On music and growing up.

There are a lot of things that I could say about Taylor Swift.

I could talk about how I loved her when I was eleven years old, when loving her was something that people were mocked for, because she wasn’t cool and she only wrote about boys and I wasn’t allowed to like her.

I could talk about how I clung to her music when I was thirteen and had an accident that left me with what might be permanent (if a small amount of) brain damage (I'm still not quite sure) and a psychological scar so deep that I’m still getting over it more than six years later.

I could talk about how Fearless as an album got me through my freshman year of high school, how I met one of my very good friends through Taylor’s music, how we got soundbooth during the Speak Now tour and I cried all over Andrea because I was so in shock, how we’ve gone to four concerts together, how we got soundbooth again during the 1989 tour out of a stadium holding fifty thousand people, or how she was the one that I turned to every time there was a boy.

I could talk about all of that, but I’m not going to.

What I’m going to talk about is the fact that I don't know how to care anymore.

She was so important to me for so long, and she will continue to be for the pure fact that Breathe was the song that got me through all those nights where I felt like I couldn’t, when my mind was running away with me and I was reliving all of the pain and sadness and terror from that night when my entire world was ripped out from under me.

It was the song that I reached for every time I felt like I was losing it, every time that I just couldn’t hold on any longer, every time that I just needed someone to remind me that I was here and I was okay and I was breathing.

I no longer reach for Breathe. 

Now I reach for Thunder Road.

I reach for Thunder Road, or I reach for Backstreets, or I reach for The River or The Last Carnival or The Wrestler or Jungleland or Youngstown or Terry's Song or Long Walk Home or Atlantic City or Devil's Arcade or Wrecking Ball or any number of other songs (though it usually is Thunder Road).

Bruce Springsteen was the first artist that I ever saw in concert, on a night in November in 2007 less than two months after my grandfather passed away. We waited over an hour for him to come on (Bruce doesn’t need an opening act, so you just wait), there were technical difficulties, and he played for hours, because he plays as long as he wants to. Every show is different. You’re guaranteed to get something that no one else is going to get if they aren’t there.

It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to, and I am fortunate enough that it was on the last tour where the band was fully intact (rest in peace, Danny and Clarence). 

My parents let me miss the first few hours of school in the morning because we were out so late, and my mom’s cousin who got us the tickets managed to get her hands on a recording of the show and she gave my brother and me a copy each. I get to relive the first concert that I ever went to whenever I want.

I liked him then, but Taylor was it. Taylor was the most important. Taylor was the one that I went to Philly for on the Fearless tour because I missed her at home.

I clung fiercely to Taylor’s music for as long as I could. I liked Speak Now, though it wasn’t Fearless, and Red was good enough, but when 1989 came out, that was the end of it. That was it. It’s catchy, it’s radio music, but it isn’t the Taylor Swift that was so important to me for so long. There were no lines that made it feel like she was reaching into my heart and pulling out the emotions that I’d kept locked away for so long. I didn’t identify with it anymore.

Instead, I identified with Thunder Road. I identified with Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, hey that’s me and I want you only, don’t turn me home again, I just can’t face myself alone again, and so you’re scared and you’re thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore.

I identified with show a little faith, there’s magic in the night, you ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re all right, and that’s all right with me. I identified with you can hide ‘neath your covers and study your pain, make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain, waste your summers prayin’ in vain for a savior to rise from these streets and well, I’m no hero, that’s understood, all the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood, with a chance to make it good somehow, hey, what else can we do now except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair and well, the night’s busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere, we’ve got one last chance to make it real, to trade in these wings on some wheels, climb in back, heaven’s waiting down on the tracks.

I identified with well, I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk, and I know you’re lonely for words that I ain’t spoken, well, tonight we’ll be free, all our promises will be broken, and there were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away, they haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets, they scream your name at night in the street, your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet, and in the lonely cool before dawn you hear their engines roaring on,  but when you get to the porch, they’re gone on the wind, and especially, perhaps most especially, it’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win.

