SHORT:
Today my therapist asked me who I write for.
I was like “I don’t know.”
He was like, “I think Lady Gaga writes for the world.”
And I was like “well if I did that, that would be effing delusional.”
MEDIUM:
I don’t know “who I write for”. With this thing, I guess I write for you all. But I don’t even know who a lot of you are (no offense, it’s sort of beautiful, mysterious, awesome, sad, cool, interesting, I’ll stop now). I don’t know what you want (except for those of you who’ve filled out my survey, tysm!)
If I was Lady Gaga and wrote for “the world” I have no idea what I’d say…
It’d come out a lot less like “ra ra ah ah ah gaga oo la la want your bad romance” and a lot more like: “Hey world people, what’s up? How do you get through your day? What do you live for? How’d you find that thing?”
I suppose I live for something, as I’m still here… living...
… making weird tofu spinach tahini salads for lunch and surreptitiously eating the concoction on Zoom as my therapist asks me weird questions like “who do you write for?” and “have you ever tried actually expelling your anger by like… screaming into a pillow? Or dancing?”
I told him: “I don’t really get angry. I just cry…….... and DON’T tell me to dance instead of cry or cry or scream WHILE dancing because my soul will fall out my ass if those words leave your lips and land upon my ears.”
Just kidding, I don’t talk to my therapist like that. I’m shy and am like “ok maybe I’ll try the pillow thing.”
I wonder what my therapist’s favorite Lady Gaga song is. Maybe he doesn’t even listen to her music and just pulled that reference out of thin (gay) air.
I sadly love the Glee version of “Poker Face”. This is why it’s great that I don’t write for the world. Imagine if I told The World that? Humiliating.
The weird thing about the Glee version of “Poker Face” is that I don’t even really like Idina or Lea Michele, but when their voices come together in a weird little arrangement? I’m sold, I guess.
Lea Michele… ugh. I try so hard to separate the art from the artist.
LONG:
I’ve gotten really into Taylor Swift. At age 24. I don’t really know why. I knew about Taylor as a kid. I remember hearing “Teardrops On My Guitar” on Radio Disney. As I got older, I subconsciously came to know some of her hits through cultural… osmosis? … car stereos and coffee shops and a cappella groups… I didn’t live under a rock.
Or so I thought…
Cut to me this past weekend showing up in the rain on my friend’s doorstep and screaming “you call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest is the best lyric of all time!!! And my friend being like, “Yeah I know. That song is from 2012.”
The line is from “All Too Well” (which is supposed to be about Jake Gyllenhaal I guess). She screams it in the bridge and it’s incredible. Unfortunately she loses me soon after with the lyric “I’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here”. But that, as I’ve come to learn? Is what happens when you decide to take yourself to Taylor town.
Unlike the “Poker Face” confession that I revealed above, I’ve been pretty humiliatingly honest about my recent Taylor Swift journey. So much so that I got a DM from someone asking me to “explain Taylor Swift” to her. The day every Swiftie dreams of!
Now, I am not a know-it-all-deeply-entrenched-encyclopedia Swiftie. I say this because the Real Swifties will come for me if I claim to know everything (or really anything) about Taylor. I can only speak from my own experience. And I know it is limited. And new.
But here’s what I brain-vomited into the message box:
ok so as you know i kind of hated her/ didn't rly care about her...
...BUT THEN a month ago - i started re-listening to her old music and realized that it all has some undeniable camp factor / weird nostalgia that makes me feel so like... sad but good?
like 15 by taylor ... that's where it all started... i watched a video of cole escola doing it at joe's pub and i was like... wait i could cry…
there's a forever-teen-emotionality to her lyrics that i once hated (perhaps because I was gay and didn't get to feel it/experience it as a teen?) and now i love it?
anyway it went 15 --> sparks fly --> dear john and so on and so forth…
Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve watched as people have let themselves return to things. People are watching old movies, revisiting old photos, letting themselves get excited over the fluffy and the vapid and the childish.
The world (for which Lady Gaga writes!), became obsessed with the teen drama of Olivia Rodrigo and Driver’s License and Joshua Bassett and High School Musical The Musical The Series (a modernized regurgitated twisted flipped cobbled together then polished pastiche of a classic teen relic*).
*that returns on May 12th!
A few nights ago, Jess and I were home alone. Right before we went to sleep, we blasted Taylor Swift and stared at the ceiling screamed along to the forever-teen lyrics.
It was incredibly fun and stupid and the whole time I was like “I cannot believe I am an adult doing this.”
We gave ourselves what we never got to have.
Maybe that’s why I’ve randomly gotten into Taylor.
It’s strangely and mortifyingly and perversely healing.
And just fun to be obsessed with something dumb.
^ ok the Real Swifties are rly gonna come for me
(they already came for me once when I said she looked hot in the Cats movie… I never quite understood why that was… it was a compliment!)
Tldr: maybe I hated Taylor as a kid because I was trying to be grown-up and now I love it because I’m trying to let myself get some of that kid-life back*.
*That being said, I still play it really softly in my apartment because I’m embarrassed for my neighbor to hear it.
Thank you for reading! Apologies for any type-o’s. I canonically write this the night before I send it out. Wanna read older newsletters? Sad essays? Funny jokes? It’s different every week, baby! Click here for the archive.
You can still fill out this survey with your thoughts, questions, topics you want me to write about, etc!
-Meg
Social- @megspope@mpopetweets
Venmo- @mpope-venmo-26
Website- meganpopework.com
Donate to The Audre Lorde Project
Movie Of The Week: Shiva Baby.
I saw it at Nighthawk and laughed my little ass off. Rachel is brilliant in it. Highly recommend! (even tho it sent every single one of my friends into a panic-spiral about being 20+ years old and not having made a feature film/getting a TV deal/getting another TV deal/ etc).
News Of The Week: I’m going to grad school at NYU for MFA Dramatic Writing in September.
Content Of The Week: Voice Lessons 2.