artemisandhersilverbow
No thoughts, just hyperfixating
JUST A NEURODIVERGENT GIRL IN A NOT SO FANTASY WORLD
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being way too into mythology growing up made me bisexual. i like everything too much. peruse my hyperfixations: nostalgia, movies + tv, music, books, a weird amount of mythology, and let's be real... just some general vibes. we crave aesthetics in this home.
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Just thinking about the line from My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys:
I'm queen of sandcastles he destroys
A lot of people have touched on Taylor using castles and palaces as a symbolic representation of her career, body of work, specifically those stolen works and versions of herself. They're locked away in a high tower and separated from Lover - TTPD Taylor.
The tension at the end of Bejeweled, when she walks smiling onto her balcony only to quickly show her castle on fire was, in my opinion, easily overlooked. Was she burning it down or had it already been burning down without her noticing? A stone castle on fire would require some orchestration.
Fast forward to TTPD, the line above from MBOBHFT stuck with me because the "boy" here is destroying her sandcastle. Sandcastles are a study in impermanence. We build them as an incredibly basic recreation of the real, impenetrable, almost indestructable thing. But we do so knowing they can't last, they won't. Eventually the tide will wash them clean away or the wind will erode at the structure until it turns back into sand.
That means "the boy" in question is preemptively destroying something that wasn't supposed to be forever anyway.
The first thing about this song that lit up my brain like a firework was the lyrical parallel to Cruel Summer. I mean, if Taylor uses the word "toy" in a song you know it's gonna be sassy af, ok? A girl takes notice.
Fever dream high in the quiet of the night
You know that I caught it
Bad, bad boy
Shiny toy with a price
You know that I bought it
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The sickest army doll
Purchased at the mall
Rivulets descend my plastic smile
But you should've seen him
When he first got me
My boy only breaks his favorite toys
Now, I have had my speculations (as have many others) about Cruel Summer not being a love song, but a PR-ing song. I almost immediately thought the same of MYBOBHFT.
Fortunately, the Barbie movie covers a lot of ground for the "why is using a kind of Barbie-Ken like dynamic excluding a romantic narrative?" Because she's Barbie, he's just Ken, Ken is basically an accessory. Anyway I think this song is absolutely talking about several people or experiences/problematic Hollywood structures etc. in a very smart twisting narrative.
"Fever dream" is playful here in the same way she uses "sickest. " The doll isn't sick and the narrator of Cruel Summer isn't running a temperature. "Shiny toy" and "sickest army doll" feel like even clearer parallels — one "with a price / You know that I bought it" and the other "purchased at the mall." I like the reversal of "You know that I caught it" and "When he first got me" because catching isn't as active as buying. Something happens to you if you catch a fever or something is thrown at you - and that feels like an entirely different he that "got" her. Another play on words because that sounds like ownership and tricking.
I was so confused by sickest army doll at first because she sings it in such a (Lana coded) morose way. I was trying to imagine a sickly Army Barbie? But I think the smart way she's written these lyrics (please read her lyric booklets they are incredibly sneaky, brilliant works of poetry) she's not referring to the "me" as an army doll. In fact what's an "army doll" little kids think are rad? Hm... a G.I. Joe?
The bait and switch of it all, the sandcastle-like metaphors, continue with the above. It sounds like "there were so many reasons why we should have been together forever." But word choice is where this poet shines.
"Litany" is one of those words that always registers to me a "a list" but it's actually got religious roots (of course - this album has so much of that): a form of prayer used in services and processions, and consisting of a number of petitions.
It can also mean "a prolonged or tedious account," which is why you hear an expression like "litany of complaints"... Got it so you had a tedious amount of prayers and petitions *checks notes* for why you could have "played for keeps" THIS. TIME. Have there been other times? Oh right, yes, she's "just repeating herself."
Play for keeps is another one of those terms we use, but don't always know it's full definition. One such definition is "to do something seriously and without showing any mercy."
This sounds less like holding onto a lover who wanted to leave or mistreated you, though I think that should also another lens to view this story... perhaps change lover to authority figure... and more like two people who struck an agreement (one that upheld some good christian values?? too far?) to battle something together... and one of them couldn't stick it out. Perhaps because "he saw forever so he smashed it up"? He was a Bolter too.
So she just wants to be put back on her shelf so she can go through the cycle all over again. In fact, pull a string and she'll repeat the lines she knows so well. Copy+paste.
