Gaylor - Blog Posts

I'm choosing you, Taylor! Thank you so much @folkaylores for putting this together and sharing. I don't have JackOLantern's way with words. I love and support Taylor and I am so appreciative of everything she has given us over the last two decades.

🎃The JackOLantern Anon Connections In You’re Losing me🌙

To me, this song tells a similar story to the one our mysterious JackOLantern Anon was telling. The messy, painfully human story behind the public persona. The raw and vulnerable people-pleasing pain Taylor has experienced by being in the closet as a famous person.

I’m spiraling about this new song, and in awe of her brutal honesty in the lyrics. The first thing I thought of was JackOLantern, and aside from some broader themes overlapping, there are some specific phrases and parallels that I NEED to get off my chest.

@spade-riddles

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🎃 Message 1: “In a panic, you drag your foot on the ground to stop, stop, stop.“

🌙 You’re Losing me: “Stop, stop, stop. You’re losing me.” (Around 4:20)

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🎃 Message 2:  “But after all this time, you decide you’d like to land softly, rather than crash in a tangle of broken limbs and fiery shock. Dear reader, I’m sure this tale has raised a question…? Why would someone you believe to have wings need a parachute? “

🌙 “I’m getting tired even for a phoenix. Always rising from the ashes, mending all her gashes “

This one has me shook. It’s a direct call and response. Also, “Mending all her gashes” calls back to King Of My Heart “My broken bones are mending.” And in JackOLantern’s message, they reference both fire and broken limbs/bones. PLUS, on the new CD, You’re Losing Me comes right after Dear Reader…I’m processing…

Additionally,

🎃 Message 10: “You place your hand on the doorknob, the metal cold against your fiery skin.”

once again using the word “fiery”, this time to refer to the protagonist’s skin…almost like she’s a…phoenix fresh from the ashes….

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🎃 Message 3: “You have frozen in this moment of indecision. But your hesitation was a decision all its own.“

🌙 “And the air is thick with loss and indecision. I know my pain is such an imposition.“

🌙 “Lose something, babe, risk something. (You’re losing me) Choose something, babe, I got nothing.“

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🎃 Message 4: “…there is a human heart that beats red and hot and furious.” 

🎃 Message 10: “Your heart beats red and hot and furious in your chest.“

🎃 Message 9: “And most importantly, they will know about the human heart. The flawed, scarred, angry, grateful, nonsensical heart.”

🌙 “I can’t find a pulse, my heart won’t start anymore.“

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🎃 Message 4: “Sometimes those emotions don’t line up with what is so easily seen. It takes a lifetime to master the art of biting your tongue until it bleeds, all while feeding the world a blinding smile. “

🌙 “I gave you all my best me’s, my endless empathy, and all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier [… ] A pathological people pleaser, who only wanted you to see her.”

I mean….just………wow……

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🎃 Message 9: “The one that questions everything, but mostly it questions if the world it has grimaced through so many smiles for would love it for what it truly is.”

🌙 “And I wouldn’t marry me either. A pathological people pleaser, who only wanted you to see her.” (I just had to put this lyric again, because I feel like it sums up…everything.)

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🎃 Message 4:  “Think of these messages as smoke signals. “

🎃 Message 10: “You smile at the signal as your feet squash the forest carpet of clovers and daisies.“

🎃 Message 9: “You’re sick of having to dilute everything so far beyond recognition.“

🌙 “I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick.“

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🎃 Message 5: “But you have never been one to lay your armor down. When you fail, you fail gloriously. When you go, you go kicking and screaming.“

🌙 “All I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier. Fighting in only your army, frontlines, don’t you ignore me.“

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🎃 Message 8: “Lightning crackles in the sky, reflecting your emotions exactly.“

🌙 “Every morning I glared at you with storms in my eyes.”

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🎃 Message 10: “The best and worst part of it all - the lock lies broken, scorched, down on the ground.”

🌙 “And all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, fighting in only your army, frontlines, don’t you ignore me.”

The Great War: “Soldier down on that icy ground, looked up at me with honor and truth, broken and blue. So I called off the troops. That was the night I nearly lost you…I really thought I lost you.”

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🎃 Message 10: “Insecurity and hope pound in your ears in tune with your heart beat. Never in your wildest dreams did you actually believe you would arrive here.”

🌙: This song literally samples her heartbeat as an instrument, just like Wildest Dreams……..I’m speechless. This song….about her deepest insecurities…..

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🎃 Message 10: “Who doesn’t love a good key change?”

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🎃 Message 10: “With the deepest exhale of your life so far, you slowly twist the handle.”

