Taylor Swift's "Midnights:" portrait of a train-wreck genius
Dear M,
The goal of any great poet is shattering the boundary between what’s personal and what's private.
Human beings are big on privacy. In fact we bury most of the things we feel out of an inability to explain ourselves properly, or out of self-preservation, or tactics, or just plain embarrassment. But this turns most of our existence into an untapped oil-well, ready to spout; and the ability to release buried and mysterious things with words and symbols is an art form in itself. Some of us call that art “poetry.”
The main problem is, the things that give us life and the things that are killing us are oftentimes the same things* — the hidden things; and if you spill your guts at the wrong time in the wrong way you lose your job and get punched in the nose. This is why being an artist is dangerous, and the best artists are usually scoundrels.
A really good artist is also rare. Most people attempting to spill their guts don’t have the skill, first of all, to sugarcoat the sacred things and make them come alive. And secondly, they don’t have the timing. Taylor Swift has both. Her latest album, Midnights, is probably the most personal record I've ever heard, and it taps into all kinds of things we’ve all felt but had to keep inside**. Whether this deserves censure or a thank-you is up for debate, but I enjoyed the album a lot, so I’m going with both.
In short, Midnights is a portrait of a single, “successful” middle-aged woman in crisis. The music is pretty good, and it has a dreamy feel because the album itself is a sad dream. Its main themes are hating yourself, feeling alone, missed opportunities, and what-if scenarios.
“What if?” is a gift and a curse to humanity, but it hits people of varying ages differently. The young person asks it looking forward, and the aging person asks it looking backwards. Taylor Swift is middle-aged and alone, so her what ifs are mostly regrets, and tend to involve lost lovers. Midnight Rain and Question…? are probably the best of these tracks — about people she tossed aside, or wasn't ready for, who are out there doing well and probably forgot about her. A part of Midnight Rain, about a married ex, goes
It came like a postcard
Picture perfect, shiny family holiday
Peppermint candy
But for him it’s every day
So I peered through a window
A deep portal, time travel
All the love we unravel
And the life I gave away
This isn’t technically homewrecking, but it’s the germ of it; and a better snapshot of a lonely and jealous mind in song form is probably impossible***. The song isn't wholesome by any means, but the dream itself feels real, and you can imagine yourself in her shoes, and it hurts. Question…? is another great song along the same lines,
Does it feel like everything’s just like
Second best after that meteor strike?
And what’s that I heard?
That you’re still with her?
That’s nice, I’m sure that’s what’s suitable,
And right
But tonight
Can I ask you a question?
The question, as you might guess, is whether he felt what she dreams he did, and if he's willing to admit it. It’s just a question, she ends, trying to save face — but the question begs for an action, lending a shyness to her audacity which only makes the lyrics feel more real. Romance is living in the unknown, and in the possibly unattainable. That’s why it’s full of anxiety.
Beside obvious regrets, it’s clear Taylor feels like a victim. I say this because Anti-Hero and Vigilante Shit deal with revenge, but they're both clearly fantasies — proof that whoever's really getting to her is beyond her reach: probably the gossip columnists, possibly the record executives.
I have this dream my daughter-in-law kills me for the money
She thinks I left them in the will
The family gathers 'round and reads it
And then someone screams out
“She's laughing up at us from hell!”
Dreaming about revenge is another thing we do and don't talk much about — the little fantasies about people who've wronged us, or how they might have wronged us, and we getting the upper hand and ruining their day. Very common, alongside romantic jealousy, which she brings to life for better or for worse.
Anti-Hero is the big hit of the album, and probably the most honest. Lyrics like,
did you hear my covert narcissism
I disguise as altruism
Like some kind of congressman?
and
One day I’ll watch as you're leaving
‘Cause you got tired of my scheming
and
I’ll stare directly in the sun
But never in the mirror
make us feel we’re getting to confession-box levels of truth-telling. But in fairness to her, isn’t this song technically staring in the mirror?
The album brings up more questions. We can't say she’s a good person; but is she a bad person on the verge of becoming a better person? And if she's voicing the deep-down feelings of a generation of spoiled, selfish, ruined Millennials, is it possible they could be waking up? Even if it's too late?
Probably not, as one of the last tracks, probably the most upbeat and anthemic of the lot, shows she’s going the opposite direction. Karma, one of my personal favorites, a God-is-on-my-side song for the godless, goes,
You're terrified to look down
‘Cause if you dare, you’ll see the glare
Of everyone you burned just to get there.
It's coming back around
And I keep my side of the street clean
You Wouldn’t know what I mean
‘Cause karma is my boyfriend
Karma is a god
Karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend
Karma's a relaxing thought
Aren't you envious that for you it’s not?
— proof that despite her confessions about throwing innocents under the bus, sleeping with people and then not returning their calls, pretending to care about others, sending “I miss you messages” to married exes in public, scheming and dreaming about fighting, and being an all-around pain-in-the-ass, Taylor Swift believes her hands are clean — and that not just justice, but all-seeing cosmic justice, is totally on her side. So she’s just like most of us after all. Except she doesn’t just sing about it. Like a true artist, she makes us feel it.
Yours,
-J
P.S. If this review sounds negative, I need to be clear: this album is the first I've listened to in years that made me say “wow,” out loud, to myself in my car — to five or six tracks. If you don’t have patience for a whole album, my favorite tracks are “You’re on your own, kid,” “Question…?,” “Midnight Rain,” and “Karma.” Vigilante Shit is probably the worst song on the album; and a few tracks, such as Bejeweled and Mastermind, are pretty embarrassing when put next to the gems.