"I used to switch out these Kens, I'd just ghost" to "I felt more when we played pretend / Than with all the Kens" with her GI Joe? I mean lumping a "lover" into a category with Kens and any kind of doll purchased isn't the most loving way to refer to them lol. And I can't help but notice she's only ever played pretend with all the Kens. But what do you do with your shiny toy when they don't want to play anymore?
The lyric video is simple, but each line comes up one at a time and "breaks," floating pieces falling out of frame. At the end we pan down to see the collected debris.
A pit of broken words.
Also worth noting you can see among the blurred graveyard of words a couple of them are crisp/hidden. They're "Boy breaks his only favorite" or "favorite only"... or his Favourite?
Anyway, we come back 'round to the sandcastle metaphor that got me started. I don't think Taylor's princess castle and her sandcastle are a perfect one to one match symbolically. A stone castle was built with the intention of lasting forever, if it catches on fire that would be surprising... more akin, to me, to her career or Taylor TM?
A sandcastle, however, can't last forever, it's not meant to, but you still build it knowing that. Like an arrangement, contract, role, etc. business or otherwise. For someone to snuff out a sandcastle before time or tides or the inevitable does that for you seems needlessly harsh. Even a short-lived imitation can mean something if you enjoyed building it. In fact, that's the only part that gets to live on once a sandcastle is washed away. And it seems like even that part was ruined.
#friends of dorothea#TTPD#lgbetty#my boy only breaks his favourite toys#he's just ken#lyric analysis#lyric video
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MIDNIGHTS (On A Screen Edition).
Featuring 7 3AM Bonus Tracks, 4 On A Screen Bonus Tracks, 1 Poster, 2 (out of 22) Title Card Postcards. (inspired by kurosdesign on Instagram, photo by Sylvia Ballhause)
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Colin Clive, Elsa Lanchester and Ernest Thesiger - The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
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Colin Clive, Elsa Lanchester and Ernest Thesiger - The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
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Elsa Lanchester as Mary Shelley / the Monster’s Bride
BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) dir. James Whale
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The Spotify canvas for the song changing to this moment from Fortnight where Taylor walks into the typewriter room and goes from one Taylor to “two” and disappears behind Post Malone’s silhouette… Taylor did you read my post?
(The full clip is longer on Spotify)
Ok, if you don't want to engage in some (queer) tin foiling... scroll away.
So first off, I think this song rules. It was one of the few that I let just vibe instead of doing what my brain usually does, which is scrutinize lyrics/marvel over the layers of meaning. It feels like it has Kill Bill energy and that was good enough for me.
My Albatross variation of the TTPD vinyl showed up yesterday — TTPD is perhaps the best her team has done btw — and was pouring over the lyrics last night and paused on I Can Fix Him (No, Really I Can) in particular.
The last line has been one that most people have chuckled at. Like she spent a whole song building up this menacing conceit: "this boy is bad news, but he can't hold a candle to me — I'll handle him." Only to be like, lol jk at the end.
But seeing that last line written out this way scratched at my brain... she really doesn't scream that line at all. Why is it in all caps? And while we're at it... I mean it's an accepted spelling, but technically the incorrect spelling of 'whoa.' It kind of felt, by putting it in caps, like she was calling attention to it. Was it an acronym? Not that I could tell.
But... just to double check... how had she spelled woah/whoa prior? The only song I could think of off the top of my head to check was Better Than Revenge. When reading her lyrics you really wont find 99% of the "whoas" in her discography written because they're more like instrumentals.
And that right there is a "whoa." Of course my eyes twitched at the matching colors of the two vids, but I'll get to that. And then I was only able to find one more written "whoa."
Ok, cool.
But back to Better Than Revenge... It struck me that something had been "fixed" about the song. The famous "she's better known for things that she's done on the mattress" line had been swapped out in the rerecording for "he was a moth to the flame she was holding the matches."
So I looked back at I Can Fix Him... could this be a joke/hint about "fixing" him. Like fixing the pronouns? "WOAH" is an intentional misspelling just by comparing it to her own body of work. But it would be rather clever if the "he" she's referring to (at least on this one layer of the song) was her use of that pronoun in her work. It would make the lines "I can fix him / No, really, I can / And only I can" make even more sense, imo. She's the author of this music and she's rerecording it/making it.
What's more is that the collaged flower in the lyric booklet and the aesthetic of the lyric video are giving me um... big Reputation vibes?
