Taylor Swift, really?
I just wrote that to get in on the glory of a transcontinental mega-star. Actually, I am a little starstruck myself because just by announcing the title of her next album that doesn’t exist yet, there were two articles in the New York Times about poetry. The last time that happened was probably when Robert Frost died, and one of them would have been his obituary. Will Tay Tay do for my favored genre of writing what she has done for the NFL?
Catching fame in pre-digital human existence was a slog. Think of Jesus. He had a few Galilean fisherman, outcast women, and tax collectors following him around when he was alive. Then, after his death, it took wandering charismatics hundreds of years to catch fire and become as popular as Taylor.
Poor Emily Dickinson could hardly get a verse published. It wasn’t until after her death, in the smaller social media world of 1886, that her sister found a massive pile of her poems which only then got published. The same thing for our well-known friend, Edgar Allan Poe, who struggled to make a living when he was alive, and received no love from the critics or the public until he was dust. Even in the television and radio days of the 1960s, Sylvia Plath barely made a splash. It was only 19 years after her suicide that she received a Pulitzer Prize for her poems.
Kafka, Keats … so many writers and poets died without an audience reading or hearing their works. Ugh.
Today, Taylor Swift can announce the title of her next album, and national newspapers, academics, and blogs immediately speculate about whether “Poets” in the title should have an apostrophe or not. “What does she mean?” they argue and banter. Is it a tormented poet’s department or a department of poets? (“The Tortured Poets Department” is the title, and it already has a Wikipedia page!)
She of unparalleled fame even became the target of scorn from the ex-President, who insisted that he was more popular than she is. Then there is the actual President, whose minions are strategizing how to get a crumb of endorsement from her. She has 534 million follows on social media. That is just a paltry few million less than the combined populations of the USA, Russian, and Mexico. However, she has fewer followers than Justin Bieber, and he has fewer than Selena Gomez. Are you kidding me? Can someone tell me how to boost my puny 1,200 (that’s hundreds, not millions)?
Socrates and Jesus never wrote a poem or lyrics — Socrates because he thought words were defenseless against wrong interpretations, and Jesus probably because he wasn’t literate. It will be interesting to see if Tay Tay’s lyrics make it to the end of this century, when the digital formats we use now will surely be extinct.
Have you guessed the point of all this yet? Simply that we have inflated the value of fame far beyond its actual worth. Why are celebrities influencers? Even more ridiculous, why are social media “influencers” actually able to influence anybody?
Meanwhile, Bach’s compositions, van Gogh’s paintings, Thoreau’s manuscripts, and the songs of Jeff Buckley were only recognized as the treasures they are after their deaths. Sift through the noise and bling, my friends, where true beauty and wisdom are waiting.
Cameron Miller of Geneva is an author and minister. His fiction and poetry are available through Amazon. Contact him through his website at subversivepreacher.org.
DENIM SPIRIT: Did anybody say, ‘Taylor Swift?’
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14.02.2024
Taylor Swift, really?
I just wrote that to get in on the glory of a transcontinental mega-star. Actually, I am a little starstruck myself because just by announcing the title of her next album that doesn’t exist yet, there were two articles in the New York Times about poetry. The last time that happened was probably when Robert Frost died, and one of them would have been his obituary. Will Tay Tay do for my favored genre of writing what she has done for the NFL?
Catching fame in pre-digital human existence was a slog. Think of Jesus. He had a few Galilean fisherman, outcast women, and tax collectors following him around when he was alive. Then, after his death, it took wandering charismatics hundreds of years to catch fire and become as popular as Taylor.
Poor Emily Dickinson could hardly get a verse published. It wasn’t until after her........
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