Taylor Swift and Wilco and songs with identical titles (plus Glenn Kotche on drums and Ethan Hawke in “Boyhood” and “Fortnight”)

In 2014, when Taylor Swift released "Shake It Off" on "1989", I connected it with Wilco's "Shake It Off" from "Sky Blue Sky" (2007). Swift's song shakes off what others say; Tweedy's anticipates being "awake enough" to shake off dreams. Now, Swift has released "I Hate It Here" on "The Tortured Poets Department", echoing Wilco's 2007 "Hate It Here". These two songs share a musician: Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche plays on Swift's tune. Further, on a camping trip in Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" (2014), Mason Evans, Sr. (Ethan Hawke), plays "Hate It Here" for his son (Ellar Coltrane) – and Hawke has a small role in Swift's video for her new single "Fortnight". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 April 2024)

 

Two concepts of “the reader” that aren’t necessarily compatible

A problem with the concept of “the reader” is that it can mean two things that aren’t necessarily compatible with each other. On the one hand, there’s a linear reader who reads once from beginning to end. This is the reader Walter Benjamin describes in "The Storyteller" (1936) as having a "consuming interest in the events of the novel", the one who wants to know what is going to happen and why. On the other hand, there is a reader who knows the whole work and has read it repeatedly. This is the reader James Joyce describes in "Finnegans Wake" (1939) as "that ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia" (120.13-14). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 April 2024)

Vieux Farka Touré at the Volkshaus Basel, 22 April 2024

I had a fourth-row seat right in the center for Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Toure's concert with his band this evening at the Volkshaus in Basel (as part of the Offbeat Jazz Festival). But I didn't sit in it. Instead, I stood over to the right side of the seats and danced right from the beginning. As always with Malian music, I had to figure out anew how to dance to each tune: sometimes by listening to the bass, sometimes to the drums, and sometimes to the intertwining lines of guitar and ngoni. But the extended jams offered plenty of opportunities to find my way into the nuances of the rhythms. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 April 2024) 

Taylor Swift songs and Miss Havisham & Estella from Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations” (1861)

I hear Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations" (1861) in Taylor Swift's "right where you left me" ("evermore", 2020): "Help, I'm still at the restaurant / Still sitting in a corner I haunt [...] / Dust collected on my pinned-up hair." Dickens's Miss Havisham has also stayed "right where you left me" in her house, with everything around her "covered with dust". Now Swift's "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024) recalls Dickens's Estella, raised by Miss Havisham to get revenge on men: "You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me / So all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs."  (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 April 2024)

Cassandra in Greek mythology, Christa Wolf, and Taylor Swift (plus a pinch of Friedrich Nietzsche)

During our listening party yesterday afternoon for Taylor Swift's "The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology", I was first struck by her song "Cassandra" for its mythological title that reminded me of "Kassandra", by German novelist Christa Wolf (1929-2011), whose work was the subject of one-third of my doctoral dissertation back in the 1990s. But then I also thought my co-teacher Rachael Moorthy would like the song, as she has already noticed Swift's multiple references to women from Greek mythology. And finally I laughed at how Swift gave another spin to the Nietzschean aphorism we had discussed on Wednesday in connection with her "Cruel Summer": "What doesn't call you makes you aware." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 April 2024)

First listening to Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” (2024)

At six am, I listened to Taylor Swift's new album "The Tortured Poets Department." It struck me that the album may have a first single, "Fortnight", but it doesn't sound like it was written and produced to be a blockbuster single. Not only that, none of the other fifteen songs have that feel to them either. At eight am, the album almost doubled in length (to 31 songs) with the release of "The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology". That's what some of my Taylor Swift students and I listened to at our listening party this afternoon. So far, the two songs I like most are "Cassandra" and "Peter" (as in Pan). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 April 2024) 

“In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” in memory of Dickey Betts (1943-2024)

On hearing the news that guitarist Dickey Betts of The Allman Brothers Band died today, I went to put on his tune "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed", the live version from the band's March 1971 concerts "At Fillmore East", with its glorious guitar solos by Betts and Duane Allman sandwiching Gregg Allman's organ solo while Berry Oakley on bass and Butch Trucks  and Jai Johnny Johansson on drums push all the soloists and each other to beautiful climaxes and interludes between them. My dear old friend Paul Baer, who sadly committed suicide in September 2016, loved this tune, so for me today it's "In Memory of Dickey Betts and Paul Baer". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 April 2024)