Autumn Goodbye girlies to August's salt air (and the rust on their door)

I never connected them until May 1, 2025 when Spotify shuffle played Britney Spears’ Autumn Goodbye about three songs after Taylor Swift’s August but oh dear lawd, the feels.

Autumn Goodbye was a 17 yo girl, cocky and vibrant, full of life, eager to experience. She never promised a happy ending and was never told they wouldn’t make her cry. Her youth, counting on days to come that she probably felt she had, simply accepted that the summer love that bloomed from April through September will keep them warm long after their seemingly inevitable autumn goodbye.

In contrast, August was a 31 yo woman, longing for love and companionship, who never needed anything more than salt air and the rust on their door, only to realise that they were destined to be lost in memories as August was sipped away like a bottle of wine. Why? Because that time was never hers to lose.

As she processed her break-up, Autumn Goodbye realises that she wants to hold on to a faint hope because ‘my heart has a place for that smile on your face’. Through red leaves and blue tomorrows, she hopes that time will give back the love that they shared on the time that they borrowed.

They say you never forget your first.

August no longer really hopes for a reconciliation. Wiser and older, she chooses to linger in memories from back when they were still changing for the better and wanting was enough. Because for her it had been enough to live for the hope of it all. I imagine her reminiscing of an August that slipped from her like a moment in time, saying: ‘So much for summer love and saying us’, actions of a younger woman, because she now knows he hadn’t been hers to lose.

They also say you can’t lose what you never had.

Summer loves. That’s what was similar about these two songs. Summer loves as told by a 17 yo girl and a 31 yo woman. Who hasn’t been through that?

Miley Used To Be Young

I watched the Grammy’s 2024 performance of Miley Cyrus and was highly entertained by it. I was also pleasantly delighted. She seemed happy and in control of her stage. I have nothing to say about any part of her private life so it was nice to watch how she dominated that stage and made it hers. The only thing that even brought her private life into play was because her private life and relationship was so public. I especially loved the part where she changed the “…started to cry but then remembered I can buy my own flowers” line to “…started to cry but then remembered I just won my first Grammy!” 

As ever, Taylor Swift with a drink in her hand was cheering her on with glee written all over her face.

This was her area. This was where she shone. Revenge songs, petty vendetta, messy lyrics… Taylor is the Queen.

People like to hate on Taylor. It is very in. They want to dismiss her songwriting to revenge, adolescence and sneer away saying her songs ‘all sound the same’. This is my argument though: the woman has written over 200 songs. Some of her lyrics and the beats, the music itself is bound to be similar. In other artists, this is often called a niche, or their style. Think Dolly Parton, ABBA, Shania Twain, Max Martin, or even Meghan Trainor… their music is all called their “signature style” because it often is instantly recognizable. However, I am yet to see online critics call Taylor’s art such and show her this same grace.

A long time ago, in a Creative Writing class for English Lit., my teacher told me that if I wrote about what I knew, my writing would be many times more impactful. She told me: the more of yourself you can share with your readers and the rawer you can share your feelings – your passion, your pain, your happiness – the more others can connect to your art. Because ultimately, human beings are social beings. We are usually empathetic. We have the ability to find ourselves in other people’s lives. Sometimes, devoid of all the lived realities and the differences in our lives, our feelings and emotions tend to be universal. Especially devastation and love.

This is what is Taylor’s niche. She connects with people because her songwriting is based on her life. We will never go through an emotional affair with Jake Gyllenhaal or John Mayer, but a lot of us have gone through shit with someone that even with time, we remember. All too well. We might not have had a Scooter Braun steal our work, or a Kanye West stealing our spotlight at the Grammy’s or a Kim Kardashian who egged her millions of followers on to call us a snake, but we have known bullies. All of us. Her lyrics are cathartic for a good number of us. Her reflections have made us reflect as well.

