Taylor Swift’s folklore: Part 3
I knew you’d come back to me
“If your cascade ocean wave blues come” —peace
How do you trust again after being deceived by the one you trusted most?
folklore is bookended by two very different songs about life after betrayal. The first is about a chance encounter with an ex, “it would’ve been fun if you could’ve been the one,”(the 1) and the last is about a woman running off with a new lover in what should be a romantic getaway. Too bad she’s overwhelmed by “insurmountable grief” from a heartbreak that “should be over” (the lakes).
Swift’s depictions of life post-betrayal have a markedly darker worldview, but ultimately remain optimistic.
So, which version of life-after-betrayal is true? Is she “doing good” or is she collapsing under “heartstopping waves of hurt?” (the 1, the lakes).
I would argue both.
Some of Swift’s characters process pain through the idea of fate. In invisible string, lovers don’t choose each other, but “one single thread of gold” ties them together across time and space. This means all those “past mistakes,” “axe[s] to grind,” “boys who broke my heart,” and “hell” are necessary penance before “heaven.” In cardigan, even when James “tried to change the ending” by leaving for another woman, Betty knew he would come back to her--and that she would be heartbroken until he did.
Destiny finds meaning in pain. While Betty is confident in her beliefs, the narrator of invisible string doesn’t sound so convinced. She doesn’t say fate is real, just that it’s “so pretty to think” all that turmoil was for a greater purpose. As a listener, I’m hesitant to believe it either. After the heartbreak of hoax, the gaslighting of mad woman, the annihilation of my tears ricochet, the bitterness of exile, the deceit of illicit affairs…am I to believe this current relationship won’t turn? That this “thread” is strong enough to protect her? That really “baby…it’s cool…with [you]?” Yet, there is hope.
“Chains around my demons” - invisible string
Not all characters move through recovery with levity. In this is me trying, a devastated narrator attempts to explain herself to an ex. She’s reeling. I could pick any line of the song to illustrate her struggle, but I’ll choose: “I got wasted like all my potential” and “could’ve followed my fears all the way down [the lookout].” As Swift says in the documentary folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, sometimes not jumping off a cliff is trying. All the fun-loving booze of Part 1 takes a sinister meaning as this character struggles to stay sober through heartbreak and a career downfall: “I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere” and “but I didn’t pour the whiskey.”
Like most stories in the album, this character’s pain doesn’t really come from the other stuff, it comes from the loss of the personal relationship: “I didn’t know if you’d care if I came back.” The “you” is her ex-lover. She regrets her own behavior in that relationship, saying “my words shoot to kill when I’m mad / I have a lot of regrets about that,” a turn of phrase reflected in mad woman: “they [scorpions] strike to kill and you know I will.”
Yes, this character finds a way to move on like the rest (she goes out “at a party”) but not without feeling “like an open wound” and not without being plagued by memories of her ex-lover: “you're a flashback in a film reel on the one screen in my town.” The metaphor of love as land, or “my town,” emphasizes the relationship’s impact on her.
Swift’s depictions of life post-betrayal have a markedly darker worldview, but ultimately remain optimistic. Yes, the betrayals “have frozen my ground” (hoax) but the freeze isn’t permanent: “a rose grew up out of ice frozen ground” (the lakes). Characters are resilient. If we permanently lock the door to our trust after betrayal, we lose out on life. It might hurt to be vulnerable again, but to remain isolated is a slower death.
"A rose grew up out of ice frozen ground" - the lakes
Resiliency can be thought of as recovery after hardship. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, in his book about trauma The Body Keeps the Score, notes “Being traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on—unchanged and immutable—as if every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past.” Resiliency is a deep knowing that the hardship is over, then taking back control of your life. You don’t run away, you process the pain and move forward.
Jane Fonda talks in an interview about what she believes is the key to resiliency: “When ill adventure and mishaps come…resilient people…know when support is there and they can take it in. Someone who's not resilient can be surrounded by love and they can't metabolize it…And after a knockdown, they can't get up” (Where Everybody Knows Your Name, 59:42).
“When ill adventure and mishaps come, resilient people know when support is there and can take it in.”
- Jane Fonda
Resiliency means opening ourselves to a community and accepting support. Van der Kolk also emphasizes the importance of relationships: “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health.”
This is why recovery after betrayal can be so hard. How can you feel safe to let people in, if letting people in was the very thing that hurt you?
Personally, I don’t think it’s a choice. I think resiliency is instinct. Fonda says, “I've had therapists tell me that they can tell when someone walks in the door if they're resilient. Many people think that you're born with it. I think so. And then you can build on it” (59:42). The concept of resiliency is as inexplicable as it is simple: “I'm resilient, so I didn't succumb” (1:00:59).
All characters in folklore adopt resiliency in their own ways. Some find meaning in pain, others try to inch through devastation, and finally, one woman tries to convince her current partner why she’s worth staying for. She’s reaching for that “warm body that might love her or teach her or take her in,” that Fonda talked about (59:42). It’s heartbreaking when that warm body doesn’t celebrate you back.
peace starts the cycle anew: “our coming of age has come and gone.” This time around, the narrator expected that new-relationship-high to settle down.
The song is about a woman who views herself as the reason her partner can’t live in peace. Apparently danger lives in her. She takes the blame for the natural ebbs that come with any relationship: “the rain is always gonna come if you’re with me.” There’s rain in every relationship. Why does the narrator think this “danger” is unique to her?
“And they called off the circus, burned the disco down. When they sent home the horses and the rodeo clowns” - mirror ball
There’s a line in peace, “but there’s robbers in the east, clowns to the west,” that alludes to the song Stuck in the Middle with You by Stealers Wheel, “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.” The narrator of Stuck grapples with the relational chaos that comes with fame, “When you started off with nothing and you're proud that you're a self-made man, and your friends they all come crawling, slap you on the back and say, ‘Please, please.’” Swift doesn’t say it outright, but perhaps she thinks her partner’s lack of peace is due to her fame.
Just like you can’t make someone stop drinking, you can’t make someone else happy.
The narrator of Stuck is just as ill-equip at dealing with this fame-mooching-circus, “Trying to make some sense of it all, but I can see it makes no sense at all.” He’s just as worn-down by it, “I don't think that I can take anymore.” The difference is, he doesn’t blame himself. He’s not happy to be in the middle of the chaos, but he is happy to be with his lover: “Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.” It’s sweet.
Meanwhile, the narrator of peace blames herself for everything. She promises everything as compensation, “I would die for you in secret,” “sit with you in the trenches,” “give you a child,” “keep your brittle heart warm.” Instead of her and her lover holding each other in the middle, laughing at the clowns around them, she cuts herself down.
All this promising and apologizing is an attempt to counteract her partner’s “cascade ocean waves blues.” She feels like a failure for not giving her partner the contentment that can only come from within himself. She repeats the question “Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?” four times. She’s begging. After the betrayal we’ve listened to in the album, it’s not hard to understand why. She doesn’t want to lose him.
But, just like you can’t make someone else stop drinking, you can’t make someone else happy. I have a feeling it wouldn’t matter how famous she was, her partner would find some reason to blame her for his unhappiness, and she would absorb that reason as truth.
And with that, our final tale of lore comes to a close. But don’t worry, there’s (ever)more where that came from.
“Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die” —the lakes