*Camus writes,
Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.
This is true, and we know that parents tell their kids not to say mean things; but as I get older, I’m amazed how we have to keep even positive feelings locked up. Too much happiness to see somebody, too loud an affirmation of their worth to you, too warm or too long of a hug, and suddenly you're an outcast. Especially if you’re a man. Especially if you’re ugly.
I know this isn't the way all men are; and in Saudi Arabia men can walk down the street holding hands; and we’re told that David not only loved Jonathan more than women, but that he kissed him, and that “their souls were knit together.” I regret I can't express my feelings for women, too — and that when they express them for me, they have to do it in hiding, like spies. The time you’re most likely to hear how someone loves you is when you’re going away and never coming back. Most Americans’ policy is the opposite of love ‘em and leave ‘em. We tend to leave them and then love them.
I don’t question the propriety of keeping many of these feelings private, especially between sexes: I’m merely saying that even the best things hurt and have to be hidden, and maybe this is what made Anglo-Germanic society so special in the first place. We were never really cold; we just crammed our feelings deep within ourselves until they caught fire and blasted us to the moon. And when we came back down after the release, we found we were the most faithless, sexually lawless people on the planet. We had ignored the middle ground between license and prudery, tried to hold our heads too high, and ran right into a signpost — which read be ye not overly righteous. And now we’re lying in the ditch.
**The inability to explain what we feel isn’t just a burden to others, but to ourselves. Aside from frustration, there’s the terror of feelings you can’t explain or define — and watch the fear melt as soon as you can put them into words. Is this mastery of a situation? Or is it the child in you turning on the light in your mind — and finding out that what was hiding in the dark wasn’t a monster or a killer, but just the furniture?
***Swift comes across like a scandal, but her confessions were already outdone centuries ago. Byron's Well! Thou art happy, about visiting an ex-lover after she’d been married and just had her first baby, feels more real — and more dangerous — than Swift.
Well! thou art happy, and I feel
That I should thus be happy too;
For still my heart regards thy weal
Warmly, as it was wont to do.
Thy husband's blest — and 'twill impart
Some pangs to view his happier lot:
But let them pass — Oh! how my heart
Would hate him if he loved thee not!
When late I saw thy favourite child,
I thought my jealous heart would break;
But when the unconscious infant smiled,
I kiss'd it for its mother's sake.
I kiss'd it, — and repress'd my sighs
Its father in its face to see;
But then it had its mother's eyes,
And they were all to love and me.
Mary, adieu! I must away:
While thou art blest I'll not repine;
But near thee I can never stay;
my heart would soon again be thine.
I deem'd that time, I deem'd that pride,
Had quench'd at length my boyish flame;
Nor knew, till seated by thy side
My heart in all — save hope — the same.
Yet was I calm: I knew the time
My breast would thrill before thy look;
But now to tremble were a crime
We met, — and not a nerve was shook.
I saw thee gaze upon my face,
Yet meet with no confusion there:
One only feeling could'st thou trace;
The sullen calmness of despair.
Away! away! my early dream
Remembrance never must awake:
Oh! where is Lethe's fabled stream?
My foolish heart, be still, or break.
Whether these feelings are good or bad are beyond the point. The feelings were felt; and many of us were too scared or too wise to confront them in public.
I mentioned that the private world is an oil-well, and it is. And how you release what’s buried determines whether you light a million lamps in a million homes — or have an ecological disaster.
****Burke wrote A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. But he wasn't old enough to make it poetic or to even give it a good title; and when the poetry finally spilled out of him, he was an aging man, and it was about corruption in India, representation in government, and the collapse of Old France — things that almost nobody can be poetic about. Which puts him in the class of the gods.
Young people have a lot of feelings, but they usually don't have the experiences or the words. Old people have the words and experiences but they don't feel the same things they used to. And I don't think anyone can be eloquent or poetic unless they feel something strongly******.
I think there’s a short span, somewhere in the middle of our lives, where we can be real poets — and if we didn’t train ourselves for it, or we aren’t paying attention, we’ll lose our only chance at it. This being said, I think the older you get, the more poetry appeals to you. Not because you’re feeling things, but because you’ve felt more things — and this means you can understand what others have felt. And in fact you need to see others express what they feel to feel young again.
*****Beauty is beyond precise definition. It simply hits you when it hits you and you can’t explain it — a force of nature that makes you feel out of control. You can try to explain it, like Solomon, and make yourself look crazy; but in the end it’s so primal and elemental that it just is, like God — who realized He was beyond words, like beauty, and called Himself I Am.
The scientists, who tend to over-value themselves and their way of life, always believed we would figure out the universe. But explaining the universe is also impossible. One law is explained by another law until you run out of laws to explain things by. So you end up just saying the universe is. And when you realize you can’t explain the last things you tried to explain, they become the first things. And then the thing you thought you’d mastered becomes less a science and more of a witchcraft; and instead of becoming an engineer you end up becoming a shaman. It turns out there is no explicable reason. What you do just happens.
The same goes for beauty. You see it, hear it, feel it — but you don’t get to define it. For better or for worse, it defines you. You have to live within the rules or you’re an outcast — or, more accurately, a criminal.
******How does a man know he’s a good friend? If his friends explode in bursts of rhetoric, or poetry. This means he’s allowed them to touch the divine in themselves — that he's given them permission to feel, and that because they have permission to feel, they have permission to declaim. A man whose friends are dull around him is around dunces, or a bore. When we find our people, we touch the face of God — and gush.