This was what I thought about Miley Cyrus as well. I have not listened to a lot of her earlier works. I have never really been a Hannah Montana fan. Or a fan of when she was shedding her Disney girl image. But her recent songs that she’s written as an adult woman with real, raw emotions – Flowers, Used To Be Young, Rainbowland, Malibu, Younger Now, Plastic Hearts… I love them. Again, I do not need to have dated or been hurt by Liam Hemsworth to understand these emotions. These are very universal human emotions.

In the end, I believe art is defined by how it moves people. It lies in how it can evoke emotions in the observer. And I have come to believe that the point of art is to show other people that they aren’t alone in feeling these things. Doctor Who’s Vincent episode had been tremendously instrumental in me coming to this epiphany. But that’s a topic for another day.

When the Used To Be Young MV first came out with Miley walking out of the blank empty black canvas in her Mickey Mouse t-shirt, teary-eyed and enunciating her lyrics, I felt that. I didn’t have any problems with child stardom and its various evils, never abused drugs or alcohol, never really lived a life that raised eyebrows, and never grew up under public gaze. But I could understand her pain. I did my own growing up, and as tame as my wild days are in comparison, I had those too.

Anita ma’am was right. When you share your life in its raw form with people, it resonates. You create art. I hope to be brave enough to create art some day.

Cat-holic

Atu once laughed at me and accused me of having this parasocial relationship with Taylor Swift.

I was thinking about it this morning and realised that yes, she’s right, no arguments, but this is very me coded. Because when I thought about it, I already had one with almost everything else I like. My obsession with pop culture elements I am fond of should already have indicated this. Potterverse, Whoniverse, Guide-verse... I am always that obsessed fanatic. Even with food although that's perhaps a topic for another day.

Also cats. Which was why I’d started thinking about this. I was just watching my cat bathe herself and said: Nix is such a nice wonderful person. And my family is just as bad. Feli was like: she can even travel and shift homes. Then Lee chimed in with: yes, she's shifted homes thrice, yet she knows where to go home to, she's so wise and capable of change. And Nix was just sitting there, bathing herself.

Which reminded me of the other night, again Nix was just sleeping and most of my family was just looking at her and going: Nix is super bitchy, she doesn't tolerate others, she doesn't make friends. And it's just the funniest thing because literally all the cat was doing was sleeping.

Meanwhile, the humans around her are just creating this whole delulu life where she is sometimes wise beyond her cat-abilities, yet sometimes she is dumb as a rock, sometimes she is kind and gentle and sweet, sometimes she is mean and jugdmental... and all the cat does is live her life!!! She sleeps, eats her body weight in food, bathes, demands random un-understandable shit in cat language and sleeps. We've created this entire world we share with her and the cat is just... a cat! This realisation has got me laughing.

The fact that I have a parasocial cultic relationship with Taylor should therefore not be surprising because I do that shit even with my cat, fecking.

Atu has always said the both of us are easy prey for cults. She’d say: I don’t know why one of them hasn't recruited us yet since we are easy pickins. She’s right, too. We’d be easy to recruit. Even in Christian denominations, my sisters and I have always said that we'd have made such great Catholics – all those rites and rituals and burning candles, we'd have been so into that whole thing. It’s just a pity we weren’t born into one. In fact, us sisters and Atu included could have been open to some witchcraft religion too, had the opportunity presented itself to us. I don't think we'd be in those satanic deity cults because you know, born into Presbyterian/Baptist church and all that. To say the least, we’d be too self-conscious. But ya, witchcraft like mix the herbs, make moonwater, light the incense sticks, dance in the moonlight, read tarot cards, observe summer solstice... whoo, I'd be into that! 

As it is, even when I only attend Sunday Schools while close to everyone else in Mizoram seems to attend church at least 4x a week, I am truly concerned about attending certain services with extra rituals in it such as Maundy Thursday Communion, Christmas and Good Friday/Easter services, Year-End service with Commemoration for the dead… I hardly ever miss those.