I identified with the entire song. That entire song makes me feel something every single time I listen to it. I don't know how to put words to the feeling that I get from that song. It's this weird mix of sadness and nostalgia and determination and so many other things. It makes me feel like I can do something, like there’s someone else in the world who understands this strange place that I’m at in my life, like my restlessness and my choices are things that I shouldn’t be ashamed of. 

And when that’s not enough, I have lines like at night sometimes it seemed you could hear that whole damn city crying, blame it on the lies that killed us, blame it on the truth that ran us down, you can blame it all on me, Terry, it don’t matter to me now, when the breakdown hit at midnight, there was nothing left to say but I hated him, and I hated you when you went away, and remember all those movies, Terry, that we’d go see, trying to learn how to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be, but after all this time we find we’re just like all the rest, stranded in the park and forced to confess.

I have lines like those memories come back to haunt me, they haunt me like a curse, is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?

I have these things that have comforted me, I drive away, this place that is my home, I cannot stay, my only faith’s in the broken bones and bruises I display, and the poets down here don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be, and you can’t start a fire sitting around crying over a broken heart, and hold tight to your anger and don't fall to your fear, and together, we can live with the sadness, I'll love you with all the madness in my soul.

I saw him again with my mom a couple of years ago, ran home after a riding lesson and went straight to the arena for the concert, and it was just as wonderful the second time around (Although, word of advice: If you're going to try to take tall boots off while driving, make sure that you remove your spurs first or the whole thing is going to be a mess and you'll hate yourself). 

Every time we listen to the recording from that show (I so love that they're producing official ones now, the quality makes my heart sing), one of us is almost guaranteed to utter the "Our voices are in there." It's true, and it's beautiful, and I adore it, because it almost makes me feel like I'm there again (almost. You can't replicate that experience).

There is something so raw about his shows, even when he has a full band to back him. There is something so raw about watching him interact with this band that has been with him for so long, with the people who have taken up the mantle of those who were first with him, and with the crowd made up of original fans and those for whom a love of his music was passed down, and there is something raw about hearing him speak and watching him play and seeing how he holds the attention of an entire arena without even trying, without needing anything but himself to complete the show.

He speaks to everyone in the room with every note he plays and every word he says, young and old alike, and it is an experience unlike any other. U2 came close, but they aren't the Boss. Nobody is the Boss but the Boss.

I love Taylor Swift. I do. I will always love Taylor Swift because she gave me someone to cling to when I didn’t really have anybody, but the Taylor Swift I love is the one who couldn't display anything but stunned disbelief and happiness when she won Album of the Year for Fearless, the one who made stupid video blogs and chased down fans on the street because they were wearing her t-shirts, the one who got me through so much.

I love her, but at this point in my life, I love Bruce Springsteen more.

Maybe it’s just that I grew up. Maybe it's that my crushes are few and far between now that I've developed some semblance of standards (thank you, every boy I've ever liked who's given me a reason to have them. You're saving me so much trouble now). 

Maybe it’s that I don’t look at things in the way that I used to, that she’s writing for an audience that doesn’t include me anymore, that I'm not who I was five years ago, and maybe it's all of those things. Either way, his music speaks to me in a way that hers no longer can. He writes about the human condition, not just the emotions of a teenage girl.

Those emotions are perfectly valid (you will never find me discounting the validity of the emotions of teenage girls, because enough people do that already and you guys need to stop because it's seriously not cool). They just don’t quite fit me. Not any longer. Not with enough regularity for it to matter.

I don’t reach for her music anymore. I skip her songs when they come on when I’m driving. I play Bruce Springsteen and the Killers and Mumford & Sons and Bear’s Den and Sheryl Crow on my guitar even though I taught myself to play off of Taylor Swift songs.

There is a time and place for her in my life, but it’s not every day.

Every day is reserved for Bruce and the Police and the Clash, for Bear’s Den and the Killers and Matthew Barber, for David Gray and Patty Griffin and U2. Every day is reserved for me belting out Thunder Road at the top of my lungs whenever I'm left alone, for how I get The River stuck in my head, for how Born To Run will always make me want to roll down my windows and just drive with no destination in mind.

I just don’t get it anymore where Taylor Swift is concerned, and that probably says more about me than it does about her, but maybe it says something about us both.