Hey kids, spelling is FUN! Am I absolutely living in delulu thinking that Reputation could also be "fixed" re: pronouns? Oh, I don't doubt it. But I needed to get this out of my brain, out into the world, and let the chips fall as they may and always do.
And at least Taylor Nation is also in on the joke...
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Ok, if you don't want to engage in some (queer) tin foiling... scroll away.
So first off, I think this song rules. It was one of the few that I let just vibe instead of doing what my brain usually does, which is scrutinize lyrics/marvel over the layers of meaning. It feels like it has Kill Bill energy and that was good enough for me.
My Albatross variation of the TTPD vinyl showed up yesterday — TTPD is perhaps the best her team has done btw — and was pouring over the lyrics last night and paused on I Can Fix Him (No, Really I Can) in particular.
The last line has been one that most people have chuckled at. Like she spent a whole song building up this menacing conceit: "this boy is bad news, but he can't hold a candle to me — I'll handle him." Only to be like, lol jk at the end.
But seeing that last line written out this way scratched at my brain... she really doesn't scream that line at all. Why is it in all caps? And while we're at it... I mean it's an accepted spelling, but technically the incorrect spelling of 'whoa.' It kind of felt, by putting it in caps, like she was calling attention to it. Was it an acronym? Not that I could tell.
But... just to double check... how had she spelled woah/whoa prior? The only song I could think of off the top of my head to check was Better Than Revenge. When reading her lyrics you really wont find 99% of the "whoas" in her discography written because they're more like instrumentals.
And that right there is a "whoa." Of course my eyes twitched at the matching colors of the two vids, but I'll get to that. And then I was only able to find one more written "whoa."
Ok, cool.
But back to Better Than Revenge... It struck me that something had been "fixed" about the song. The famous "she's better known for things that she's done on the mattress" line had been swapped out in the rerecording for "he was a moth to the flame she was holding the matches."
So I looked back at I Can Fix Him... could this be a joke/hint about "fixing" him. Like fixing the pronouns? "WOAH" is an intentional misspelling just by comparing it to her own body of work. But it would be rather clever if the "he" she's referring to (at least on this one layer of the song) was her use of that pronoun in her work. It would make the lines "I can fix him / No, really, I can / And only I can" make even more sense, imo. She's the author of this music and she's rerecording it/making it.
What's more is that the collaged flower in the lyric booklet and the aesthetic of the lyric video are giving me um... big Reputation vibes?
Hey kids, spelling is FUN! Am I absolutely living in delulu thinking that Reputation could also be "fixed" re: pronouns? Oh, I don't doubt it. But I needed to get this out of my brain, out into the world, and let the chips fall as they may and always do.
And at least Taylor Nation is also in on the joke...
#i can fix him (no really i can)#gaylor#the tortured poets department the anthology#TTPD#reputation tv#pronouns#hey kids spelling is fun!#WOAH!#*WHOA
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*slow claps* see how much more enjoyable that was? Not that all reviews have to be glowing, obviously tastes are subjective, but this one immediately squashes the... approach, let's call it, of other notable publications.
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this whole album is literally “never take advice from someone who’s falling apart”
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and for a fortnight there, we were forever
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Whether I’m gonna be your bike, or smash your wife or whatever Taylor Swift said.
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I'm still not over Taylor's Fortnight MV... to say it's my favorite visual work she's done would be an understatement. As with all things on this album, she did her research. Her incredible DP - Rodrigo Prieto - who has shot The Man, Cardigan, and Willow MVs. As well as, Brokeback Mountain, The Barbie Movie, Killer of the Flower Moon, etc.
There are so many ways to parse the story of the Fortnight video, but I will mostly focus on Taylor's use of mirroring to make some of the video's larger points.
I am a queer former film student so I wanna note that that's the bias I'll be writing from. If that disinterests you, no worries! This just may not be for you.
Love that we start with silent film era titles. One is black, one is white, perhaps a ying yang visual or simply representing the original album + the anthology. Could also be the light + dark of her two sides represented by Taylor and Post Malone.
The vertical alignment shift in the word Fortnight is interesting because the other time i noticed her doing this was in the closing poem for TTP with, "Some stars never align." Would be cute to have it like a nod to screenplay scene heading: INT. FORT - NIGHT
We start with Taylor, virtually still, but singing. She's handcuffed to an askew bed frame - sans mattress - with bars resembling a prison/cage.
The mirroring she's doing here is reminding us of "real life" Taylor's outfit at the 2024 Grammy's, but with the addition of white gauzy gloves + garter belt (like on tour), it reads more bridal, more bed sheet. That similar clock necklace is set to, best as I can tell, 9pm.
