OBSESSED (#4): Taylor Swift, psychopaths and a spooky gothic horror
This newsletter's gonna be a little different.
Happy Friday! You know how I typically write about three things in each newsletter? Well, I mostly wrote about one thing this week: Taylor Swift; more specifically, my complicated feelings around calling myself a fan. It wound up being pretty long, and I’d like it to live on my Substack as a standalone piece.
So! Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to write somewhat briefly about two things, then tease a bit of the Taylor Swift essay below. In around 30 minutes, I’ll hit “publish” on the essay, which’ll automatically send it straight to your inbox (I cannot change this). How’s that sound? Cool with getting two emails today? Let me know at 1-800-I-MAKE-THE-RULES-AROUND-HERE!
Briefly, some shoutouts:
Cool new Substack alert! Lillian Stone, one of my dearest and gassiest friends, is a published author, freelance journalist and humor writer who also manages to do that in an incredibly chaotic, distracting world. She just launched The Big One. Subscribe if you’re into candid insights and practical, sustainable ways to build and sustain a creative life.
I really loved “Affirmations for a Debt-Free Life,” Naomi Extra’s cartoon panel (is that what it’s called?) published in The New Yorker. Sweet, surprising and relatable.
I CAN’T STOP WATCHING…
No Country for Old Men, because apparently, Javier Bardem’s utterly emotionless Anton Chigurh is the among the most accurate depictions of psychopathy in film. It’s brilliant to watch Chigurh wield violence not to sadistically stoke fear in the hearts of his victims, but because violence is often a simplest solution to tough problems. Want to steal a car from a guy who’s parked on the side of the road? Cool! Blow his brains out so he can’t tell anyone. Need to rob a convenience store? Rig somebody’s car to explode outside, so folks will be distracted.
Chigurh takes no pleasure in doing these things, because psychopaths don’t feel pleasure the way you & I do. He’s violent because there is no part of his brain that cares about anyone who gets in his way. And that, my friends, is metal.
I CAN’T STOP READING…
“Our Share of Night,” by Mariana Enriquez, a sprawling epic of a novel that (so far) weaves a wide tapestry of a tale about family, legacy, fate, grief and inner darkness. It’s part gothic horror, part magical realism and, yeah — there’s a secret society of rich occultists that sacrifices people in its pursuit of immortality!!
This book came recommended by the well-read proprietor of a new Substack you should read. I’m around 250 pages in, with 350 more to go. In The New York Times, Danielle Trussoni describes its “vibe” as similar to Salvador Dalí’s marrying of “the hallucinatory with the concrete, the esoteric with the commonplace and the disturbing with the beautiful to create images that feel both ethereal and visceral.” Jinx! I was gonna say that!
I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT…
The Eras Tour concert film; specifically, the complicated feeling of calling myself a Taylor Swift fan.
In the nearly two decades since Taylor Swift burst onto the scene as a confessional country songwriter, her star has ascended beyond the known peaks of pop superstardom.
To-date, she’s written and released 10 acclaimed albums, few of which belong to the same genre. She’s re-recording six of those albums, an ambitious project (and flex) that’s so far been a massive commercial success. Her name is among the probably 100 or so names that most people on the planet have heard.
It wasn’t until releasing folklore and evermore, I think, that Swift gained a certain kind of grudging respect among snobbish holdouts as a singularly gifted songwriter, and I remembered what made me stop listening to her years ago. But I’m having complicated feelings about what it means to return to her music.
Catch you in about 30 minutes!