The "folklore" of Taylor Swift -- Part 3: "To Live For The Hope Of It All"

In her newest album, folklore, Taylor Swift presents a trio of songs that she calls the "Teenage Love Triangle". These songs, "cardigan", "betty", and "august", are each sung from a different character's point of view about the relationships within the triangle. 

In the song "august" one character sings: 

Back when we were still changing for the better
Wanting was enough
For me, it was enough
To live for the hope of it all
Cancel plans just in case you'd call
And say "Meet me behind the mall"
So much for summer love, and saying "Us"
'Cause you weren't mine to lose. 

In this particular song, the narrator is "the other woman" in The Teenage Love Triangle, yet as I listened to these lyrics in particular, I couldn't help but resonate with the pulsating rush of infatuation. It took me back to when I was naïve and nineteen, "still changing for the better" and living for sun-drenched dreams of romance and fairytales. 

****

"It's your freshman year, and you're gonna be here, for the next four years in this town." 

Taylor Swift sings these lyrics on the song 'Fifteen', the second track on her second album Fearless. It's one of the examples of writing that I like to think about whenever anyone accuses Taylor's music of being singular in focus; that she *only* writes about the boys who broke her heart. This song, much like others in Ms. Swift's collection is autobiographical, but instead of naming names and seeking revenge, she's simply giving us a picture of her high school experience that is both personal and universally applicable to the challenges of being fifteen and the crushing blows of a first love gone wrong. In this song, she speaks to the loss of virginity ("And Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind. And we both cried.") and identity crisis ("I find time can heal most anything. And you might find who you're supposed to be." ). I remember what it felt like to sit with girlfriends as they shared stories of first sexual experiences, and of course, holding closely to my dear friend, Aaron, who was struggling with every ounce of his identity. 

Taylor Swift released her second studio album, Fearless, in November of 2008. I was nineteen years old, and in my freshman year at Calvin College. 

 I struggled with leaving high school behind me. The loss of that familiarity sent me into my own depression, one from which I didn't have the tools to come out of readily, or the knowledge to ask about. So, I threw myself into my studies, and played Fearless over and over and over again. Hearing Taylor sing about high school and small towns, was really comforting for me. This album became the soundtrack of that academic year. 

It certainly helped that this was also the album that catapulted Taylor Swift to the top of the charts, so it seemed like her music was everywhere. I was so excited when her break-up song "White Horse" was featured on an episode of Grey's Anatomy (which was my favorite show at the time), and the first single, "Love Story", became the song that my roommate, Tiffany, and I most often played when we needed a study break. We always sang our loudest during that key-change in the final bridge-to-chorus: ("He knelt to the ground, and pulled out a ring and said MARRY ME, JULIET! YOU NEVER HAD TO BE ALONE!") The high-school anthem, "You Belong With Me" (which became one of the top songs of 2009), was a second favorite and, to this day, I think it has one of the best melodies that Swift has released. It's just really fun to sing along with! Also, I'm really fond of the lyrics, "And you've got a smile that could light up this whole town." When I first heard those words, I couldn't wait to sing that about someone I really loved. 

Of course, Fearless was also the first album that gave the public fodder for the celebrity "Who's Who?" behind the lyrics. In her first album, Taylor sang about guys named Drew and Cory, fellow classmates of hers. You know, before she was famous. It was on Fearless that Taylor wrote about her relationship and break-up with Jo Jonas (of the Disney-endorsed boyband The Jonas Brothers), but I didn't really care about her dating life at that time. I was too busy figuring out my own heart. Freshman year of college brought multiple new crushes and heartbreaks.

As I attended a small Christian college, there was always the buzz about "freshman frenzy", "ring by Spring," "MRS degree", and the coveted "Calvin walk". Though I didn't grow up in Christian culture, where marriage was viewed as something that should be pursued in your early twenties, my incurable romanticism was absolutely encouraged in the setting where so many spoke about finding their husband or wife by twenty-two. I don't know that I necessarily yearned to be a wife or a homemaker at the time, but I desperately wanted love. I wanted to be loved, and to give it. This was a fervent desire that lasted for much of my twenties (and one that led to some pretty disastrous life choices), but when I was at Calvin, my feelings were just exposed and raw, all the time, it seems. 

