{"id":162244,"date":"2022-11-09T10:15:58","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T15:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=162244"},"modified":"2022-11-16T16:39:29","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T21:39:29","slug":"i-remember-all-too-well-taylor-swift-and-joe-brainard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/11\/09\/i-remember-all-too-well-taylor-swift-and-joe-brainard\/","title":{"rendered":"I Remember All Too Well: Taylor Swift and Joe Brainard"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Taylor Swift. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC0 4.0.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last year, I began running the trail at Lake Storey in Galesburg, Illinois, where I live. My friend S. recommended Taylor Swift\u2019s \u201cAll Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor\u2019s Version)\u201d as an exercise soundtrack; soon, I was clocking my runs by it. Five took me around the lake and to the dock where I stretched. For me, there is only the ten-minute version. The five-minute original is like getting cheated out of an orgasm.<\/p>\n

The song had just been released on Red (Taylor\u2019s Version)<\/em>, the 2021 rerecording of her fourth album, which came out in 2012. It\u2019s a power ballad, the story of a dissolved romance that haunts the speaker, who is still hurting over the cruelties of the relationship. \u201cYou never called it what it was,\u201d Swift sings. \u201cAll I felt was shame.\u201d \u201cAll Too Well (10 Minute Version)\u201d\u2014which broke the Guinness World Record for longest song to hit number one on Billboard<\/em>\u2019s Hot 100\u2014is also a master class in the present tense. By the second, third, or fifth listen of a run, all I could think about was point of view, verb tense, and one of the few \u201ccraft\u201d words I like: temporality<\/em>, which sounds so much more well behaved than time<\/em>. Verse one opens in scene: \u201cI walked through the door with you, the air was cold.\u201d The door is the door to an ex-lover\u2019s sister\u2019s house, where Swift has forgotten a scarf. The first three lines of the verse are written in simple past, but the fourth shifts to present perfect, foreshadowing the showdown to come between tenses. In the ten-minute version of \u201cAll Too Well,\u201d forty-nine lines are in past and forty-seven are in present.<\/p>\n

In writing workshops, the present tense is often perceived as a lazy shortcut. As Janet Burroway notes in Writing Fiction<\/em>, \u201cthe effect of the present tense, somewhat self-consciously, is to reduce distance and increase immediacy: we are there.\u201d But are we there? And where is there? The present is a \u201cparched and barren country<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0 William Gass has written. Yet he also acknowledged its existential hold: \u201cThe present can last an eternity … Its overness is never over.\u201d When Swift ushers listeners through that door in the first line, the listener steps toward a perpetual present, a place where the overness of past love is never truly over, \u201c \u2019cause,\u201d as the chorus goes, echoing Dolly Parton, \u201cthere we are again.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

One day last fall, I found a receipt from Amherst Books, dated a decade prior, stuck in my copy of The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard<\/em>, along with instructions for fasting before blood work from UMass\u2019s University Health Services. I don\u2019t remember why I needed labs done, but I remember why I bought the book. I was in Peter Gizzi\u2019s workshop, doing a poetry MFA at UMass. One day, Gizzi mentioned that the Library of America was publishing Joe Brainard\u2019s collected works. I think he said what a big fucking<\/em> deal this was, for the Library of America to be publishing Joe alongside Melville and Whitman: Joe\u2014a skinny, queer, glasses-wearing art student from Tulsa.<\/p>\n

Brainard started writing his memoir I Remember<\/em> in 1969, when he was twenty-seven, while staying in Vermont, along with the poet James Schuyler. Every day he\u2019d show Schuyler a page, and every day Jimmy, as Brainard called him in interviews, would say \u201chow terrific it was, which was all I needed for the next day.\u201d I Remember<\/em> is written in a long list of mostly short paragraphs, all of them beginning with the title. In the Library of America collection, the paragraphs on the first page take up four lines, two lines, one line, one line, four, two, two, two, and two, respectively.<\/p>\n

Four lines:<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember the first time I got a letter that said \u2018After Five Days Return To\u2019 on the envelope, and I thought that after I had kept the letter for five days I was supposed to return it to the sender.\u201d<\/p>\n

One line:<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember pink dress shirts. And bola ties.\u201d<\/p>\n

I Remember<\/em> was published in 1970. Apparently there was more to remember\u2014thus\u00a0I Remember More <\/em>(1972) and More I Remember More <\/em>(1973). The three books were compiled as a single volume in 1975, with Brainard shuffling, shaping, and editing those lists of memories.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember my father trying to get splinters out of my fingers with a needle,\u201d writes Brainard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember daydreams of living in an old bus, or an old railroad car, and how I would fix it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember daydreams of having a pet monkey that would wear human clothes and we would go around together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember daydreams of inheriting lots of money from some relative I didn\u2019t even know I had.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember daydreams of being a big success in New York City. (Penthouse and all!)\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember Second Avenue and strawberry shortcake at \u2018Ratner\u2019s.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Brainard\u2019s writing is akin to the visual art he made: friendly and image-drenched and nonchalantly funny, kind of telescopic in a diaristic way that\u2019s relentlessly present in its anaphora, and also sometimes sort of sexy. I find myself thinking about Joe Brainard whenever I listen to \u201cAll Too Well.\u201d Swift sings the word remember<\/em> eighteen times. And then there\u2019s the third verse, which begins by conjuring her ex-lover in a childhood photograph, a seemingly ordinary boy with glasses.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Over the last three years, my friend S. has become a devoted Swiftie. I try to impress her, and recently that\u2019s meant intensely feeling her intense feelings for Taylor Swift. It\u2019s not hard. I had my own Swift phase, when I was twenty-four and working at a call center, capsized by a crush, and blasting \u201cLove Story\u201d whenever I got off of work.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because of S. that I know that the scarf Swift leaves at \u201cyour sister\u2019s house\u201d is the navy-and-maroon-striped Gucci scarf she was photographed wearing during her 2010 relationship with Gyllenhaal. I also know many of the names associated with the extended Swift universe: Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, Liz Rose. I know the rumors about her relationship with Karlie Kloss. I know about Long Pond Studio, where Swift, Dessner, and Antonoff met to play the entirety of Swift\u2019s eighth album, Folklore<\/em>, for a Disney+ documentary. After watching clips of that documentary with S., and after watching another Swift documentary, Miss Americana<\/em>, I visit the website of the Long Pond Studio’s architect and stare at a photo of the empty building, a bank of windows glowing gold.<\/p>\n

