Mostly you look back and say, "Well, OK. Things might have
been different, sure, and it's too bad, but lookā
things happen like that, and you did what you could."
You go back and pick up the pieces. There's tomorrow.
There's that long bend in the river on the way
home. Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating
through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where
trees reach out from their deep dark roots.
Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows
till they learn that floating, that immensity
waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust.
Maybe somebody has to explore what happens
when one of us wanders over near the edge
and falls for awhile. Maybe it was your turn.
I usually tell my students that āclose readingā means looking at what is actually on the page, reading the text itself, rather than some idea ābehind the text.ā It means noticing things in the writing, things in the writing that stand out. To give you some idea of what this means, Iāve made up a list of five sorts of things that a close reading might typically notice: (1) unusual vocabulary, words that surprise either because they are unfamiliar or because they seem to belong to a different context; (2) words that seem unnecessarily repeated, as if the word keeps insisting on being written; (3) images or metaphors, especially ones that are used repeatedly and are somewhat surprising given the context; (4) what is in italics or parentheses; and (5) footnotes that seem too long. This list is far from completeāin fact, no complete list is possibleābut the list is meant to begin to give you an idea of what sorts of things we notice when weāre doing close reading.
What all five of my examples have in common is that they are minor elements in the text; they are not main ideas. In fact, your usual practice of reading which focuses on main ideas would dismiss them all as marginal or trivial. Another thing they have in common is that, although they are minor, they are nonetheless conspicuous, eye-catching: they are either surprising or repeated, set off from the text or too long. Close reading pays attention to elements in the text which, although marginal, are nonetheless emphatic, prominentāelements in the text which ought to be quietly subordinate to the main idea, but which textually call attention to themselves.
Most of you have been educated to ignore such elements. You have been taught to seek out and identify the main ideas, dismissing the trivial as you go. This has had to be trained into you: read to a young child sometime, you will notice she has the annoying habit of interrupting the flow of the story to draw attention to some minor thing. Close reading resembles the interruptions of that child. It is a method of undoing the training that keeps us to the straight and narrow path of main ideas. It is a way of learning not to disregard those features of the text that attract our attention, but are not principal ideas.
Jane Gallop,Ā āThe Ethics of Close Reading: Close Encounters,ā Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Vol.16, No.3 (Fall 2000), pg.7-8 (x)
"Hi. The quality of my speaking voice is the product of two things that Iām not sorry for. One is that I went to, I was lucky enough to go to a Knicks game last night. I screamed for 100% of it, and then I got home and I was like, āYou gotta stop screaming. Youāre screaming too much. Youāre screaming instead of talking. Youāre too excited.ā And I was like, āOkay, Iām not going to scream tonight.ā And then I got to witness the amazing performances that I saw tonight, and then I just kept screaming. I just never stopped screaming. And so this is what you get, and again, I make no apologies for that. Iāve had a blast. Tonight has been amazing.
I want to begin by thanking the person who introduced and inducted me tonight, and thinks this is the first time he has inducted me into something. But what he may not be taking into consideration is that through his decades of spellbinding storytelling, Steven Spielberg has unknowingly inducted me and countless others into his sacred club of expansive world-building. From the time he was a kid, every time he dreamed something up, he wanted to do anything humanly possible to be able to show it to you. I watched his films pivot between different genres, from action, to sci-fi, to historical epic, to drama, to comedy, romance, fantasy, to musical, and I watched him ace every single genre. And that kind of limitless creativity isnāt just inspiring to burgeoning filmmakers. Because of examples of Stevenās, I trusted my imagination, regardless of it was taking me somewhere new and uncharted, and then every time I dreamed something up, I wanted to do everything humanly possibly to be able to play it for you.
A few months ago when the Songwriters Hall of Fame asked me about my heroes and the creatives who shaped my storytelling and who I might want to present this award to me, I said Stevenās name. And about an hour later to my absolute delight, I ended up on the phone with him and his legendarily effervescent wife, Kate Capshaw, who is here tonight. And he was telling me, yes, absolutely, he would be thrilled to be here. I was completely blown away because the man has a massive film called Disclosure Day thatās coming out at midnight tonight, and heās still going to agree and show up to do this for me a few hours before it comes out. Wouldnāt that be impossibly hard to balance? Wouldnāt that be too difficult, scheduling-wise? Iām trying to give him an out. At which point, Kate said something Iāll never forget. She said, āGood and true things are easy.ā And if I look back at my entire 23-year career in music: the ups and downs, the industry battles, the trials and tribulations, the tears and the cheers and the dogpiling of doubt, the criticisms, both fair and unfair, the complete loss of privacy, the world tours, and the ego wars, and the twists of fate, the absolute magical chaos of this path that I chose when I was too young to remember it ever being a choice at all. Songwriting was the easiest thing I ever did. Not because it didnāt take effort ā it definitely did; not that it wasnāt frustrating at times, because it could be; and not that my songwriting didnāt haunt me relentlessly until I cracked the perfect internal rhyme scheme for the third line, the second verse of the book where my teachers called me out in class for not paying attention ā because that definitely happened. But when I say that songwriting was the easiest part for me, I think what I mean is that it was instinctual. No one taught me how to do it. I had to be taught how to entertain a crowd, and learn choreography, and be less annoying, and navigate the industry, and fiercely protect my own sanity. I had to learn all of that over time, through difficult lessons and massive amounts of trial and error and chaos and calamity. But songwriting, for me, was pretty much the only thing I ever just naturally did.
