Vipers Dressed as Empaths (Times Infinity)
Last month, Taylor Swift released “The Tortured Poets Department,” a 31-song anthology of sorts, that has been generating a lot of discourse, some legitimate, and mostly utterly unhinged and it inspired me to write this piece.
Contrary to what people expected, the album doesn’t seem to be about her ex-boyfriend of 6 years, Joe Alwyn, but rather, seems more focused on her few month, problematic situationship, Matty Healy of the 1975. However, my personal response is that it makes perfect sense that the meltdown she describes in TTPD isn’t triggered by the end of her long-term relationship but rather, by Halsey’s ex-boyfriend ghosting her. I personally found that so #relatable given that I didn’t process my 4-year relationship ending in 2021 and was in active denial until I very briefly dated a senior research director of the Trump campaign and then it hit me like a ton of bricks and I too had an absolute meltdown. Sometimes, you just need to date someone you’d never actually be in a serious relationship with, who all your friends openly hate, to come to terms with why you’re really upset and only then can you heal from that particular grief.
“Breaking Free” from High School Musical came up on my shuffle and I was just struck by how weirdly quasi religious the lyrics are in a way I don’t think would fly today in children’s media, which is probably why Disney and Nickelodeon have no real teeth compared to when Hannah Montana and iCarly were in their heyday. Like, the bridge to “Breaking Free” is literally, “More than hope, more than faith/This is truth, this is fate/And together we see it comin'/More than you, more than me/Not a want, but a need/Both of us, breakin' free.” I watched High School Musical at my friend Lauren’s house, in her mother’s room, when it came out way back in 2006, and it didn’t strike me as particularly odd then but that particular brand of religiosity absolutely feels unique now.
It’s 2024, another election cycle, so I find myself thinking about 2020, the last election cycle. In 2020, I was in love with someone who … made me feel very “Writer in the Dark” by Lorde for lack of a better word. I wasn’t able to have a public Twitter account, I wasn’t able to comment on politics publicly since what I said reflected on him. I wanted so badly to be someone he could love and in the process, I became someone I didn’t know let alone like. Now, I’m with someone who makes me feel very “Gypsy” by Lady Gaga and I’ve never been happier but in general, being reminded of who I used to be makes me extremely grateful to be where I am now.
I haven’t written it yet but after all 3 parts of the season 11 finale are released, I plan to write a screed on Vanderpump Rules and the media. The preview to this piece is, “In an odd way, I think about reality TV like I do about political media.”
Bernard Hill, who played Théoden in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (2001-2003), recently died and naturally, I returned to The Ride of the Rohirrim in Return of the King, as I often do.
There’s something extremely poignant about the sons (and daughters!) of Rohan riding to what they believe is certain death, literally chanting “Death!!!!!” before the charge set to Howard Shore’s score, and it hit me hard first time I saw it in the very front row of the theater with my father next to me and still gives me goosebumps to this day.
Théoden’s last words,“I go to my fathers, in whose mighty company I shall not now feel ashamed,” feel different now than it did when I was 9. My own father is getting older, and a few weeks ago, when my boyfriend was out of town, he came to eat dinner with me, and he told me that in the years left to him, he wants to give Jude (the golden retriever) the best life possible, and see me happy and married and settled, and that’s all he asks for. To be clear, my dad has been warning me of his impending death since he was 25, but it’s a lot scarier for me now that he’s in his early 50s.
I’ll end this by sharing pictures of my new love, Esther the kitten, who my boyfriend and I adopted in late March.