🌙: Song literally opens with her exhaling/sighing loudly into the mic.

🌙:  “Remember looking at this room, we loved it ‘cause of the light. Now, I just sit in the dark and wonder if it’s time. Do I throw out everything we built or keep it?” 

This lyric from You’re Losing me feels so much like she is contemplating leaving the closet. This song in general screams to me that it is about her human experience being closeted, and I believe that the “you” she keeps referring to in the song is her fans/general public who have refused to see her desperate attempts to be understood for who she is throughout the years. 

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🌙 “You say you don’t understand, and I say, ’I know you don't’. We thought a cure would come through in time, now I fear it won’t.”

One of the biggest themes in 🎃’s messages is the concept of time. Running out of time. Time being cut short. To me this line feels like she has waited and waited for a time in her career to come out. To boil the frog slowly enough that everyone would basically know before she ever had to say anything explicitly. Or maybe even for the homophobia and denial in her audience to die out over time. This line feels like her realizing that despite her endless messaging, signaling, and practically begging people to see the real her behind her sparkly persona…people still don’t get it. And because they still don’t get it, she is going to have to come out to ever be free. She will have to face adversity from her own fans, she will have to look their homophobia in the eye. She’s going to have to do it before she is “ready”. Before the world is “ready”. 

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Aside from being a stunning, beautiful song, this is some of her rawest, most vulnerable expression yet. I know the deeper meaning, and queer overtones will go over a lot of people’s heads…preferring to credit a relationship with a man for this song over Taylor’s own deeply personal experiences. But I love you, Taylor. I see you. You won’t lose everything by coming out. As JackOLantern might say, we see you, we see you, we see you. 

Hey y’all, this is my first time posting here but I think I have some stuff to say…?

So I was just watching old Gaylor videos from really early on in Taylor Swift’s career when I stumbled across a video of pictures of Tay with a voiceover of Chely Wright talking about being queer and in the public eye. The link is here:

Overall, her words really drove home, at least for me, the very real reality that people in the spotlight are struggling with in terms of their sexuality, and hiding relationships, and not being able to come out because they have so much to loose.

There are a few things that Chely says that really caught my attention. One of these was:

“It’s going to keep going until someone who has something to loose stands up and just says I’m gay… we need a huge, huge star, at the top of their field, the very top, to stand up and say I’m gay.”

She goes on to say:

“Nate Berkus said it so beautifully on the Larry King show the other night when I was on with him. He said , ‘Where are our heroes?’

Now, this second quote reminds me of the thoughts of other gaylor creators that I’ve seen on tumblr and tiktok (thank you to those creators you’re amazing keep up the amazingness) talking about how with Anti-Hero, Taylor is telling us that she can’t be the queer icon that we need her to be.

I think that it’s possible that this theory ties into this interview with Chely Wright. I mean, Taylor and Chely have known connections, and it’s not a reach to imagine that Taylor has probably heard this interview, right.

So the idea is that Taylor is telling us that she isn’t this hero. She can’t be this person, this ‘huge star at the top of their field’ that will say she’s gay and be our hero. How she will keep baiting us, keep queer flagging and leading us on but never come out. This message really ties in well to the message of Anti-Hero, and I think the lyrics ‘I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror’ are extremely telling of that. She’s saying that she’ll give us cryptically messages, queer flagging, go the long and painful road, but she isn’t going to face the reality of what’s in-front of her and just come out.

I also think that the line ‘All of my heroes die all alone’ from The Archer may be related to this interview. Again with the use of the word ‘hero’, I think Taylor might be referring to how many queer women from history have been closeted until their death. Take Emily Dickinson for example (We know that Taylor draws inspiration from her in her songwriting). Emily Dickinson was secretly in a relationship with her brother’s wife. She was a sapphic woman and no one was aware until her death when all of her poems and letters were found. I think maybe Taylor is saying that she’s hopeless in her own journey of coming out because of how historically, all of her ‘heroes’ never came out and were only discovered to be queer after their deaths.

In my opinion, this lyric also nicely describes how Taylor feels as a closeted queer woman. How she is queer but doesn’t feel part of the community as she isn’t out, ‘die all alone’, she’s worried that she will never have the opportunity to be a part of the queer community because she might not ever have the chance to come out (I’ll talk more on this topic in another post).

A very similar line to this (‘All of my heroes die all alone’) is found is ‘You knew the hero died so what’s the movie for’. Now, I subscribe to the common Gaylor belief that Taylor was originally going to come out during Lover era but her plan was ruined by the Masters Heist, and this line, in my opinion, has failed coming out writen all over it. I believe this lyric reflects how Taylor was going to be the hero, she was going to be the big star that says ‘I’m gay’, but then she didn’t so ‘the hero died.’