Something else I know from S.: Order a latte Taylor-style at Starbucks and you\u2019ll get a nonfat caramel latte. If you\u2019re lucky, the white sticker on your cup will say \u201cTaylor Latte.\u201d<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t watched Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour<\/em>, even though S. told me to last year, but I often remember something Swift says in a clip from it, about \u201cAll Too Well.\u201d Swift describes the song as having \u201ctwo lives\u201d in her mind, one rooted in her own catharsis and one generated through its sharing and performance\u2014the way the lyrics are transcribed in fans\u2019 diaries and tattooed on their skin. She says to her audience: \u201cYou turned this song into a collage of memories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Taylor Swift’s signature. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CCO 4.0.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI remember at junior high school dances mostly just girls dancing with girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember \u2018Silly Putty\u2019 in a plastic egg.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember silent moments in church when my stomach would decide to growl.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember daydreams of living in the past and having the advantage (and sometimes the disadvantage) of knowing what was going to happen before it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tense of memory is the present,\u201d the Conceptual artist Carl Andre once said. Only sometimes, very rarely, maybe just once or perhaps not more than five times, Brainard\u2019s memories refuse to be memories, by which I mean, they refuse the past tense and enter into a kind of eternal present:<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember, when your beet juice runs into your mashed potatoes\u2014red mashed potatoes!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember smiling at bad news. (I still do sometimes.) I can\u2019t help it. It just comes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember chalk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember balloon sleeves. And no sleeves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember dark red fingernail polish almost black.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In 2014, researchers at Universidad Aut\u00f3noma de Madrid<\/a> conducted an experiment examining the implications of verb tense on \u201cconstrual\u201d\u2014or how people mentally represent action and events. In the experiment, fifty students were asked to consider scenarios written in both the simple past and simple present tense. Some they ranked on their probability, e.g.,\u00a0\u201cJohn participates\/participated in a cross country car race. How likely is it that he meets a friend from his city?\u201d and others they scored on their familiarity, e.g.,\u00a0\u201cSara tastes\/tasted a new light food brand. How familiar does a person like Sara seem to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Participants scored the past-tense statements as having less predictable outcomes than the present-tense statements. Past tense rendered the scenarios \u201cless vivid \u2026 more difficult to imagine \u2026 reducing likelihood assessments and increasing psychological distance.\u201d Simple past, according to the researchers, \u201cinduced an abstract mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n

A second experiment, in which sixty-three college students were asked to write about an episode of excessive drinking, saw similar results. One group was told to write using only simple past-tense verbs, and the other told to write in the simple present. Those writing in past tense used more abstract language, while those writing in simple present \u201cused more concrete linguistic terms.\u201d (The Linguistic Category Model organizes language on a spectrum from the most abstract category\u2014adjectives\u2014to the most concrete: descriptive action verbs \u201cwith a clear beginning and end and with a physically invariant feature.”<\/p>\n

The researchers sum up their findings with a note about the persuasiveness of the present tense, especially in conveying \u201cemotional messages.\u201d Reading the simple present, they conclude, \u201cthe audience focuses on specific details, blurring the general message but attributing high likelihood to the event and perceiving the target as familiar.\u201d They go on, \u201cthe simple present tense . . . can increase the emotional reaction,\u201d making \u201cthe event appear closer and more vivid.\u201d In the bridge, where Swift\u2019s voice hits an anguished peak, she describes how \u201cyou call me up again just to break me like a promise.\u201d Then we\u2019re back in the present, and, she sings, \u201cI’m a crumpled-up piece of paper lying here.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It was the easiest writing prompt in the world, Gizzi said, and the most replicated. My first semester teaching college writing, I brought my Library of America edition into class, read a few pages, and gave my students and myself fifteen minutes to write. We went around the classroom, each reading aloud one item in our list of \u201cI remembers.\u201d We remembered a lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cA List of Topics for Writing Practice,\u201d in Natalie Goldberg\u2019s Writing Down the Bones<\/em>, nods to Brainard without naming him:<\/p>\n

Begin with \u201cI remember.” Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going. Don\u2019t be concerned if the memory happened five seconds ago or five years ago. Everything that isn\u2019t this moment is memory coming alive again as you write it. If you get stuck, just repeat the phrase \u201cI remember\u201d again and keep going.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It bothered me that Goldberg left Brainard\u2019s name out, until I stumbled on it on the copyright page. He\u2019s credited for the cover art of the first edition of Goldberg\u2019s book: a fountain pen aimed at a tilted bottle of ink, spilling a pool of black scattered with stars and a moon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

2001 edition of “I Remember.” Used by permission of the Estate of Joe Brainard and courtesy of Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

JoAnna Novak’s <\/em>Contradiction Days: An Artist on the Verge of Motherhood, will be published in 2023.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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