And she's got enough hairpins to... idk... make me spin out? Her make up evokes a little Clara Bow, Greta Garbo, legends of the silver screen, etc.
Taylor stops lip-syncing. Breaking the fourth wall, with direct eye contact, she's forced a "Forget Him" pill and unshackled from her bed prison. Unlike the next instance we get this match shot, it feels like she's telling the audience she knows we're watching and her look has a "this is what I'm forced to do" anger charged to it.
Also, the pill itself seems to break Taylor's reality from here on out. She "forgets him," but perhaps also becomes a different him herself.
She walks over, in her wacky funhouse of a prison room - skewed angles, upside down doors (those who enter from the left walk on the "ceiling" - to an actual mirror. But this mirror looks more like a one-way mirror. Meaning that the subject can see themselves, but so can others they can't see on the other side. Usually so the subject can be observed.
Still appropriate to break the fourth wall as though we are watching her in a way she can't return.
She wipes her face to reveal Post Malone's tattoos under the veneer of her prerfect facade. Once done, she utters the first "I want to kill her." She wants to "kill" Taylor TM?
I'll basically be going forward assuming that Post Malone is established in this mirror shot as a representation of Taylor, perhaps her True Taylor underneath the engineered perfection. This door/portal splits her in two on entry. From one white-clad figure to two black-clad ones. Kind of like the splitting of a prism.
Instead of exiting this upside down asylum, she goes deep into a department - perhaps the Tortured Poets kind. We get an awesome match cut/panning transition where Grammy dress referential Taylor morphs into a Victorian mourning dress. One very similar to the dresses on stage during Folklore during Eras (at the bottom of post). Perhaps also a nod to Emily Dickinson herself.
The way they design the set to make it so her asylum and office are connected feels like a not so subtle call out on how she feels about her chosen industry. Not quite a cheery take on the Lover House for ex. Time also becomes a little bendy, irrelevant when she does this portal walk.
When she enters she sits at a mirrored desk, morphing into Post Malone's silhouette. To the side we have faceless writers, also dressed in black older fashions, that seem to go on for infinity like a mirror trick.
Taylor sits down to start writing, Post Malone is already typing. They're both in black with embellished collars. We see that she has a top sheet with typed words, but under they're blank. Post has a pile next to him, along with his fountain pen, which perhaps are fully done b/c placement on the other side of him. Their desks are also arranged ever so slightly different. So Post-Taylor is a typing machine, Taylor needs to catch up...
But then Post Malone looks up to create this awesome mirrored match cut.
Taylor and Post-Taylor get to work, singing the chorus, camera cutting on their lines in mirror shots respectively.
We see a typewriter jam the same lines from the song, but specifically "I LOVE YOU." Granted, we can't be 100% sure whose typewriter it is, but we see Taylor type "Love You." Perhaps they're mirroring each other in even this task.
Eventually their stories starts leaking blue and orange/gold ether which prisms out to reveal "The Story of Us."
Really great shot of the infinity vanishing point effect from the unidentified crowd, how they're positioned makes them look like they're mirroring all of us watching/sharing our opinions.
This is where I'll stop for Part 1 because it's not ok how late this album has been keeping me up.
But a couple of things to start:
Taylor using very strong, very consistent mirroring techniques to create distinctions from narrator, character, and audience. Even the music is mirrored in the chorus with Post Malone's repetition.
By both wearing the face tattoos under a perfect exterior (the face we know her by), and immediately separating into two characters - one with her face/gender expression as we know it and Post-Taylor who now wears the face tattoos we just saw/is also sporting the face and gender expression we are familiar with him. It's Taylor TM the Brand vs Hidden (in plain sight) Identity Taylor.
Her typewriter emits an orange/golden glow from all of her repeated "I LOVE YOU'S," while his emits blue. Together they're creating the next story vignette: "The Story of Us."
One basic read for this is that Taylor could be owning her male POVs that come up in her songs (Folklore we're looking at you). Another read I have is that Taylor TM is writing the love song framework expected from her as an artist while Post-Taylor injects the devastation, anger, emotion, the heavy blues we often unearth from a song we originally thought was upbeat, romantic, unassuming. And considering these mirrored halves, I think that aligns with her own messages about her music, that people will always going looking for paternity tests - the publicized romance pulled from what we think we know about her. But perhaps the assumed truths of a song could be, and often are, driven by your gendered expectations - "Girl loves boy, sings about that." The hidden in plain sight Taylor subverts what the surface level shows.