Now on the surface, ‘so what’s the movie for’ could be interpreted as how Miss Americana may have originally been Taylor’s coming out, or contained scenes and things where Taylor was openly queer but then obviously they had to cut that stuff out. We know that there were things saying that Karlie Kloss was originally listed as part of the cast… but we’ll never know now.

I think a deeper analysis of this lyric concedes to how Taylor is still queer flagging. She’s still giving us these signs. The lyric could also be in reference to how most of her fan base completely ignores and dismissed her queer flagging. She could be asking ‘why am I still doing this if no one is getting it and I can’t come out.’

Now there are a heap more mentions of ‘heroes’ throughout Taylor’s discography, for example:

Long Live ‘you held your head like a hero on a history book page’

My Tears Ricochet ‘And you were the hero flying around saving face’

Tolerate It ‘I greeted you with a battle hero’s welcome’

Now there are more than this but I think these are some of the more likely to be references to queer themes.

So yeah, that’s my thoughts. I’ve been stewing on this for a long time and I heard Chely Wright say all that and everything just kind of fell into place in my mind. Thank you for coming to my TED talk tonight.

i used to switch out these pens

i’d just ghost

rip the bong and skip town like an asshole outlaw

freedom felt like summer then on the coast

now the blunt burns my heart

and the kief hurts my feelings

the “joe sux” & “gaylor” & “me” bracelets shay mitchell made are phenomenal

i know we are in mourning for twitter so enjoy.

i gave my blood, sweat and tears to make it

I just saw this comment on fb. Hmmmm, I don't think TS will do that given the fact that she's highly suspicious that everyone who'll see London Boy will want him because he's got a big fucking reputation, he's so gorgeous that she can't say anything to his face, and also fit like a daydream.

does tumblr like kaylor/edits ???🤭

@taylorswift @kimbykloss..

oh my gkd they added karlie kloss to the miss americana cast.

this is just confirming its her voice and shes singing to her in the clips we can't see 'joe'

happy international lesbian day to my favourite lesbians

she wanted to say her so badly

truly her horniest album

in case who calls??

taylor nation were so unserious

LGB.... LGBT? ..iykyk???

no straight woman is this worried about keeping a relationship secret

gaygaygaygay

taylor swift girl kisser

she was so far out of the closet at this point its crazy how some people can still deny it

ok but taylor wouldve looked INSANE in this dress

if you were wearing the jeans, who was wearing that little black dress taylor...

gay ass song

karlie being at the eras tour the other day and the possibility of them talking publicly again is so insane to me i dont think ive stopped thinking about it since she showed up

every single day i think about this deleted tweet

since 1989 tv is coming, heres why wonderland was about dianna agron

background information: taylor swift and dianna agron are rumoured to have dated between 2011 and 2013 and there's quite a lot of evidence to support this. they were seen together in public during this time and there are songs on both red and 1989 about her.

alice in wonderland was dianna's favourite film which is referenced in the title

'we took a wrong turn and we fell down the rabbit hole' the wrong turn could be that they started out as friends and became something more, rabbit hole is another reference to alice in wonderland and dianna's tumblr url was wefelldowntherabbithole

the spinning out of control is their relationship changing from friends to dating

'didnt you flash your green eyes at me' dianna has green eyes

'curious minds' is probably talking about them experimenting with their sexualities

'didn't it all seem new and exciting' describing a new relationship dynamic and experience of dating a woman. dianna at the time had tweeted that she was grateful for 'new changes + excitement unfolding'

they found 'wonderland' and didn't realise what they were getting into, they knew the relationship couldn't last forever

'too in love to think straight' pretty self explanatory

the public were realising what was going on between the two, there were articles about it, and dianna was asked in an interview if there was anything going on between her and taylor. it must've become difficult and frustrating to hide their relationship with the public always watching.

cheshire cat is a character in alice in wonderland, another reference to her favourite film

losing their mind probably means the stress they were put under by the public creating rumours about them

'you searched the world for something else' dianna went traveling after the breakup

by going back home she may mean returning to a life without dianna

'we both went mad' dianna had a tattoo saying 'we're all mad here' however she had the tattoo removed shortly after the song was released

someone actually give me a heterosexual explaination for this necklace

MOTHER’S DAY 🔥🔥🔥

not to be confused with taylor swift’s birthday, which is december 13th, 1989.

gaylor swift coded…