From now on I fear the unfortunate Taylor Swift

II just read that thousands of Taylor Swift fans have been storming the London café The Black Dog for days, because it is mentioned on her new record. That cafe will be full of girls metaphorically ordering beer for years to come. ‘Can I have a glass full of brewed love / you are the hops / I am the wheat / I was the foam, you the head / we foam together until it kills / you turned into 0.0 and I turned into liqueur.’

Swift can do something about it. I am a great fan of her two previous albums, but on this last one, which according to the latest reports has been released in 47 different versions, her sadness and anger are very often packaged in ridiculous sentences. Everything she sees or touches looks like this or that.

We, the free-wheelers who don’t sell millions of records, think perhaps twice in our lives something that you could, with some effort, explain as poetry. ‘Look, that carrot there, exactly Uncle Hans’ cock when he walked naked through the house looking for love again’, but Taylor Swift suffers from metaphorical observation countless times a day.

Have Swift looking at a tea towel and she says, “This is us hanging on a hook.” The glue comes loose. We cling to the wall, but we know, one day we will fall.’

Taylor Swift for a pack of granola with pieces of dried peach. ‘You caressed my fruit, the morning dew on my back, my hair, your hand, the juice on your chin. I was your shell.”

My favorite song by Taylor Swift is The Last Great American Dynasty, in which, until just before the last line, beautiful sentences are sung about someone she admires. The song is about America and actually about The World, in which there is little room for eccentric behavior. The song never feels like a poem in a secret diary that you let all your friends read every day.

I therefore hope that Swift will be happy again soon. When love pumps through her body (sorry reader, I couldn’t resist) she writes beautiful sentences. In the slightly older song Cornelia Street she sings about her fear of never being able to walk down the street where she once felt so happy after a divorce.

Now henceforth I fear the unfortunate Swift. She looks at a horse and writes: ‘The flies are on her skin and she tolerates it.’ And as a listener you have to think: her previous boyfriend was a fly on a trembling horse’s back.

Nico Dijkshoorn writes a weekly column for Het Parool.

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