Also with Nix, she is very close to us, her humans. But she’s also fiercely independent. And she hates water so I’ve bathed her exactly once in her life; she was so angry none of us have ever dared to again. Unlike our other cats who take water baths about once a fortnight. Nix has also been put in a box three times in her life to change homes. All three times, Eli was the one who put her there and carried her. So she associates boxes and being trapped with Eli; she never lets Eli touch her. And we think this is why she bullies Eli’s dog, the honorary cat Snowy. See how easy I venture into my world of delulu world-building where Nix is almost human, the way we talk about her.

Like I said, Cat-holic.

Cassandra

Pobody’s nerfect. And nobody likes the bearer of bad news. So it is only logical that people should hate Cassandra when she delivered accurate prophecies for doom. Perfectly accurate; perfectly unbelieved. Apollo is a douche.

Cassandra is a fascinating figure so it comes as no surprise that two of my beloved artists should choose her as a muse. One, ABBA. Two, Taylor Swift. Interestingly, ABBA’s Cassandra, written by two men, was an apology to her because they hadn’t believed her. Taylor’s Cassandra, written by a woman who’s in her tortured poet era, is an angry I Told You So. The men talked to her; the woman identified with her.

The lovely part is they could have been talking about the same story is how well both have written their poems. A woman – not necessarily the Oracle Cassandra, of course, that would be too easy – was warning people about something but no one would believe her. She was alone in her ‘tower, weaving nightmares, twisting all my smiles into snarls’, viewed from the outside by people who were ‘hiding their shame behind hollow laughter, while you are crying alone in your bed’. 

The parallels you can draw between the two songs are beautiful. ABBA talked about how ‘down in the street, they’re all singing and shouting, staying alive though the city is dead’ which Taylor would parallel with, ‘in the streets, there’s a raging riot’. Of course, the Woman was right in the Warning she gave to the people. And when the prophecy was fulfilled, Taylor would sadly croon, ‘When the truth comes out, it’s quiet.’ This would be echoed in ABBA’s ‘some of us wanted, but none of us would listen to words of warning. And on the darkest of nights, nobody knew how to fight, and we were caught in our sleep’. Taylor here would mournfully conclude, ‘I regret to say: do you believe me now?’

Of course, the stories are different. ABBA’s is closer to the Greek myth probably and talks about the Trojan people not heeding the warnings of Cassandra, that when the Greek warriors emerged from the Horse, they were caught unawares and defeated. If it parallels a real-life modern situation, all the better. Taylor sees herself as Cassandra and talks about how people would not believe her when she spoke out about bullies, that she was instead vilified for it by the media and netizens; and similar to, but not entirely alike, when the truth came out, it was quiet. It was quiet in Old Troy because the old Trojans were dead. It was quiet in Taylor’s world because much like Cassandra, no one could believe her, even when she was proven right.

My sister Feli says I should mention her friend Cassandra in this blog. Cassandra is a fellow Swiftie who has been fortunate enough to have her name in a Swift Song, the bitch. I kid. She's really a good egg. And how lucky, though! When TTPD came out and she saw her name in the track list, she told Feli about it. And I remember thinking, ugh why couldn’t my namesake have been a doomsday prophet too that Taylor could identify with? Esther was just another Persian Queen Taylor probably does not identify much with. A great pity, if you ask me.

Well, pobody’s nerfect!

Water

Psalms 120:7 says I am a man of peace, but when I speak they are for war. Always I seem to encounter this. Taylor Swift was right, and I fervently concur: I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me.

I gave this a thought the other day. And my thoughts led me to water. Very specifically how water is soft, till it’s rough. Water is gentle, till it’s brutal. Water is Elohim, Phanes, Brahma until it’s Satan, Perses, Shiva. Water is Terra Mater when she’s merciful and when she’s angry. Plato had philosophized on this too a long time before I did: what is the shape of water? He’d said that in its purest form, water takes the shape of an icosahedron. An icosahedron is a 20-sided polyhedron. I supposeit means things like beauty, humanity, love have many faces. You can't judge a book by its cover, we say in a cliche now. You can't neatly box people by your own limited worldview and restricted interaction with them. Things have a way of being more than what they seem. Like how water takes the shape of what contains it.