I fell "in love" quickly, and often. I imagined every chance encounter to be the beginning of my own grand love story. I lived as though walking through the pages of my own romance novel, hoping that I'd just causally bump into my soulmate on one of Calvin's picturesque lawns, and I'd forever tell the story of meeting my one true love. There were a lot of guys who caught my attention that first year at Calvin, and all of them had their own Taylor Swift song in my playlist.  There was the junior who offered to take my arm and walked me to my dorm one night. And there was the boy I *literally* fell for on my first day on campus, who preferred the company of my roommate. Then there was a guy from my past -- we had gone to church together as kids, and our parents knew each other. (Maybe we'd fall in love and get married in our home church!) And then I met the brooding young writer with soft eyes, and a smoking habit that he was continually trying to break. That one, in particular, was an unrequited love that lasted years. And of course, Taylor always provided the perfect words for my broken heart.

Musically, and lyrically, I don't think that Fearless is the best album that Taylor Swift has to offer. It's definitely the least played in my collection of her music. But I deeply appreciate what it did for her as an artist -- allowing her a more public stage -- and what the album meant for me at a time when everything felt like constant transition and anticipation. And, there are certainly some treasured gems in that tracklist. In 2015, when I met my husband, everything about falling in love was terrifying. Yet David made me feel safe, and treasured. I felt... fearless.

So, one night, while the snow fell around us, we sat in David's car, and I played him the title track from the Fearless album. I told him, before we listened, "These lyrics are exactly how I feel about you." 

We're drivin' down the road

I wonder if you know

I'm tryin' so hard

 not to get caught up now

But you're just so cool

Run your hands through your hair

Absent-mindedly makin' me want you

And I don't know how 

it gets better than this

You take my hand 

and drag me head first

Fearless

And I don't know why

but with you I'd dance

In a storm 

in my best dress

Fearless

So, thanks, Taylor. 

The "folklore" of Taylor Swift - Part 2: "Peter Losing Wendy"

In her newest album, folklore, Taylor Swift presents a trio of songs that she calls the "Teenage Love Triangle". These songs, "cardigan", "betty", and "august", are each sung from a different character's point of view about the relationships within the triangle. 

In "cardigan" one character sings: 
"I knew you, tried to change the ending, Peter losing Wendy."

That lyric, Peter losing Wendy brought to mind my own high school experience. How I first fell in love with my own boy from Never Never Land, and how Taylor Swift's first album provided the soundtrack for that season of my life. 

***

I hated country music. 

Unfortunately, because I had to take the public school bus for seven years (middle school through high school), I heard it constantly, because that's the only thing my bus driver would play on the radio. Even at Christmas time, when I begged her to play something more festive. And bringing my own mp3 player and headphones didn't help, because she played it very loudly. Two hours a day. Five days a week. For seven years. That's a lot of time filled with songs about wide, open spaces, and a backwoods night at the bar. 

To be fair though, country music from the early 2000s was probably the safest bet to play on a bus full of public school kids. While there were songs about rowdy nights out with the farmer's daughter, most of the music I remember from that time was filled with post-9/11 patriotism, and evoked Evangelical messaging. You wouldn't find that kind of morality with Britney Spears or the Pussycat Dolls. Over time, I came to appreciate the storytelling in the songs that played. Carrie Underwood's "Jesus Take The Wheel", Randy Travis's "Three Wooden Crosses", and Martina McBride's "Anyway" were some songs that I particularly enjoyed because they spoke of a faith that, on some level, I connected with, and was trying to make sense of. 

My best friend, Nicole, LOVED country music. There's not a summertime memory that I have of the two of us that doesn't include Nashville's greatest. She was the first in our friend group to get her own car, and I remember gleefully riding along with her on many trips in the summer of 2008. Because I'm legally blind, I'll never know the exhilaration and independence of driving a car that I own, but having a best friend with her own car was the next best thing. As we would ride along that summer, the anticipation and freedom of adulthood spread out before us like the winding, rural back roads of our small West Michigan town. 

"You need to hear Taylor Swift's song, 'I'd Lie'," I remember Nicole telling me during one car ride that summer. "It's country music, but it's exactly what you're going through right now." 

We had been in a conversation about my other best friend, Aaron. I was in love with him, and had been for quite a while. Everyone knew it. 

Aaron and I had been friends since the sixth grade, had performed many duets together in the school talent show, and had gone through some really tough times together. We spent hours a day together, and during our sophomore year,  he took me out on my very first date. Our senior class voted us "Couple That Wasn't...But Should've Been", and we walked across the stage in front of everyone to accept that award. Everyone knew that I loved Aaron. Everyone, it seemed, except for Aaron. 

Nicole turned up the music so that I could hear this new singer who apparently read my diary. Immediately, the familiar sweeter-than-sweet-tea harmonies of a country love song filled the car. It was the lyrics, though, that kept me hooked. 

Lines like, 

"He'll never fall in love, he swears

As he runs his fingers through his hair. 

I'm laughing, 'cause I hope he's wrong." 