My parents tell me stories about driving home from taking me to see Disney movies, and in the theaters, they were noticing I was singing the songs from the film on the way home, in the car, but I was changing the lyrics and the melodies to be about my own life. As a little kid, I loved to sing. I loved to do childrenās theater performances. But everything came together when I learned to play guitar at 12. I wrote my first song after learning my first three chords. It felt easy to work incredibly hard at this. It felt easy to nurture something I loved so much, to watch calluses form on the tips of my tiny fingers and to become a constant observer of the human condition. Because peopleās feelings, passions, and motivations always fascinated me, and it was easy to choose songwriting over everything else in my life. Ā But it couldnāt have been easy for my parents and my brotherāIām good [crying]āto just pick up and move our entire family from Pennsylvania to relocate to Nashville so that I could hone my craft in the songwriting capital of the world. But after it became obvious that this was not even remotely a temporary phase their tween daughter was going through, they uprooted their entire lives to move me to Music City. And even though words are kind of supposed to be my thing, I will never be able to express my gratitude to you guys for doing that for me. Youāre the reason Iām doing it.
In Nashville, I took meetings, and I played acoustic shows until I was able to secure a publishing deal. I got signed when I was 14āoh, thanks! And I got the chance to work with incredibly wise and experienced cowriters. People like Liz Rose, Troy Verges, Hillary Lindsey, Robert Ellis Orrall, Angelo, The Warren Brothers, and the late but so very loved Brett James. So Iād written over 100 songs on my own at that point, but this would be my first experience cowriting. My parents have raised me to be overprepared, show up early, never assume the world owes you anything. And I might have been 14 years old, but I didnāt want anyone in a professional setting to treat me like a baby, or for these songwriters to think that I expected them to write songs for me to slap my name on. So at this point, I started to approach songwriting like a full-time vocation. And that didnāt mean just showing up to my appointments and hoping the ideas would show up too. It meant spending nearly all of my free time writing ideas in preparation for my writing sessions, and then stopping myself at a certain point to allow my cowriters to later weigh in. So some of these ideas were fifty percent done, some were seventy-five percent done, some were just a hook with lyrics and a melody or a chorus. I stockpiled them, so that when I went into a writing session with a cowriter, Iād play them and sing them a few of these ideas, sort of like it was a pitch session, and whichever idea they liked the best is the one that we would finish together. I kept long lists of words that I loved, and I added to it every time I thought of a new one. I developed a serious fixation on alliterations and juxtaposition. And I wrote poems when I didnāt have the right melody yet.
When I was inspired by my own life, my curiosities about the world, or my very dramatic but extremely dire crushes on boys at school who had never even once talked to me, I wrote about that. And if I wasnāt inspired by my own life, Iād use other methods to spark my imagination. I figured, if the idea doesnāt come to you, you have to become your own search party and go find it. Oftentimes, Iād put a movie on. Iād pause a scene, and try to write a song from each characterās perspectivesāeven the villain. Iād explore what they were going through and try to say it in a vernacular that that character might use. And this is how I learned that every person has a self-constructed justification system that they live by, and we each get to decide what choices weāre willing to condone ourselves. We each decide what we see as good and true, fair and right. And so with my metaphorical Mary Poppins bag of hooks, choruses, and bridges, and my nonmetaphorical backpack from sophomore year of high school, Iād walk into my writing sessions on Music Row.
One of my favorite stories from this time in my life is when I got a chance to write with one of my favorite songwriters of all time, Craig Wiseman. Yep. Craig is an absolute savant of a writer, but heās also one of the funniest people Iāve ever met too, so I know that I can tell this story. I brought in about five different semi-formed songs that I thought were really strong. Because it was Craig Wiseman, I led my pitch with a song I really thought was special. It was pretty much done except for a few lines in the bridge. So filled with nervous anticipation, I played it on guitar and sang it for him, and when I finished, he very kindly told me tht he thought it was good but he didnāt really get it, and heād love to hear the other ideas I brought. A few songs later, we landed on one that resonated better with him, and we had a fantastic writing session. It turns out, you really can and should meet some of your heroes. But years later, we still look back on that session and we laugh about that first idea that I had played for him. I had ended up going home and finishing the song on my own later that night. It was called Love Story. Finishing that song that night was me trusting my instincts as a writer, regardless of any feedback or information I had about what other peopleās take on it might be. I think now more than ever, in an industry that seems to be consumed by metrics, data, and analytics, and weāre all trying to predict whether something will trend or not, like, writers need to trust their human intuition. And I think the thousands of hours Iāve spent lovingly working at this craft have taught me to really be able to identify the ideas that jump out at me and sparkle and linger, the ones that matter to me the most.