The True Taylor is an unrecognizable author. And that writer is producing the meat of the work.
Additionally, I love that she's wearing a dress that feels taken off the Era's stage.
Folklore in particular was a really different writing era for her. She presented the characters and stories as fiction and all the sudden an unknown male collaborator — William Bowery — gets credited on it. I'd love if the message, in part, was hey I'm actually my own male writing partner. Regardless, her other half/POV was able to allow her to write truths so long as they remained unrecognizable.
But she's wearing the mourning dress, looking over at her hidden true half, looking over anxiously. And then begins to write. They're half the story that makes up the whole, one needing the other to tell the story they want to tell. Perhaps it's a call out to Folklore in particular as a solution to being limited by expectations of her signature diaristic-like songs' perspectives. Using it as a way to tell a version of the truth from a POV society or the powers that be in her life would accept it from — not Taylor TM as she is/who she's known to be.
More generally, the "male pov" and the male pronouns, just seem to be called irrelevant smoking guns in the game of knowing the unknowable - what her work, a lot of her work, is referencing specifically. These two writers, as presented, are still both Taylor. Them's the rules here.
Ok, see you in PT. 2!
#fortnight mv#music video#taylor swift#post malone#TTPD#the tortured poets department#video breakdown#multiple pov#gaylor
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I was actually speechless when my CD showed up today and "But Daddy I Love Him" lyrics stopped me in my tracks. CONCRETE POETRY??
Pattern poetry is probably the more accurate categorization for this ex., but I immediately thought the lyrics echo the shape of one of the most famous examples, "Easter Wings" by George Herbert.
I know the variants have different shapes for the lyrics (circle, square, octagon). But any googling of Concrete Poetry or pattern poetry will inevitably lead you back to the OG George Herbert (or like... ancient Greece, but ignore that for now). I also saw someone on Twitter say that the variants could even symbolize the many interpretations (and no true muse) of this song.
Below is a brief breakdown of "Easter Wings".
On its base level, in "Easter Wings" the speaker meditates on one's relationship to God. I have been thinking, prior to this booklet showing up at my house, that the "him" in BDILH could potentially be God. Or at least one interpretation of it could be. Sunday best, pearl clutching was an early tip off.
Anyway, pattern poetry is more than just shaping a poem into a fun shape or even an obvious shape. The physical shape and visual appearance of how the poem is printed works in combination with the themes and content of the poem to amplify the meaning. It adds another level (a third level?) where the poetry has to be seen to be fully understood. Also because you need to see the poem, authors use its shape to manipulate words, phrases, meanings. Essentially, if you heard the poem it would sound one way, but reading it will reveal the authors true meaning. Dear reader, indeed.
This is an oversimplification, but in "Easter Wings" the wider lines are, to borrow a phrase from "Robin," lighter. The narrowing signifying this turn to despair, pain, disconnect from God. Similarly BDILH lyrics narrow at the most biting part of the song and give way to that incredible running through field energy we end on.
And not for nothing, but the only way I would find the joke of "I'm having his baby, no I'm not," would be if she was talking about God. Lol iykyk.
Anyway, Herbert has another very famous poem. One taught to me in middle or high school - maybe you've seen it before too. It's called "The Altar". The first illustration is harder to read and a little more obvious, the second is how I've seen it reproduced more commonly (still the shape of an altar).
And naturally, the word altar made me think of another song from TTPD... So Long, London.
This woman terrifies me...
Anyway, Taylor wants you to put her reading glasses on! Album booklets, lyric videos, the choice is yours! As I always find with her booklets, she fully embraces writing out her lyrics as poetry. You'll notice a lot of changes from the Genius versions, for ex. Album booklet's punctuation, line breaks, new sentences, etc. have changed the entire "meaning" of lines/songs for me. Usually, whatever reframing I find is richer than what I had accepted on the first listen.
I've also noticed how simple the lyric videos for TTPD are in comparison to previous albums, but she's (ok her digital media team who I would not doubt are under STRICT instruction) playing with text quite a bit. Like Herbert above we have many instances of spacing, CAPS, vs lowercase, even collage like effects that completely reorder the lyrics, perhaps even the meaning.
#TTPD#The tortured poets department#taylor swift#but daddy i love him#so long london#george herbert#the altar#easter wings#concrete poetry#pattern poetry#visual poetry#album booklet#TTPD lyric video
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