And...

"Shouldn't a light go on? 

Doesn't he know

That I've had him memorized for so long?" 

were all I needed to convince me that I needed to buy Taylor Swift's music as soon as possible.

Taylor's self-titled debut album (which was released in 2006) didn't contain "I'd Lie", but it was filled songs that accessed pieces of my heartache for Aaron. That whole summer, I was filled with such melancholy - fear of what leaving high school behind would mean, fear that I would lose all of my friends, and the ultimate fear that Aaron would forget me in his quest for fame, and building a foundation to set off to Hollywood. I remember sitting up until the early hours of the morning, playing Taylor's songs, "Cold As You", and "Invisible", and "Teardrops On My Guitar" over and over and over again on my CD player, crying into my diary as I wrote prayers to God, asking why Aaron wouldn't love me.

My ache for Aaron continued throughout my freshman year of college. There were other crushes, certainly, but something so magnetic about the skinny kid from back home. I wrote poems about him for my English homework assignments, and I kept his senior picture tucked away in the back pocket of my diary. He was the boy in my heart's back pocket, the thousands of pictures kept "in my mind, so I can save them for a rainy day", to borrow the Swift lyric from the song "Stay Beautiful".  I was jealous of the dreams that took him away from Michigan, and I was afraid of the other girls he met on his jet-setting back and forth across the country. I found that Taylor's chorus of "Stay Beautiful" became one of my anthems as I dealt with Aaron leaving me again, and not having a clue about the brightness of the torch that I carried for him.

"You're beautiful. 
Every little piece, love. 
And don't you know? 
You're really gonna be someone. 
Ask anyone.
And when you find
Everything you've looked for. 
I hope your life
Leads you back to my front door.
Oh, but if it don't,
Stay beautiful." 

Aaron wanted to be an actor, and got his start as Peter Pan in Disney World. He was perfect for the role  -- eternally youthful, thin, energetic, nimble and ever-chasing his dreams "straight on 'til morning." And I wanted to be his Wendy.  

***

For Christmas 2009, Aaron sent me a beautiful six-page love letter, and lavished me with thoughtful gifts. He wrote to me about having visions of our future - the children we would have together, how we would support each other in our careers, and other really serious stuff. I remember thinking that the depth of the letter was something that should warrant the presentation of a ring. I remember going home for Christmas break, really confused about how to feel. I was both angry and touched. Angry because we had been playing this game of "Will They or Won't They?" for years, and touched because - maybe? - this was a "sign" that Aaron and I were supposed to be together. I let myself think about the idea of marriage with him, and in some ways, it was comfortable. 

And it played with my heart. Because I knew something about Aaron that Aaron hadn't even told me, yet. 

My best friend, Aaron, whom I had fallen in love with, was gay. 

While Taylor Swift may write about traditional teenage love triangles, my love triangle with Aaron was always and forever going to be the two of us, and his attraction to guys. He grew up in a traditional Christian home. Being attracted to men was a struggle of his that we talked about many times, often in the hypothetical, but I knew that Aaron was gay, even if he wasn't ready to admit it to the world. He was bullied by so many people in our high school. My upbringing was much more open to accepting homosexuality, so I always showed Aaron that I would accept him, no matter what happened. Aaron has told me that it was my care for him during those dark times that saved him from taking his own life. May that be a lesson to all of us. Compassion literally saves lives. 

Yet, I also wanted to believe that I could be enough for him. To believe that I could be the one woman who made him decide that "Yeah, I like guys, but Cassaundra is all the woman I need." I'll never forget that, when Aaron eventually did come out to me in a McDonald's parking lot in December of 2011, he told me,"You would be the ideal wife, you know." That was supposed to be comforting, I know, but I distinctly remember looking down at my cold french fries and thinking, "So why not choose me?"

I've had nearly a decade to reflect back on that reaction. I realize now that I didn't have enough self-worth to believe that any man would ever want me as a real wife - the kind of wife with whom he would share sexual desire, intimacy and all-encompassing companionship. I honestly thought that I would be content "playing house" with a closeted gay man for the rest of my life, and that even if I wasn't truly fulfilled, this would be a loving and sacrificial thing to do for Aaron. At the time, keeping up appearances mattered so much to Aaron. And, somehow I thought that that if we married, it would grant me a semblance of my own dreams. Being married to a gay man, I thought, was better than not being married at all. 

Since that time, thankfully, Aaron and I have both found our place in the world. We inhabit different spaces, both literally and metaphorically. He lives out in California, and I'm still here in Michigan. He works as an actor on the sound stages of Hollywood, creating stories for the masses. I make my living as a counselor, working in a tiny office, listening to the stories of one. His faith life is marked by the expressive teachings of Pentecostalism, and I have found truth among the"frozen chosen" of Presbyterianism and Reformed theology. Yet, for all of our differences, we are still so close, and so dear to one another. 

