holy?

– ‘Guilty as Sin?’, from The Tortured Poets Department

You don’t get to tell me about sad

– ‘Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?’, from The Tortured Poets Department

If you wanted me dead, you should have just said / Nothing makes me feel more alive / So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street / Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream / Who’s afraid of little old me?

– ‘Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?’, from The Tortured Poets Department

You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me

– ‘Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?’, from The Tortured Poets Department

Dancing phantoms on the terrace / Are they second-hand embarrassed / That I can’t get out of bed / ‘Cos something counterfeit’s dead

– ‘loml’, from The Tortured Poets Department

I’m combing through the braids of lies / ‘I’ll never leave’, ‘never mind’

– ‘loml’, from The Tortured Poets Department

The lights refract sequin stars off her silhouette every night / I can show you lies

– ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’, from The Tortured Poets Department

Were you writing a book? Were you a sleeper cell spy? / In fifty years, will all this be declassified?

– ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’, from The Tortured Poets Department

I would have died for your sins, instead I just died inside

– ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’, from The Tortured Poets Department

And you jump up, but she’s too young / To know this song that was intertwined / In the magic fabric of our dreaming / Old habits die screaming

– ‘The Black Dog’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

Even if it’s handcuffed, I’m leaving here with you

– ‘imgonnagetyouback’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

A rose by any other name is a scandal

– ‘The Albatross’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

Cross your thoughtless heart / Only liquor anoints you / She’s the albatross / She is here to destroy you

– ‘The Albatross’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

Devils that you know / Raise worse hell than a stranger / She’s the death you chose / You’re in terrible danger

– ‘The Albatross’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

If you wanna break my cold cold heart / Just say ‘I loved you the way that you were’

– ‘Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

I changed into goddesses, villains and fools / Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules / All to outrun my desertion of you / And you just watched it

– ‘Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

Could it be enough to just float in your orbit? / Could we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses? / Cooler in theory, but not if you force it to be

– ‘Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

I’m high from smoking your jokes all damn night

– ‘So High School’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

I hate it here so I will go to / Lunar valleys in my mind / When they found a better planet / Only the gentle survived

– ‘I Hate It Here’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

Cards on the table / Mine play out like fools in a fable

– ‘The Prophecy’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

And I look unstable / Gathered with a coven ‘round a sorceress’ table / A greater woman has faith / But even statues crumble if they’re made to wait

– ‘The Prophecy’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

I was in my new house placing daydreams / Patching up the crack along the wall

– ‘Cassandra’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

When it’s ‘burn the bitch,’ they’re shrieking / When the truth comes out, it’s quiet

– ‘Cassandra’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

The goddess of timing once found us beguiling / She said she was trying, Peter, was she lying? / My ribs get the feeling she did

– ‘Peter’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

And I won’t confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn / As the men masqueraded, I hoped you’d return / With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you’d learned / ‘Cos love’s never lost when perspective is earned

– ‘Peter’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

When it’s all roses, portrait poses / Central Park Lake in tiny rowboats / What a charming Saturday / That’s when she sees the littlest leaks / Down in the floorboards / And she just knows

– ‘The Bolter’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

There’s escape in escaping

– ‘The Bolter’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

You’ve got the dragonflies above your bed / You have a favorite spot on the swing set / You have no room in your dreams for regrets

– ‘Robin’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

In the age of him, she wished that she was thirty / And made coffee every morning in a French press / Afterwards, she only ate kids’ cereal / And couldn’t sleep unless it was in her mother’s bed

– ‘The Manuscript’, from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

[katyagrayce]

Okay friends, you guessed it… it’s time for an update!

All the right guys promised they’d stay / Under bright lights they withered away

– ‘Elizabeth Taylor’, from The Life of a Showgirl

Be my NY when Hollywood hates me / You’re only as hot as your last hit, baby

– ‘Elizabeth Taylor’, from The Life of a Showgirl

We hit the best booth at Musso and Frank’s / They say I’m bad news, I just say thanks

– ‘Elizabeth Taylor’, from The Life of a Showgirl

I pay the cheque before it kisses the mahogany grain / Said, ‘They want to see you rise, they don’t want you to reign’

– ‘Father Figure’, from The Life of a Showgirl

You want a fight, you found it / I’ve got the place surrounded / You’ll be sleeping with the fishes before you know you’re drowning

– ‘Father Figure’, from The Life of a Showgirl

Everybody’s cutthroat in the comments / Every single hot take is cold as ice

– ‘Eldest Daughter’, from The Life of a Showgirl

Pretty soon I learnt cautious discretion / When your first crush crushes something kind / When I said I don’t believe in marriage, that was a lie

– ‘Eldest Daughter’, from The Life of a Showgirl

We lie back / A beautiful, beautiful time lapse / Ferris wheels, kisses and lilacs / And things I said were dumb / ‘Cos I thought that I’d never find that / Beautiful, beautiful life that / Shimmers that innocent light back / Like when we were young

– ‘Eldest Daughter’, from The Life of a Showgirl

Every youngest child felt they were raised up in the wild / But now you’re home

– ‘Eldest Daughter’, from The Life of a Showgirl

And baby, I’ll admit I’ve been a little superstitious / Fingers crossed until you put your hand on mine

– ‘Wood’, from The Life of a Showgirl

Girls, I don’t need to catch the bouquet / To know a hard rock is on the way

– ‘Wood’, from The Life of a Showgirl

So she waited by the stage door, as the club promoter arrived / She said, ‘I’d sell my soul to have a taste of a magnificent life that’s all mine’ / But that’s not what showgirls get / They leave us for dead

– ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ (feat. Sabrina Carpenter), from The Life of a Showgirl

I took her pearls of wisdom, hung them from my neck / I paid my dues with every bruise, I knew what to expect / Do you wanna take a skate on the ice inside my veins? / They ripped me off like false lashes and then threw me away

– ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ (feat. Sabrina Carpenter), from The Life of a Showgirl

[petitworld]

Acorn Creek Trail, Silverthorne, Colorado, USA by Monica Breckenridge

[vangoghcore]

by daniel_casson

[spicymochi]

choose your fav puppy

[larimar]

artistic_viral

[cricketcat9]

💖

[astrasaur]

Grogu demands piggyback rides

[secondaryartifacts]

New set photos from The Mandalorian and Grogu

[bauliya]

i think all quiet on the western front and the lord of the rings are in direct conversation with each other, as in theyre the retelling of the same war with one saying here’s what happened, we all died, and it did not matter at all and another going hush little boy, of course we won, of course your friends came back

[bauliya]

someone should remake lord of the rings as a grandfather telling a fantasy story to his grand child with flashbacks to world war one showing the dead boys and men the characters were based on. grandpa why didn’t they just fly. because they didn’t. they didn’t.

[bauliya]

i’m fine

I will never get over how Tolkien & Lewis took the horrors of war and spun them into fantasy.

Shivering in the trenches dreaming of cozy hobbit holes, shaking as bombs pockmark a forest and imagining each shallow mud-filled crater contains a new world—that maybe there are still as many beautiful things in the universe as there are bombs—that maybe the world is bigger than this moment and this ugliness and one day this will be a peaceful forest again full of small ponds.

I mean look at these photos of the shell craters in Sanctuary Woods, near Ypres Belgium and tell me it’s not the Wood Between The Worlds:

[laurenthemself]

…oh.

[changelingchilde9]

It’s also the Dead Marshes.