But dear lord, how water breaks the container sometimes! 

There is no place on earth that can be a nice haven that does not have sufficient water supply. In all the places I’ve ever travelled to, I’ve noticed that my peace of mind has depended largely on whether or not I have water at my disposal – to drink, to wash up, to whatever. No village is ever nice that has scarcity of water. And my stars, how amazing to just sit by a babbling brook, listening to the music of water flowing over smooth rocks the entire day. Zen.

The nature of duality has always fascinated me. The binary code even of life and death. We cling on to life so desperately and yet we get closer everyday to the day we die. Ends of spectrums. The nice grey shades in between are something of acceptance and/or tolerance. Even in bureaucracy – the Law that stands, the Deviation that is the M.O., and all the variants that necessitate or justify that deviation. Very interesting!

Water though. The shapes it takes. The roles it assumes. The life it gives. The destruction it leaves behind. The destiny it shapes! 

I once saw an IG reel saying perhaps God is Water. Life-giving. Death-bringing. Everywhere. Assumes all shapes. Be all. In all. It makes me remember all the times I’ve ever been captivated by the omnipresence of water. Even in religion. Christian baptisms are with water – immersion or not; it’s supposed to symbolize death of a life and birth of another. Hindus would bathe in the Ganges; or otherwise symbolically bathe in it by pouring a little water on their heads to begin the day. Water is a portal of change; it is how you leave one realm and enter another. Even in sci-fi and fantasy fiction, like Mirror Mirror for one, magical portals would often be water or water-esque. Even the rebirth of Lord Voldemort was water-adjacent, in a cauldron, simmering with magic potions that gave him new life.

You have to respect water. Because water is patient. It will outlast all of us. All the smooth rocks in rivers have been smoothened by water, is all the proof you need that water will beat you. Because it will always play the long game.

I heard recently that scientists have found traces of water in Mars. Doctor Who fans will tell you to stay away. Respect.

Jesting aside, water is a force that can not be tamed, no matter how much we fool ourselves into thinking we can and have. And with all the life it gives, to me, to talk of water is to talk of Nature. You can’t tame Nature either. We think we can only at our own peril. To paraphrase Gandhi, the earth has enough to satisfy our need, but not our greed. With all the necessary civilization we are expanding on our piece of Earth, we really should consider making nice with Gaea while we are at it. Mother Earth? Khuanu? Whoever you want to call her.

Because as even a mere mortal like me who seeks only to fly under the radar gets caught in drama and then fights back, the life of bountiful peace Water offers will turn into war when we don’t consider the ramifications to our senseless actions. Senseless actions. This is, by the way, to quote Taylor Swift again, why we can’t have nice things.

Little Miss Distinguished

Last year, she rounded up the boys. This year, because they had to go to church, she picked me.

As ever, she – my sister, Feli – was practically squealing the moment she heard the Distinguished Gentlemen were riding again. Taylor Swift! she exclaimed. Only half-listening, I asked: Taylor Swift what?

She had meant that Taylor Swift had worn a really bright, dazzling red tailcoat jacket for the Red promotional videos (or tour?). I said it was more Ringmaster than Dapper, more Britney Spears’ Circus than Robin Scherbatsky at the cigar bar. She said: true, but instead of the short shorts and fishnet stockings, I’ll be wearing pants and heels so it’ll be smart. I said: fine, will we be visiting Eros Tailoring again? We had visited them a few years back the time she decided that we’d look really dapper in fitting waistcoats. This was before DGR so you can tell she’s always loved the dapper. The Eros people made us really fun waistcoats so that was not a bad investment. She came to my place of work one day this year and we went to see them again but they said they weren’t sure how to stitch the Taylor Swift jacket. So we left.