We both still listen to Taylor Swift, and talk about the impact that her music has on our lives. When her album 1989 released a multitude of radio hits in 2015, we cranked it up and belted out the lyrics. That same summer, we recorded our duet of  Taylor's "Love Story" together, with Aaron playing the ukulele and me singing about a Romeo that I had met that summer. (Hint: I was totally using Taylor's lyrics to sing about my now-husband, David.) 

Today, the lyrics of "Stay Beautiful" are still true for my relationship with Aaron, even if the meaning has changed.

"And when you find
Everything you've looked for. 
I hope your life
Leads you back to my front door.
Stay beautiful." 

I am thankful for first loves, and final loves, and friendships that withstand the changes of time. No matter where life leads, I'm thankful for the beauty of these memories, and the music that calls them back to my heart.  

***

SONGS REFERENCED:

"cardigan"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLSUp53y-HQ

"I'd Lie"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVC7YdJEZI4

"Stay Beautiful"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THgjpSEzUoI

Cassaundra and Aaron, 2006. 

The "folklore" of Taylor Swift: Introduction

2020 has been quite the year. That's the understatement of the century, and though we're near the end of July, I know we all feel entirely fatigued about this year. Many people are uncertain about how our world looks today, and what we should expect for tomorrow.

Personally, I have always found comfort in listening to music, and one singer /songwriter in particular has been "with me" through all the ups and downs of the past 12 years. 

Taylor Swift. 

I've written about Taylor Swift's impact on my life in previous blogs on this site -- her lyrics have provided blog titles, Facebook photo album titles, and the words to my heart's deepest breaks and highest elations. I feel a kinship with her. It helps, I think, that Taylor and I the same age, so I really do feel as though we "grew up" together. We have similiar passions (red lipstick and our love of cats, to name two), and it seems that with every album Taylor has released throughout her career, my own life mirrored the diaries found within her songs. On her most recent album, "Lover", for example, Taylor sings a song that she wrote for her mom, who is battling brain cancer, "Soon You'll Get Better". My dad was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2018, a few months after I got married, and I can't help but think of his struggles when I hear that song. 

But more than that, Taylor Swift and I are both writers. We connect with the world through the cultivation of words, and the weaving of stories, both beautifully universal and poignantly personal. Taylor wears her heart on her sleeve in her lyrics about love, and politics, and dreams and doubts. I try to engage similarly with my limited audience. I speak truth about what it's like to live with my physical disabilities, advocate for inclusion for disabled people within all spheres of life, and share the beauty of the gospel because knowing Christ has transformed my life. Taylor and I both write about the simple joys of love found after years of loss, and hope to point our audiences to the beauty of everyday moments. 

This morning, I logged onto my social media to find that Taylor announced that she will be releasing her 8th studio album at midnight on July 24, 2020. The album is called "Folklore" and is the singer's first release since the news that she had lost the rights to her first six studio albums. It got me thinking of that word, "folklore". A quick Google definition of that word yields the following: "The traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth." 

Taylor's stories are the stories of "my community". Women who have dealt with first loves, and first losses. First jobs, and moves into new apartments and new lives. Women who have dealt with stalkers or sexual harassment, or the doubting of their capabilities because of some characteristic like gender, ability, or age. Women who have been bullied, betrayed, comforted and cared for. Women who are in love, and can't help but sing about it in a thousand ways. 

In the closing remarks of today's announcement, Taylor said, "My gut is telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world. That’s the side of uncertainty I can get on board with." So, with that in mind, I'm going to start a series about the impact of each of Taylor Swift's albums in my life. I'm putting it out into the world. 

Fans know that we call each album release a new Taylor Swift "Era" which really helps to connect with Taylor's newest  folklore concept -- that stories are passed down through generations. 

There will be 13 blog posts in this series - this introductory blog post being the first. Why 13? That's Taylor's "lucky " number, and she's always clever in how she makes that connection.  I will speak about each of the albums that have been released since 2006, including one blog post about her Netflix special and conclude with my thoughts about the newest release which debuts tomorrow, July 24th (7/24 converts to 13, if you break it down: 7+2+4 =13).  I've wanted to do something like this for quite some time but never felt that it was worth it, or that anyone would read it or care about how much her music matters to my life. 

But if Taylor Swift has taught me anything, it's to be "fearless" -- to wear my heart on my sleeve, and to write about the things that matter to me.