As part of their creative assignment for English Literature (Taylor’s Version), one of my students made a replica of Taylor’s famous Lover House, peopled with several special figures from the worlds of literature and music. Read all about it in their own words below…
“For this creative assignment, I long had no idea what I was going to do. In truth this class didn’t teach me that much I didn’t already know; absolutely no offence since this is mostly because I already have a master’s in history, which in my opinion rests so much upon other disciplines, historians tend to be homo universali; having a broad foundation of knowledge whereupon we can build in a blink of an eye. This is however not a love letter to my former studies. On top of that, I am also, what the kids might call, a swiftie. Many of the topics in class I had already pondered upon deep in the bowels of Reddit threads and Tumblr posts. That doesn’t mean I did not have an absolute blast in this class; I enjoyed delving deeper into subjects without shame, and did stumble here and there on things I hadn’t thought about when my wonderful peers shared their findings or opinions. But a creative assignment without real boundaries or guidelines stumped me; I thought about it since the beginning of class and by December I still had no clue. Believe it or not, the idea came to me in a dream.
It all started when I had a dream about Taylor sampling the first and fourth movements of Dvorak’s 9th Symphony for Reputation (Taylor’s Version), it slapped by the way when I started thinking about inspiration in art. We had talked in different classes about references and inspirations found in lyrics of Taylor and an idea popped into my head: “What if I pushed that further? What if I could link every Taylor album to an author I think influenced or embodies her albums?” I quickly took a Post-it and scribbled down some thoughts.
It was a slow day at my internship so my mind searched for more enrichment and another thought popped into my head. “Why stop there? You’re a musicologist, look further than purely lyrics and look into the music.” I thought about all the musical inspirations Taylor had cited over the years. I thought about her different genres, I thought about how Red was a parallel to Joni Mitchell’s Blue and an indirect answer to a critic who had written that ‘Miss Swift should listen to Joni Mitchell”. Another post-it was scribbled on.
I thought about how Taylor had likened her body of work to a house, in which each room was an album. I thought about the Lover House. I thought about how even after Lover it fits other albums (although I do believe we’ve reached an endpoint or Taylor is going to have to pull the very Belgian tradition of building ‘koterijen’ to make it work for future albums). An idea, half delirious, popped into my head. What if I built the lover house? What if I built the lover house and created little dolls of authors and musicians who lived in the dollhouse as an ultimate representation of inspiration both literary and musical? Delirious? Yes. Time-Consuming? Yes. Fun? Also yes. I have no real exams in January besides a few papers here and there. I pulled out my notes app and drew a half-hearted attempt at the Lover house. Yes, I would do this. How hard could building a lover house be? I was about to find out.
Before I started I had to think about the materials; I asked my cousin, who studies architecture and design at LUCA. He gave me some great tips, so thank you. At the store, I bought materials and racked up a bill that sincerely made me question the entire project. I looked away when I typed in my pin and told myself to power through, it would be worth it in the end.
And so came the day I had to start actually building instead of dreaming. I made sketches and a plan and then started, wall by wall, trying to adhere to the rules of architecture and thinking of how actual houses were built. I stumbled upon problems here or there; the glue my cousin recommended was very runny and instead, I used a building paste my mother had bought me (bless her foreseeing mind). The foam carton from the store tended to bend even when stored in optimal upright conditions. I found out that despite measuring, drawing, measuring again, and using great force to cut pieces of carton, no matter what I did it would never be perfectly straight or be at a degree of 90 in corners. I found that even glueing the straight edges of the carton that were cut in the factories before it ended up in a store were somehow also not 100% straight or perfectly perpendicular. I also learned that a whole lot of glue, willpower, and my beloved Saint Taylor swift candles (pictured below) will make a very structurally sound house whether you believe it or not. I also learned that I should never ever build an actual house and hire professionals if I don’t want to wake up with the ceiling caving in. I also learned to have a lot of patience. My days consisted of glueing a wall, putting force on it, putting weight on it and waiting 6 to 12 hours before glueing another wall, putting force on it, putting weight on it and waiting another 6 to 12 hours. But each floor filled me with more pride; yes I was building something, and by the grace of physics, it was quite structurally sound.
Then came the painting of the rooms. This was something I was better at; enjoying mixing the paints to get the right shades, letting myself go here and there by adding unnecessary details. But it was really coming together now, even a friend who is not a Swiftie saw a picture and said ‘Oh is that the Taylor Swift house?’ and I replied why yes, it is. I spent an entire day painting. My back hurt from constantly bending and moving with the utmost care to not disturb the physics of my little house. I sort of understand motherly instinct now.
Then came a part I thought would be easier than it was; and the clue of this entire work. The dolls which inspire or embody or have a likeness to the albums to me. I had to find full-body pictures of each of these musicians or writers. At first, I felt quite pervy. Typing ‘Taylor Swift full body pic’, and ‘Pablo Neruda full body pic’ into Google made me feel like a creepy man scouring the internet back in 2007. After a while I realised ‘X cardboard cut-out’ granted me more success and saved me time because I didn’t have to manually remove the background from the pictures, it was already done for me. I also quickly learned which musicians and writers are more popular depending on their cut-outs, the amount of cut-outs, or the lack of cut-outs (Pablo Neruda is one of those). Sometimes I found it infuriating that someone could not have a full body picture found anywhere on the internet (Louise Gluck and Justin Vernon I am looking at you).
Printing these pictures, sticking them onto cardboard and then cutting out their silhouettes took very long, I had underestimated it completely. You can tell after a few I gave up on trying to perfectly cut them out, I just wanted them to stand in their rooms and be done with it. After the 8th doll I was trying to perfectly cut whilst cussing here and there my mom revealed that she had been standing in my room for about 10 minutes just watching me work. I felt like that one Parks and Rec scene where Ben makes Claymation.
I will not go into detail why I’ve placed someone in an album room, I am very sure most will be clear to a literature professor and seasoned Swifties. If not, I can always clarify at the oral presentation. But I do have to go into detail about what my version of the lover house means.
What am I trying to say here about what I learned from this class or how it shapes my future engagement with literature or music? Even though as a veteran Swiftie I usually pick up on inspirations or references to authors, I learned that there are way more than I thought, sometimes more direct than I thought, or sometimes indirect, maybe not even intentional; but someone somewhere will find a parallel, even if it is just for themselves, even if it’s just a small part that makes them think of it.
In the classes about grief, I often thought about my own grief, something dark that has hung over me these past 10 years. And I thought; How beautiful that we humans will keep trying to put things into words. How beautiful that we keep exploring the same themes over and over again. We keep writing love poetry, we keep writing about grief trying to make sense of it somewhere, and we keep making art for ourselves and others. It doesn’t matter that there have been millions of sonnets, novels, and songs about a topic before, we keep trying to find a new angle, a new way to speak the unspeakable. It is something very human, and it is something that I find so beautiful. It’s something that has fascinated me as a historian as well. Seeing Onfim’s 13th-century drawings, seeing the Cueva De Las Manos, and hearing Taylor Swift’s evermore. It’s all about love, it’s all about expressing yourself, it’s timeless. It’s why I can scroll hours on Tumblr on the tag ‘web weaving’ seeing one piece of art posited next to another, even when the artists in question would have never been mentioned in the same breath before the post. We humans will keep trying to find ways of expression, and we will see meaning, parallels, and memories reflected in each other across cultures, across languages, and across time because we are filled to the brim with pieces of others in our lives, no matter how long or short the moment of impression was, we carry it all with us. It’s what connects us all, and I will never tire of it.”
Swifterature 