St. Valentine (R.I.P.)

 I've always had a hard time with this day.  You understand.

***

I was boasting to Big the other day about how, in the Lara Demming stories, Lara continually expresses dislike for superstar Taylor Swift, which is so very far from my own opinion.  I am a fan, though I've never bought any of her albums, and know only a handful of her many, many songs.  

For example, I downloaded a track called "August" by Ms. Swift (purely at random), one I'd never heard before.  It tells about a cherished adolescent romantic experience one summer, and how fondly she remembers it . . . now that it's done.

It's familiar ground for a Taylor Swift song, and its refrain of "August slipped away like a bottle of wine, 'cause you were never mine," is like a lot of her best songs, and it occurred to me that the reason it resonates (with me) is because she's singing about a time that is over.  She lost her virginity (or the character the song is about, anyway) to some (presumably) dude, and for just a little while, all was right in the world.  

And then the world continued to rotate, and soon enough, it was all over, in the rear view, as I have grown fond of saying.

And that's what works about these Taylor Swift songs: there's a palpable heartbreak to a lot of them, some wistfulness, some anger, some regret, some embarrassment, maybe.  But the romance is in the rear view, and for me, that's so easy to relate to, even if it wasn't my personal experience.

There's so much negativity toward her right now--gotta be at an all-time high--so I figured, unlike Lara Demming*, I'd try to say something positive.  I especially like the bit where she says 

So much for summer love and saying "us"
'Cause you weren't mine to lose.

Fleeting, isn't it?  Just like life.

So, I listen to the song (over and over, as is my wont) instead of dwelling on this abhorrent day, and pretend that I share the bittersweet memory of that August day with the writer(s?) of this song.

Take care.

*I even toyed with writing a story where Holcomb surprises Lara on her fifteenth birthday with some happy news: that singer she hates so much has died in a tragic, one-in-a-million accident.  Lara is mortified, realizing that her complaints about her least-favorite singer have inspired her well-meaning guardian to murder the musician.  But when she opens her phone, she finds that Florida hip-hop artist Sailor Twift was killed in a bizarre petting zoo calamity.  She spends her birthday trying to decide whether to explain the witch's mistake, and when she finally does, Holcomb claims to have done nothing to anyone, and presents her more banal present to the girl: a candy cane that allows her to see in the dark.