New York dispatch

swifty implications of graduation season

Greetings from New York! This newsletter may reach you with a bit of delay, and I apologise for this! I propose to you a short dispatch from New York, and reflections on graduation season, specially the Swifty implications of my very own.

I landed here a couple of days ago, in the middle of graduation season, and the weather followed suit. It was 30 degrees today! I ran the Brooklyn Half marathon on Saturday, but of course did not want to stress myself out about it so much that I wouldn’t do all the other stuff I would usually do on a visit here. If correctly planned out, the jet-lag from Europe can allow one to pack three days in one, and this is exactly what have been doing since arriving: walking up early, crossing town multiple times over, takeout coffee in hand, going to museums, catching up with friends, and walking over 20,000 steps before even running my half. (You’ll likely hear about the BK half some other time!).

Since landing I’ve been seeing so many girls riding the subway and walking 3rd Avenue in their cap and gowns, and it has really brought me back to my own NYU graduation, which, I cannot believe happened four!!! years!! ago!!! I maintain that this is one of the best weeks to be in the city and maybe that’s because I remember the week of my own graduation as one of the best weeks of my life!!! It was a week of bittersweet endings and scary beginnings, gratitude, urgency and euphoria, walking through the greenwich village in my cap and gown, being congratulated by strangers in that specific American way that is both naive and earnestly thrilled :’).

I was ready to be done with school by the time I was a college senior, that was until graduation week arrived and felt completely overwhelmed by joy and love for my school and these incredibly formative years of my life (it would only take a few months for me to want to go back and apply for grad school!). I distinctly remember sitting in Bobst, the NYU library, knowing it was the last time I’d be there (under these circumstances, at least) and began feeling intensely nostalgic for a moment that was fleeting right through me, which was also the last moment of quiet I remember from that week. Until suddenly everything felt urgent, taking finals and handing in assignments like a check list, packing up my apartment, and saying goodbye to friends all while juggling the excitement my family flying in and our plans for the week. By the time they arrived, I moved out of my apartment and into my mother’s hotel room, taking with me my dog and my many suitcases.

Now, I was one of the blessed students that were NYU class of ’22, which mean that Taylor Swift was the speaker at the university-wide ceremony. I can’t even express the enormity of this, other than to say that there couldn’t have been a better, more sentimentality charged speaker to send me out into the world.

If you are at all interested in the Taylor of it all, and how the speech figures into her career, you have come to the right place. I won’t make this exhaustive because I have the tendency to lose people when I go all ‘swifty’ on them. But since it happened at MY graduation, let me go ahead, why don’t you?

First, we ought to establish the meaning and traditions of what is known as ‘easter-egging’ in the swifty-verse, because ‘easter eggs’ have gotten a bad rep for being intentional coded messages sent by Taylor to the fans in a marketing type of way, but like any respected academic field, some practices and terminology evolve. ‘Easter-eggs’ used to point to the way in which Taylor communicated with fans, way before the hugeness of her success, when that kind of back and forth with fans was more manageable and wouldn’t snowball into full-blown conspiracy theories (for instance, Taylor use to capitalise letters throughout lyric booklets inside her album in a way that spelled out the names of her ex-boyfriends, though this tradition has died with her understandable desire for more privacy! All that is to say, Taylor once encouraged the detective fan behaviour). However, there exists a subtler type of easter-egging, one that I find to be far more interesting. The easter-egging I’m interested in, is simply a natural by-product of Taylor being a vulnerable storyteller. Meaning, that sentiments she expresses in songs often only make sense with time. For instance, via repeated motifs and metaphors, making the subject or muse of a song traceable throughout her discography. Ideally, one interacts with all this information and the muses like with characters in a story, but other times it feeds the intense parasocial relationship that swifties are so known for. So, before I humiliate myself, just know this is coming from a place of love and interest in the craft and evolution of Taylor’s career and storytelling!

When I think of this speech, Taylor giving us advice and sending us on our way out into the real world, I can’t help but think about where she was headed, too. In the speech, she tells us, “Today, you leave New York University and then go out into the world searching what’s next, and so will I.”

Intriguing??? I hadn’t thought twice about this when I first heard it, but it is clear with the couple of years of Taylor-mania that followed that she knew she would have a lot on her plate in the months to come, and likely a lot she would have to give up in return.

Again, the gift of hindsight shows that this graduation speech actually came at a fascinating point in Taylor’s career: on the heels of Folklore and Evermore, Taylor had amassed the most creditability she ever had! And knowing what we know about the work that would come later (three albums and two break ups later), her speech demonstrates that she was on the precipice of some sort of reinvention. Not to mention that her rerecording project, which was also earning her a lot of goodwill among the public and music industry, likely fostered a lot of reflection when it came to her past writing and the evolution of her career. This, I can only imagine, then probably led to further introspection about where she was headed, both in her personal and professional life.

In the months that would follow, Taylor would release her cryptic album, Midnights, dump her longterm boyfriend, date an old flame that, as it turns out, was one of the most significant muses in Taylor’s body of work (more significant that we knew at the time), all while embarking on her biggest tour yet, release The Tortured Poets Department in the middle of the same tour (an album which makes the old flame narrative really click), and meet her future husband.

But back to May 2022. In her speech, Taylor actually weaves in some lyrics from the yet unreleased album, Midnights. Knowing the album now, I think one of the most interesting songs that relate to this moment, to this imminent reinvention hinted at in Yankee Stadium, is the closing track “Dear Reader.”

It ought to be said that Midnights, in general, is an album where Taylor had so much to say, but couldn’t say it yet, she hadn’t dumped the bf yet and unleashed the trickle down chain of events that this would produce. But on “Dear Reader” she wants us to know she’s was about to change everything about her life, from her love life to the way she engages with fame, but all of that will only click later, when Matty Healy starts showing up to the Eras tour and she!!! while!!! on!!! stage!! mouths I love you to him and say this song is about you during the instrumental of “cardigan.” This was nuts!!!!!

In “Dear Reader,” she says,

Dear reader / Burn all the files, desert all your past lives / And if you don’t recognize yourself / That means you did it right

In the song, she is gearing up to burn her life to the ground and start over, a theme also treated on the song “Midnight Rain.” Most jarring, is the next line,

Never take advice from someone who’s falling apart

Later,

So I wander through these nights / I prefer hiding in plain sight

Which is what she’s always done, hiding in plain sight, writing her darkest thoughts for the whole world to listen to. The media may pick up things here and there, usually her easy jabs at ex-boyfriends, but Taylor had been writing about this unfinished business love-affair for YEARS and it went unnoticed! She is always hiding in plain sight, and this precisely is best thing about being a swifty: close-reading is rewarded and endlessly satisfying. Again, not in an invasive way, but in the same way one reads a novel. There are connective dots and through lines, and Taylor’s entire artistic project is documenting matters of the heart and being unafraid of embarrassment and vulnerability if it furthers the art.

Later she encourages the ‘dear reader,’ to find another “guiding light,” hinting there are things we don’t know, that we don’t have the full picture, and that,

You wouldn’t take my word for it / If you knew who was talking

:o

You can watch the full speech here. She is simply endlessly charismatic and the speech is otherwise full of wonderful advice. I’ll never forget being there!!!!!!!