She was slightly dejected. So I said: it’s alright, Mizo seamstresses can stitch anything. That cheered her up to an alarming degree and the next thing I knew, she was in Armed Veng and asking our cousin to stitch her a Taylor Swift jacket! Bright red and trimmed with gold. Our cousin said she was not sure she would cut it right but if she could find someone to cut it, she would definitely sew it for her. She did find one. And she made her the jacket. You should have seen her the night the jacket came home.

She made plans and told me I had to go with her. I said, sure. When she was not convinced that I was looking for dapper clothes to wear, she started looking into my wardrobe and measuring them out. I think she was slightly disappointed that she didn’t find very dapper things there. You could come dressed as Philemona Cunk, she finally said, I know where we can borrow the jacket and you already have her boots and pants. Nice. She gave me Philomena Cunk. Very nice.

The day of the ride, I realized who she reminded me of. If you’ve seen the excellent 2006 Fox picture Little Miss Sunshine starring Abigail Breslin, you’d understand. I am not big on festival recommendations but this was a winner. I found out about it from the Sundance Film Festival press and loved it so much I have re-watched it multiple times over. Excellent, charming and grapping, every bit of the movie is simply marvelous.

Of course I mention it because my sister being this excited for DGR 2024 was about the same level of excited as little Olive for the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. And although no one else from her family understood or even supported the idea of the pageant, they all supported her. Which was about the same for us, her and DGR. Her sisters and brother have patiently listened to her chatter about DGR; two of us accompanied her while one did her week’s laundry for her in our absence. Our parents have no idea what goes on in DGR and why she won her award for the night, but they’re happy about it and the trophy is proudly displayed now in our living room. Oh yes, she won the Most Distinguished Lady for DGR 2024, did I not mention? And she looked like little Olive there on the stage, next to the statuesque silhouette of Miss Asawmi. Lots of fun.

Of course, this cast me in the role of Olive’s grandpa, played by Alan Arkin. Heroine sniffing, foul-mouthed, striptease-loving, burlesque-teaching, porn magazine aficionado who dies in the middle of the movie, by the way. Overdosed on heroine in a motel. Nice. Sort of made poetic justice though, because I was there on this nice Sunday afternoon at a bike ride primarily because the usual suspects were in church. Very nice.

He was very supportive of his granddaughter though. And Alan Arkin won an Academy Award for this role. I can live with that.

On Killing Men

I listen to country music. Someone once theorized that male country songs are about cheatin’ and lovin’ women. In the plural. And female country songs are about lovin’ yet killin’ the men who do the multiple lovin’ and cheatin’. I was very amused at the theory but also I can’t dispute it. Broken hearts and crimes of passion and all that.

I do not consider myself a violent person although I do enjoy vicarious violence. I have stopped whatever it was I was doing just to watch people fight. I don’t know. Perhaps it is something lacking in my life that I like to see somewhere else on display. It happens. I am sure there is a psychological name for it too.

Not for nothing therefore that I like violent songs sometimes but mostly lyrical violence wrapped up in sweet melody. Which is why Kill Bill by SZA really resonated with me. Such a sweet melody singing “I might kill my ex. Not the best idea. His new girlfriend’s next. How’d I get here?” The first time my sister played this song in my vicinity, it gave me pause. I stopped what I was doing and listened and said: what is she singing?

I laughed and have returned for multiple re-plays. It feels to me like an updated version of Olivia Newton-John’s excellent psychotic and honey-voiced narration of how she asked her lover to take a walk by the Banks of the Ohio and then sweetly crooning, “I held a knife against his breast, as into my arms he pressed. He cried, ‘My love, don’t you murder me; I’m not prepared for eternity.” which then went on to, “I walked on home between twelve and one. I cried, ‘My God, what have I done?’ I’ve killed the only man I loved. He would not take me for his bride.” 