I have to say thank you to Sombr for that perfect performance. And his writing is so exceptional that it makes me actually envious, and I love that feeling. Heās going to be the top of my Spotify Wrapped this year, guaranteed, like itās locked, itās in the bag. A lot of my late night debates with my friends about the state of the music industry involve me saying very loudly, āSombr is the future and he does it all on his own and he doesnāt need AI. The kids are fine.ā And so obviously, Shane is a very well-adjusted person and artist, and doesnāt need any of my advice at all. There are so many incredible writers that I love who have come into their own recently, and if I had advice for young artists, though, who should perhaps be interested in it, I would say that you really have to prioritize what you love down to your very core, because youāll need that if your song ever gets heard by the public, or the critics, or the haters posing as critics, or the people who are chronically online, or the robots posing as people who are chronically online. Songwriters have a real balancing act that they have to conduct every day, because inherently, weāre supposed to let it all in, feel deeply and sensitively to the point of near-delusion, and then reflect those feelings and delusions back to the world in the form of a three-and-a-half minute sonic landscape, or a ballad, or a folk tale, or a battle cry, or a 10-minute coming-of-age song about a scarf.
So itās hard to harden yourself to certain brutal elements of this world, but allow me to now make a hard pivot and pull out a quote I love from the show Yellowstone: āWhen a father says to his son, itās the one constant in life, son. You build something worth having; somebodyās gonna try to take it.ā Thank you, thank you very much, thank you. So, John Dutton was talking about a ranch, but Iām using this quote to refer to your self-worth, your peace of mind, and your singular vision as a creator. Positive feedback and people loving what you wrote feels incredible, and I hope you get lots of it. But you need to be ready to receive negative feedback, whether you seek it out or not. Itās no longer a shock that this is how things work, but sometimes it feels like I have this conversation with a young writer every other week. If you make anything awesome, someone out there is going to say horrible things about it, or twist what you meant into something completely unrecognizable to you. What I hope you discover is this: You can be sensitive, but also durable. And you can accept that feedback, and skepticism, and criticism are inevitable. You can take whatās useful or constructive from that information, and leave out whatās simply damaging to your creativity. No one does or should make art that appeals to everyone, everywhere, all the time. My favorite art is detailed and singular in its voice, therefore it canāt be digested and metabolized by everyone who experiences it in the same way. Iām very frequently told by people how they feel about my music, that they never really got my music until they got their heart broken, or started driving their daughter to school every day, or until I made an alternative album in the pandemic called folklore, or that they only like the hits, or that they only liked the ones that werenāt hits, or that they donāt like any of it at all. But it doesnāt feel uncomfortable for me to get feedback of all sorts because I know where I stand regarding the work Iāve made.
As writers, we can only hope to meet people where they are in their lives, but you canāt ever orchestrate or force the encounter. You just have to hope that in some exquisite happenstance, you bump into them on the same path at the same time, that somehow, amidst the noise of life, a line we wrote or a melody that we crafted cuts through, and they hear it and they feel something, that they get chills or feel lighter or think of someone they love. Our goal is to elicit that glint of recognition in another human being, because something that felt good and true to us feels good and true to them in the same time. And in that moment, when someone blurts out, āI love this song,ā it was easy.
Before I go, there are so many people who helped me get to this podium, who vouched for my writing and cared about my perspective before anyone cared about my name. And then the fans came along, and they wanted to hear my stories, my prose, my hooks, my heartache, and nothing, nothing delights and surprises me more than the fact that 20 years after my first song came out, they still want to read the next chapter. Nothing makes me happier than when someone tells me that they used to listen to my music with their parent, and now, decades later, they listen to it with their own child. [crying] Iām good. Or that they listen to it with their best friend, or when a couple tells me that Love Story is their song, or somebody does a cute little dance to The Fate of Ophelia, or I hear people in different countries singing Opalite in their own accents, or someone tells me that the song Enchanted gets their baby to stop crying. Itās, Iām humbled by the ways that fans have immortalized my songs in their own individual ways, allowing them to be the underscore of some of their real life expeditions on this Earth, the magnificent moments, as important to me as the seemingly mundane. Lastly, I know that when it comes to legacy, there are so many songwriters who have had such remarkable careers before me, and I know that the Songwriters Hall of Fame could have chosen any of these deserving and brilliant writers to receive this honor this year, but you chose to include me in this group of exemplary songwriters to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, class of 2026 tonight. So I want to thank the voters for celebrating and honoring the best and trust parts of my life. I will be forever grateful. Have a good night guys! Thank you!"
ā Taylor's induction speech into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 11, 2026 (x)
April this year, not otherwise
Ā Ā Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Ā Ā Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Ā Ā Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.
There rings a hammering all day,
Ā Ā And shingles lie about the doors;
In orchards near and far away
Ā Ā The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;
Ā Ā The men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.
The larger streams run still and deep,
Ā Ā Noisy and swift the small brooks run
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Ā Ā Go up the hillside in the sun,
Ā Ā Pensively,āonly you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep.
pixelskylines
gummygunk
amandla
