folklore: the long pond studio sessions
Dec. 10th, 2020 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerPartly because of the news that Taylor Swift is dropping another album tonight (!!!!!!!!!!!! exclamation points times infinity we are not worth), I watched her film folklore: the long pond studio sessions this evening.
It's a very low-action concert documentary: large portions of it are literally just Swift and her two collaborators playing the songs from folklore in Swift's home studio, which is in an idyllic forest by a lake. So you should go into it expecting that: it isn't going to be the pyrotechnic experience of her stage concerts.
On the other hand, wouldn't the glitz feel wrong for folklore? It's a much more low-key album - introspective, which is interesting because Swift comments that this is the album where she's really broken free from the autobiographical mode. (She comments on this specifically in the discussion before the song "Illicit Affairs," presumably to discourage us all from yelling "WHO ARE YOU CARRYING ON AN ILLICIT AFFAIR WITH, TAY-TAY?")
I enjoyed hearing the songs - it's particularly interesting to see the little ways in which the performances vary from the recordings on the album - and I LOVED to hear the discussions Swift has with her collaborators about the songs: the stories they're telling, the themes within each song but also linking the songs together, and the sometimes unexpected ways people respond to the songs, bringing new meaning to the lyrics.
She comments that "Cardigan," "August," and "Betty" are a trilogy. (asakiyume, you'd already twigged the fact that "Cardigan" and "Betty" are a matched set.) "Cardigan" is Betty's perspective on "Betty," "Betty" is James' side of the story, and "August" is the story from the point of view of the unnamed girl James ran away with for the summer (Swift mentions that in her head, she calls the girl Augusta or Augustine), who thought they had a real love, only to realize when it ends that "you weren't mine to lose." I love this. (I also think it makes James look like a total cad, getting in this girl's car and leading her on but dreaming of Betty the whole time he's by her side. "I'm only seventeen, I don't know anything" is a good excuse but not THAT good.)
I also loved the insight into the song-writing process. For this album, at least, it sounds like her collaborators sent her the instrumental pieces, and Swift built the lyrics from there. One comment that stuck with me is about "The Last Great American Dynasty," the song about Rebekah Harkness, the previous owner of the house that is now Swift's: Swift commented that she had wanted to write a song about Harkness since she bought the house in 2013, but she hadn't previous found - gosh, I wish I'd written down exactly how she put this - music that fit, music that would hold it, something like that.
That really struck me because - on the one hand, writing songs is clearly such a different process than writing a novel; the medium is much more compressed, but there's this whole musical element that a novel doesn't have, collaborators, yadda yadda yadda. But on the other hand I have felt this feeling of "I want to write a story about this theme, this person, that makes use of this fact."
It sounds like you should just be able to sit down and make that happen, but in fact there's a matter of fit: you have to find the right story to contain it. I feel like contain is the wrong verb here, but it's a difficult thing to explain in words (I feel like this is a ridiculous thing to say about a novel, which is after a medium that is entirely words, but there you go), an almost tactile matter of fit.
And Swift is very good at turning this very inarticulate part of the creative process into words - at letting the audience have at least a glimpse of the creative alchemy by which the sausage is made. It feels like the whole album just came together, it just fit, and it's wonderful to get a glimpse of that even at secondhand, through the documentary screen.
It's a very low-action concert documentary: large portions of it are literally just Swift and her two collaborators playing the songs from folklore in Swift's home studio, which is in an idyllic forest by a lake. So you should go into it expecting that: it isn't going to be the pyrotechnic experience of her stage concerts.
On the other hand, wouldn't the glitz feel wrong for folklore? It's a much more low-key album - introspective, which is interesting because Swift comments that this is the album where she's really broken free from the autobiographical mode. (She comments on this specifically in the discussion before the song "Illicit Affairs," presumably to discourage us all from yelling "WHO ARE YOU CARRYING ON AN ILLICIT AFFAIR WITH, TAY-TAY?")
I enjoyed hearing the songs - it's particularly interesting to see the little ways in which the performances vary from the recordings on the album - and I LOVED to hear the discussions Swift has with her collaborators about the songs: the stories they're telling, the themes within each song but also linking the songs together, and the sometimes unexpected ways people respond to the songs, bringing new meaning to the lyrics.
She comments that "Cardigan," "August," and "Betty" are a trilogy. (
asakiyume, you'd already twigged the fact that "Cardigan" and "Betty" are a matched set.) "Cardigan" is Betty's perspective on "Betty," "Betty" is James' side of the story, and "August" is the story from the point of view of the unnamed girl James ran away with for the summer (Swift mentions that in her head, she calls the girl Augusta or Augustine), who thought they had a real love, only to realize when it ends that "you weren't mine to lose." I love this. (I also think it makes James look like a total cad, getting in this girl's car and leading her on but dreaming of Betty the whole time he's by her side. "I'm only seventeen, I don't know anything" is a good excuse but not THAT good.) I also loved the insight into the song-writing process. For this album, at least, it sounds like her collaborators sent her the instrumental pieces, and Swift built the lyrics from there. One comment that stuck with me is about "The Last Great American Dynasty," the song about Rebekah Harkness, the previous owner of the house that is now Swift's: Swift commented that she had wanted to write a song about Harkness since she bought the house in 2013, but she hadn't previous found - gosh, I wish I'd written down exactly how she put this - music that fit, music that would hold it, something like that.
That really struck me because - on the one hand, writing songs is clearly such a different process than writing a novel; the medium is much more compressed, but there's this whole musical element that a novel doesn't have, collaborators, yadda yadda yadda. But on the other hand I have felt this feeling of "I want to write a story about this theme, this person, that makes use of this fact."
It sounds like you should just be able to sit down and make that happen, but in fact there's a matter of fit: you have to find the right story to contain it. I feel like contain is the wrong verb here, but it's a difficult thing to explain in words (I feel like this is a ridiculous thing to say about a novel, which is after a medium that is entirely words, but there you go), an almost tactile matter of fit.
And Swift is very good at turning this very inarticulate part of the creative process into words - at letting the audience have at least a glimpse of the creative alchemy by which the sausage is made. It feels like the whole album just came together, it just fit, and it's wonderful to get a glimpse of that even at secondhand, through the documentary screen.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-11 01:32 pm (UTC)I love that: music that would hold it.
And yes, I feel so strongly what you say about finding the right story to contain something--an image, a character, a concept, a line of dialogue, a place. Jewelers talk about getting the right setting for a gemstone. If you put a real diamond among a bunch of rhinestones on a leather jacket, well, that would be a cool leather jacket, but the true specialness of the diamond would be missing. I end up not writing so many things because I can't find how to place them.
And this is amazing that she's releasing another album! She definitely hasn't been diminished by 2020.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-11 06:47 pm (UTC)And I've had the opposite experience as well, where there was a scene that I knew had to go in, even though it didn't seem to fit anywhere. The setting is incomplete without this particular jewel, even if I have to rearrange every other damn jewel in the piece to fit it in.
I haven't listened to the album yet (except