My favourite country stars have often sung of violence and even murder. Sometimes they even make it a joyful dance number. Like the most excellent Goodbye Earl by the Dixie Chicks (The Chicks, now). The story telling remains fantastic. “Earl walked right through that restraining order and put her in intensive care. Right away Mary-Anne flew in from Atlanta on a Red Eye midnight flight. She held Wanda’s hand and they worked out a plan and it didn’t take them long to decide: That Earl had to die.” So that was the Why. What about the How? “Those black-eyed peas, they tasted all right to me, Earl. You feelin’ weak? Why don’t you lay down and sleep, Earl?” where they couldn’t help taunting their erstwhile-abuser-now-a-corpse with the line, “Ain’t it dark wrapped up in that tarp, Earl?” The girls would later admit to not losing any sleep at all over this because Earl had to die. There is a haunting line in this upbeat number: “It turns out he was a missing person who nobody missed at all”. It's like those Bible verses where they write about bad kings and go: he passed away, to no one's regret. Haunting. Makes you wonder who would miss you if you were gone.

Taylor Swift also joined this bandwagon with the matter-of-fact narration of Dexter-esque vengeance in No Body, No Crime where her friend Este went missing. But there was no body, so no crime, no prosecution. She was sure the husband did it though because he’d been acting differently, drinking merlot with someone else, and buying jewelry from Este and his joint account that was not for her. And when Este went missing, his truck got some brand new tires, he brought home his mistress who slept in Este’s bed and everything. And for Taylor, it was a “good thing my daddy made me get a boating license when I was fifteen, and I’ve cleaned enough houses to know how to cover up a scene; good thing Este’s sister’s gonna swear she was with me.” Luckily for Taylor, the mistress took out a big life insurance policy so everyone thought she did it. And again, as with Este, there was no body, so no crime. Taylor ended her narration with a satisfying, “I wasn’t letting up until the day he died.”

Such charm. Entire murder stories in 4-5-minute songs. And told in such entrancing, enchanting ways that you just start to, if not sympathise with, at least understand the murderer. Genius.

Cell Block Tango by the six merry murderesses of the Cook County Jail from Chicago is possibly where I first started being captivated by this genre of women murdering men because they wronged them. Ooh, this probably deserves its own blog.

Meanwhile on the flip side, I’d read once that judges who pass a death sentence break the pen they use to sign the papers. One, to show how heavy this sentence is and how they are themselves broken over it, and two, to ensure the pen that has killed a person would never be used again. Symbolic. Of course sometimes when it’s really high profile, they have also been known to retire the pen but keep it as a souvenir. Psycho-alert, anyone?

What Kind of Dog Jumps Higher Than a Building?

Taylor Swift says if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. I think she’s been to carnivals. 

To paraphrase her, I think also that if you ask stupid questions, you get stupid answers. Ignore all the teachers who ever told you there were no stupid questions. There are.

Recently, there have been Questions raised in the Mizo Christian world that has upset church members. I don’t think I would call them stupid questions at all but I know also that a lot of people call them things close to blasphemy. Which I don’t think they are, at all.

Religion should ideally be able to answer questions of the Faith but often religion hates when hands are raised.

It is in the questions you ask.

I know a lot of people for whom faith is not a difficult task. They simply say they believe, no questions asked. But there are others who need more. It’s not a failure on anyone’s parts. It’s just the degree of inquisitiveness of a mind, the inclination of how a mind is exercised. I would lean more to the curious side myself, I think. 

For me, personally, reason is important and I do look for reason in almost everything I do. Even at work, even when we deviate from norms, I need to know what the reason is and how we deviate from it. It makes sense to me to look for reason. But I accept also that it is not enough that reason for something exists, because sometimes those reasons are not good reasons. Logical consistency is not the answer to everything. At work, or in Faith.

