redantsunderneath:

I’m reading Taylor Swift’s diaries now, the four on the special editions of Lover. They start at age 13, so compassion should be exercised, but she’s no normal kid, and I find her fascinating.  She has gifted kid syndrome - she looks at everything in terms of whether people like what’s she’s executed. She doesn’t know how to relate to people other than “do they approve of my works?”  She wants to learn (self help) but the take home of the personal growth has a lot to do with showing others appreciation through gifts.  For her, choosing what to buy/style is a large part of her identity.  My contention of her exemplifying the struggling subjectivity of an object/Laura Palmer type is supported.  Often this issue is a masculinized one pertaining to “work,” you are what you’re good for, so I look at this and see a version of my life with narrative art instead of clothes/decor and no “being famous.”  But she has to contend with the horror of being seen.

She flew home because she was lonely and was so glad she did because she “wrote a song called Red on the plane.” Her introspection has aspect of alien autopsy with really nice candles burning. 

The 4 journals are all contemporaneous (though not 100% in order) and are curated to emphasize her excitement at good things happening, how down she gets, the fact that family is important, and the fact that she actually writes the songs.  There is a longing for human connection and a having to be goal directed 24/7… it’s noteworthy when there is a day off, and she wants you to know she can appreciate this as long as she’s helping her mom choose a light fixture.  The diary seems like she imagines someone reading it and there are many stories of “I played it for them and they loved it.” At 13, she’s expressing that she doesn’t want to be at a large label where she gets lost, but Capitol won’t give her the deal she wants.  

All of this could be written last week, but somehow this doesn’t matter because it’s selected to paint a picture anyway, and there is ample subtext.  She writes about how she’s getting old at 21, and feeling like the girl before the girl you spend your life with/valorizing never getting married at 16.  There are lines of “what good will I be when I’m useless.” The pro guy stuff is all  princess fantasies and she undermines every instance by repeatedly, harshly disbelieving the myth.  She wrote a song called White Horse about the hero myth being soul rending bullshit which is the best unknowing Laura Palmer nod this side of this “secret diary” itself.  

It calls attention so some of her writing ticks, like the “didn’t you see this relationship was your shot at perfection yet you threw it away” and I really get this can’t mess up paranoia/fear of uselessness that hangs over everything.  All the relationship songs going back are as much or more about her struggle to make her own identity happen through an “audience.” All of the business stuff is about how producers and celebs see her and her work.  There is a long passage of hating the album cover for 1989 until she saw a polaroid that chopped off her eyes but retained her lips and body.

I think releasing this is an exorcism.  There’s no cancer or the solid guy.  There is a bunch of never had a real high school experience so my idiom is stuck there, which explains all the cheers and marching bands and prom dresses. But I think that’s over.  If the next album’s not a baby album, then it’s a wedding one then baby one.