History #

A bit of music history #

Taylor Swift’s Speak Now album has always resonated with me. I love the optimism, the knowing that good things never last but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be cherished, and how you can feel what you feel, and want something really bad. It’s extremely relatable.

Timeless is especially close for me. “I’m gonna love you when my hair is turning gray, will have cardboard box of photos of the life we’ve made….” It’s so wistful, hopeful, and in general romantic. I really thought this would be me forever. But I think even though Speak Now will always hold a special place in my heart, at some point you just have to age out of the album. Not any song in particular, but the album in general.

But not 2 months into this year, Red has taken over my listening, specifically with State of Grace and Treacherous.

A bit of recent history #

I met a girl recently, and we’ve had a formal dinner and drinks together, and I thought it went well. But here’s the thing. I think about her a lot. Like a lot. Like I overanalyze texts and simple things. I think I’ll tell her I like her in a couple of days. I’m really scared, and I think I like her a lot more than she likes me.

Red vs Speak Now #

Real Life in Red #

Red is a little different from Speak Now. Whereas Speak Now seems primarily to center on fairy tales and love, Red centers on longing with flavors of chaos and uncertainty. Right now, it feels like every moment is fleeting, and the more I lose them, the more I want them all back, because soon there’ll be nothing left to lose. Maybe that’s why it works so well right now. Maybe it’s Oxford. Or maybe it’s about moving into something real for once.

I think writing about life when you’re 18 might be more about what you could be, what could happen, and what could be beginning. It’s all at your fingertips; you just need to grasp it.

But life when you’re 20 is much different, despite only being 2 years apart. Writing about it is more about what could have happened, what should have happened, and how everything is slipping away. The youth, the boundless opportunity. It was inevitable, of course, and it’s not a bad thing at all, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t mourning of some sort of untouchable youth anyways.

That’s what makes Red hit hard lately. “How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22?” makes so much sense all of a sudden, even if I’m not 22.

But love is also more real in Red #

Speak Now seems to have everything: longing in Enchanted (and I Can See You), love in Mine/Ours, and loss in Last Kiss. These are real, innocent, and very… black and white.

But Red is nothing like that. The singular difference is that in Red, Taylor’s view of the world has matured into realizing that you don’t need to be this “hero” to everybody nor ”flawless” in ideology and that people aren’t either for or against you. People are just… people. And that’s what lends its chaos. It’s much harder to consider this.

This is exactly why I like Red now. I don’t feel like a character in a story. I just feel like me. And I don’t think I want to feel like a character in a story. I want to be myself, who might be inconsistent with my own rules and values. That just means I don’t fully know him yet. But I am me, and I know that every day I wake up I try to be a good person who finds meaning in big and little things. And even that’s not compatible with everyone. Taylor says “All we are is skin and bone, trained to get along,” but still we don’t. I know that to be me is not to be universally loved. I like the things I like, and that means some people who don’t might not ever associate with me. That’s not a problem. That’s just real life. And that realization makes all the difference.

But people hurt people, too #

I think at some point we learn from experience and we know what some things mean. We aren’t naïve like in Enchanted where all we know is how we feel and what we want. We know the meaning of what we want. We don’t just blindly follow our feelings. We are aware of what meeting someone for coffee is and what going to the movies means. We know that to love somebody is to risk yourself.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it. “Nothing safe is worth the drive.” Of course we could go our whole lives without risking anything. It’s easy, it’s free, it’s safe. But it’s not how life is meant to be lived. Treacherous doesn’t just say that love is treacherous by design. It says that life is. But we like it. We like these things in spite of it.

And I think I finally realized that.

I always thought that I could live a meaningful life without ever risking any cost. But when it comes to relationships with people, you have to give and take. And I think this realization is what is driving me right now. There are people in my life that matter to me, and people in my life I want to matter to me. What’s the difference? The latter doesn’t know enough about me. The latter can’t hurt me. And that’s fine. But that difference is what moves people between those categories.

I want to be someone who feels deeply and can connect deeply. But it’s never safe. It’s treacherous. And though I don’t like it, I’ll risk it.