That being said, my Faith gives me solace, and comfort, and hope. And that is precious to me. Sometimes it is everything to me. So however the human-organised church fails or doesn’t match the mark, it is not enough to shake my faith. Also I have been indoctrinated enough to have the fear of the Lord instilled in me, so good luck shaking that. However much I sin, I shall never shake that fear off.

There are age-old questions raised about God. Mostly, how does an all-powerful, all-loving God not stop natural calamities and all the cancers and all the fuck ups of this world? Because things like wars, we can reason out and say man inflicted these shits on mankind. An ever growing cancer from the Garden of Eden. But to take just one example, what of the babies who died in the neonatal units of hospitals when Gaza was bombed in 2023? Where was God then?

The get out of jail card for theism is always Free Will. God can’t get rid of the evil without also ridding the world of Free Will embedded in the system. God cannot get rid of much of the evil and suffering in the world without also getting rid of morally significant free will. 

The question of whether God’s omnipotence is compatible with the claim that God cannot do the logically impossible is another concern. If God can make 2 + 2 = 5, then what would 2 + 3 equal? If God can make a rock so big that he can’t lift it, exactly how big would that rock be? What people who ask these questions want is something that is no longer itself. Each of these things seems to be absolutely, positively impossible. What they want is magic, probably. Transfiguration, perhaps. And in the vein of McGonagall turning into a cat and less of Jesus becoming radiant in the mountain top. 

There is also the question of whether us free willed creatures could have perfect lives in Heaven in the great Afterlife. Or whether to ensure perfect society, if free will would be removed from us then. Or perhaps in Heaven, the free willed creatures (angels? souls of believers?) always and unfailingly choose right. So there’s free will that can be compatible with perfect living. Technically, possible. But I guess if we get turned into that, we would not be the same as we are now anyway.

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. Or perhaps I’m not asking the right questions. Deep Thought said the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything was 42. The only problem was no one ever asked the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe and Everything. Perhaps the Answer is there. We just don’t know it yet. As for me, I’m OK for now with the Answers I have, and the comfort my Faith gives me.

The answer to the titular question, by the way, being all of them, of course, because buildings can’t jump.

Getaway Car by Taylor Swift, an Appreciation

One, Taylor Swift has a way with words. Two, I love metaphors. So three, my favourite lyrics of hers is Getaway Car for its brilliant use of metaphors.

The entire song is a story told in pure metaphors. It doesn’t really matter to me if she wrote it for someone or with someone in mind or if it was just something she thought up, like Story-tellers do.

The metaphor is that of someone who pulls off something like a double con. She commits a crime with someone with the intention of double-crossing him because she was already disenchanted with him. She then drove away with someone else in a getaway car, a Bonnie & Clyde story. Then she leaves Partner No. 2 the first chance she gets. To him, she quips: don’t pretend it was such a mystery, think about the place where you first met me. She tells him their partnership had never been meant to last because nothing good ever started on a getaway car.

It is a dramatic telling of a romance that was never a love story. She wanted a reason to leave her current boyfriend but didn’t really have any, and was probably too cowardly to break up with him. She was looking for an out when she met someone somewhere. She broke trust with her boyfriend and got together with this new exciting boy, cheating on her boyfriend and running away with Boy No.2 in a mad daze, a heady romance even as her boyfriend was left hurting. But things that begin with hurting someone that badly has a way of not working out. Karma, maybe. So she left Boy No.2 again and tells him: we were never meant to be, remember how it was we first started out? Us traitors never win.

The song is very self-aware and she never tries to rationalize her betrayal and cheating. Her new romance not working was just what she reaped for the shit she sowed. There is no self-pity. There is just some serious “it is what it is” acceptance and a whole lot of embracing a “well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences to my actions playing out” deal.

She did know it from the first Old Fashioned that this new romance was cursed. They never had a shotgun shot in the dark, driving around in a getaway car.