The sickly sweet notes of cinnamon apple tea linger at table’s edge as I broadcast my thoughts tonight, facing the brilliant, almost-full moon as it competes, through light years and glass and plastic, with the glare from my laptop. I want to make it clear I never know quite how far to take these posts. Too many reflections begin with some variation of “Maybe I should”/”shouldn’t,” and what to include in this blog is no exception. I don’t really know who my audience is, so I attempt to straddle the line between personal and…professionally appropriate, let’s just say.

My ideal reader, however, would be a friend or acquaintance. Past, present, future, it’s all fair game.

Anyway, I know my Japan Music Part II post is still pending, but I just got too excited with current sounds, as editing travel photos recently scratched the itch of reminiscence, as well as watching my favorite gay foodie couple make the most out of travel restrictions by throwing one helluva picnic in my old stomping grounds. But, as for what my life sounds like right now, it’s something along these lines.

• Song for Our Daughter – Laura Marling
• Cruel Summer – Taylor Swift | i.e. suddenly Stanning
• Guts – Augustine | it’s been years since my last new Swede
• Drive – Soccer Mommy (Cars cover)
• Carrie & Lowell – always makes its reappearance during those quiet, gentle summer mornings and sunsets when everything is still except the wildflowers dancing in the breeze.
• Colder & Closer – TOPS
• Guilty Conscience – 070 Shake
• Each song from Folklore, subjected to days-weeks of fixation
• As well as downtempo versions
• Saved By a Waif – Alvvays, and more sad-girl music–think Yumi Zouma, Jay Som, Frankie Cosmos, thanks to the most incredible new friend/music soulmate I could dream of dropping into my life
• Women in Music Pt. III, obvs.

Call these Songs of the Most Sheltered Summer of All.

Behind my daily rotations of music, there’s always one single artist who dominates my personal airwaves, who lingers in the background at all times. Someone who has me hooked during moments of both triumph and weakness. This person, most months of the year, is Charli XCX. The only others I can think of would be Carly Rae Jepsen and Grimes, but since the release of Folklore, styled folklore, however, the torch has passed to Taylor Swift.

But, oh yes, I cannot resist a dose of “Delete Forever” fluttering its emo-country singularity in the open summer air, capturing the juxtapositions of Seattle summers at its core: seemingly breezy and mild, but buckling under the weight of the opiate crisis at all times.

Anyway, back in May, Taylor also accompanied me on my daily bike rides in Minami Aso, in the form of twangy adolescent Speak Now Swift. That album alone did it for me then, but in the wake of folklore, I’ve found myself wading more deeply through all her albums between it and Speak Now, and it’s been one massive treasure hunt.

In the past, I refused to proceed from what I found to be a whiny singing voice, which I haven’t completely shaken. Lyrics, though they still pass right through me sometimes, have slowly gained a foothold in my music-listening experience, and Taylor is a huge part of that. Take away her storytelling, and of course her songs wouldn’t feel like “gifts” to me. 

I’m sure everyone and his mother has a definitive list of the best T-Swift songs, but I just made one for myself. Most of these songs had passed through my life at some point, but I wasn’t ready to accept them until now. I took my time and didn’t force anything. Isn’t that kind of the recipe for #noragrets?

Now, this summer has sped up suddenly, and I cannot capture it all here, but I wanted to leave one memory for my future self.

After chaining myself to my desk all day on a Saturday a few weeks ago, I needed a little shake-up, a little summer breeze on my skin. Up for the job was my old, rusty cruiser bike assembled from a box bought at Walmart, untouched since before Trump seized the headlines. It clicked, it whined—enough to embarrass me in front of passerby, but I’d already committed to an afternoon with the old geezer, and so we ventured forth. To diminish my self-consciousness at being heard with the defective relic, I employed the classic public-bathroom-pooping strategy: drown out any noise on my end with some earbuds.  (Don’t worry, that’s not foreshadowing some stupid incident caused by my temporary sensory deficit.)

Since I broke out right at the peak of the afternoon heat, I decided to duck into an expansive neighboring subdivision to get closer to ground level. And that’s when “invisible string” filled my ears and swallowed me into a comforting breeze as the sun flickered, folk-like, through tall trees in the distance. The pedals seemed to propel themselves, but rather than feeling a loss of control, I simply became one with it all—the air, the sun, the words, the guitar, the asphalt even—and especially the old ruster himself. Although I’d listened to that song dozens of times already since the album’s release a mere 3 days prior, it wasn’t until that exact moment that I would really hear/see/place it.

Consciously or not, we’re primed for connections—invisible strings, dare I say—to make themselves known, a little less invisible. In the lyrics, Taylor posits moments and mistakes that she fancies linked her and her current partner together; with our human capacity for hindsight, it’s fun to romanticize how our connections get forged. There’s beauty in the inextricable relationship between fate and happenstance, and I rode straight into it on that Sunday afternoon.

“Green was the color of the grass

Where I used to read at Centennial Park

I used to think I would meet somebody there”