Bringing people along with me 101

The Column: 12.04.23

So the news is out. Harvard will be offering a course on Taylor Swift in the spring. The professor, who is 52, is a Swift fan and describes her interest in Swift — “she’s someone who worked to become herself and makes her own decisions in a way that brings people along with her and doesn’t alienate people.” I suppose you could say the same about Shakespeare, though he did alienate some people who then wound up in engineering or medicine.

In the course, Swift’s work will be compared to other writers such as Coleridge and Wordsworth. “Wordsworth also writes about some of the same feelings that Taylor sings about: disappointment in retrospect, and looking back and realizing that you’re not the child you were, even though you might want to be.” Students will write three term papers but there may not be a final exam. “I have such mixed feelings about final exams because they stress people out. They’re a pain to give and they’re no fun.”

The professor came across Swift about 12 years ago. “I noticed that of all of the songs that one would hear in, you know, drugstores and airports and bus stations and public places, there was one that was better than all the other songs. I wanted to know who wrote it. It was just a more compelling song lyrically and musically, just a perfect piece of construction. It was ‘You Belong With Me.’”

That’s the song whose chorus goes:
“If you could see that I’m the one who understands you,
Been here all along, so why can’t you see?
You belong with me, you belong with me.”

Some people may prefer “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wand’ring bark, whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken,” and other people prefer “Why can’t you see you belong with me.”

Oh well. I was an English major back in the Classics Era, but I don’t care if English professors teach pop songs or the backs of cereal boxes and produce Artificial Intellectuals with a doctorate in self-realization. I am minding my own business. As James Thurber said, “Let us not look back in anger or look forward in fear but let us look around us in awareness.” It’s plain old sensible Midwestern stoicism and they should put it on the dollar bill in place of “In God we trust.” The progressive left looks back in anger and the regressive right looks forward in fear, but the old man walks down the street and is aware of bustling enterprise, delivery e-bikes, little storefronts striving to survive, tight clusters of families, the woman in full stride announcing into her iPhone, “That’s absolutely ridiculous,” the man and woman stopping because their dogs wish to talk to each other.

I live in New York City because my wife likes it here, which is the best reason: to live with a happy woman. I like it too. I walk down the street and every so often someone grins at me and says, “Hey, I’m from Minnesota.” People didn’t do that back in Minnesota all those years I lived there. We shake hands and I ask, “Where you from?” and “What do you get to do there?” and from Hometown and Occupation, we formulate a conversation. I’ve met people that way whom, back in Minnesota, I’d never have gotten to talk to, a chemical engineer, a pediatric dentist, some retired cops, a couple writers, and a retired special ed teacher who’d listened to me on the radio since we were each in our twenties.  

It was a sweet, unexpected encounter. She said she missed listening to me; she wept as she said it. I put an arm around her. Now I wish I’d said:

       For true wisdom and authentic feeling
       Don’t listen to songs that come out of a ceiling.
       “No wise man ever longed to be younger.”  
       If for self-knowledge, you hunger,
       Postpone success and learn from failure.
       You belong with Jonathan Swift, not Taylor.
       He said, “Every dog will have its day.”
       And so she does and hip hip hooray,
       But put away anger, put away fear,
       Sweetheart, you belong with Shakespeare.
       Your sweet love is such a gift,
       I would scorn to trade places with Miss Swift. 

Garrison Keillor has a lot to say about love, joy and aging gracefully in his new book, Cheerfulness. With this set of eight notecards — each featuring a different colorful photo and quote from the book — you’re ready to send a little cheer to brighten someone’s day during the cold winter months.

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