Taylor Swift is my no. 1

And other truths not entirely mine

Is there a more modern indicator of a life lived interdependently than having never chosen to play your most streamed artist of the year?

I’m not anti-Swift (some readers may know I have a playlist of ‘survival songs’, and you can bet ‘Shake it Off’ features) I just wouldn’t consider myself a Swifty. I am, however, an adult in the life of a girl who absolutely is. A girl who will draw, paint and craft for hours to the tones of TayTay. Hours that I am often witness to or comrade in. And so here we are - My most streamed musician of 2024 is Taylor Swift.

How did I feel when I learned this? I laughed. I frowned. Comically close together, actually. I thought about how many people, particularly those with children, wouldn’t bat an eyelid or expect any different. I smiled about joining that club, alongside a low level harrumph that my favourites weren’t at the top. Parents tell me this is a common combo. All perfectly relevant and fair responses to a playlist, and a life, co-created, I reckon.

I think it’s fairly common for humans to spend some time intentionally working out who they are, what switches them on, what they bring. Very likely more than once, across a lifetime. I hear a lot of romance around that ‘working out’ - How important it is, how beautiful it can be etc etc. Certainly in the places I’m listening and thinking, there’s simultaneously more and more acknowledgement that humans live and thrive together as a species, not when we isolate ourselves. But I hear less conversation about what it means to walk those knowings into the world to live them: Out into the magical, rocky, ridiculous mess of things. Do you become less or more of yourself when you recognise that you’re one tree in a forest? Is it strange to feel protective of both the collective and your individual self? Is what’s lost the stuff you shouldn’t have been so worried about anyway? If some things are lost, what’s made?

“No man is an island” said the poet and priest John Donne, in a moment of only just swerving death. Somewhere in the extremity and malaise of it all, he knew it to be true that his life depended on connection. Not just with his doctors. Not only with God. People. I know this too, even without a near death experience, but I am also an introvert. One with her own little flat, the skills to feed and entertain herself sufficiently and a spacious imagination to roll around in. I have preferences and quirks and unconscious systems for things. Spending time with people is my favourite way to use the energy I have, but it’s topped up best when I’m on my own. How did this person find herself completely unrepresented in her own music-listening headlines?

Law can be understood this way: we need law to precisely the extent that we lack relationships good enough to trust. Every law that ever had any legitimacy existed to make up for an unfortunate deficit in good relations. Where good relations grow, the realm of law recedes. Relationship is the refusal of the violence of law.

-

David Benjamin Blower

, ‘There is No Law Among the Wild Fruit Trees’

Given that I’m blaming him and his children for the complete confusion of my carefully crafted algorithm, it feels only right to highlight one of the many things that David talks about that sits with me.

It might feel extreme to introduce the word ‘law’ in the context of a short bit of writing about a music-playing profile, but stay with me. Because I think many modern humans are righteous rule-makers: Tiny, invisible, law writers and enforcers. The air and land is soaked with law. Why wouldn’t it drench our decisions too? When I think of law, I think of states; Institutions, use and abuse of powers, life changing repercussions if the law is broken. But bear with me while I consider an equivalent of this image for this singular body. Relationship permeates the skin barrier - A person becomes fluid and uncontained, spilled across a larger area than themselves. When the rules for engagement are invisibly broken, there’s invisible hurt and a sense that the relationship isn’t good enough to trust. I can think of so many ways this shows up for the artist in a making process, and it’s almost always attached to expectation - A preconception of how a material will behave or a fixed vision of the outcome. I return again and again to the sensibility of the craftsperson as a way of dancing with uncertainty, channelling frustration, trying and failing over again and trusting a little longer than today’s short attention span might support. What the artist brings is only part of the puzzle - Every work is a collaboration between so many factors, a flexibility, and a trust in the input of all that’s there.

When two of my favourite people recently wed, I used my speech to remind the room that L-A-W has a twin: L-O-R-E. Lore; ‘a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth.’ A collection of stories, known and created by a particular group. Lore is responsible for characters in our collective imagination, it’s the root of experiments and practices that tie people together. It falls down in places, and leaves behind all it created while it existed. It’s in the weave of relationships good enough to trust. This is where my thoughts have been for the last handful of months. What does l-a-w really protect? How does l-o-r-e emerge and are there limits to who it includes? Where is l-o-r-e stranger than l-a-w?

Playful beats and triangle tings, deep bass landscapes and soaring voices: I want it all. I wouldn’t find it all, left to my own devices.

The Felice Brothers - Boy’s first live gig.

Beastie Boys - Partner’s happy place.

Taylor Swift - Girl’s one way ticket to outer body joy.

Something is being made. Lost, too. But made. It’s an art, and I trust it.