Captain's Log, Day 10: A "Swift" Description of Everyday Magic

Date: April 14, 2020

Time of post: 10:50 PM

Quarantine Day: 30

Last Song I Listened To: “Gotta' Go My Own Way" from High School Musical 2

Last Person I Communicated With: believe it or not, I’m on the phone with my mom again

Last Thing I Ate: beef stroganoff Hamburger Helper & mint green tea

Last Thing I Read: The Way of Thorn and Thunder by Daniel Heath Justice

Current Mood: doing better

One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: my dishes (finally!) and grading

One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: read one more chapter of Justice & write for fun

One Reason I’m Stressed Today: grading is the worst part of my job

One Reason I’m Happy Today: had a Zoom: I started writing for fun last night!

Dear Apocalypsers,

I’ve been a little down the last couple of entries. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I’m a firm believer that your feelings aren’t wrong—especially during a pandemic—but I’ve that just means that I haven’t been talking as much about the good things that have been happening!

My letter from my pen pal Reese.

My church back home started a pen pal program between adults and children in the church, and I got my first letter from my pen pal last week! Her name is Reese, and I remember her from VBS and other church activities, but I doubt she remembers me. Her letter was so sweet, and it brought a much-needed smile to my face that day. It wasn’t long (she’s probably only 6 or 7), so I’ll quote it, grammar errors and all: “Dear, Katie, How are you doing? How is school going for you? I start my new school on Monday. Next time I right I will tell you about it. I also miss my friends how about you? Love, Reese” All written on a blank piece of paper. But she also included a picture of a cross that she painted. It’s hanging on my refrigerator as I write this.

I love kids. I loved working VBS and interacting with them—even as exhausting as it was. I even worked at my church daycare the summer after I graduated college (and that was a time and a half, let me tell you!). So I’m so excited that I get to have Reese as a pen pal friend. I’ll definitely update you on our friendship.

The picture that Reese drew for me hanging proudly on
my fridge.Add caption

Another fun thing that’s happened this week is that I’ve started to do things for fun again. I’ve been reading for fun a little (which is more than I was before!), but in the last week, I’ve started making a Taylor Swift PowerPoint and a Harry Potter spreadsheet (more on the latter in a minute). You see, as I sit in my kitchen typing this, I was supposed to be on my way to Kansas City to catch a red-eye flight to Denver and then to Philadelphia for the 2020 PCA/ACA conference. Jacque, Mikayla, Molly, and I (and maybe Dustin and Lexi) were going to make a ridiculous overnight flight to make it to Philly in time for Molly’s 11AM presentation tomorrow. As I just told my mom, “We were supposed to be making really poor life choices right now!” I was so excited about this trip. I knew it would be hellacious in the moment—I mean, our flight from Denver to Philly left at 1AM!—but it would be such a good story later. And I love stories. So I’ve been devastated for weeks that that isn’t happening. But, like I said several entries ago, I don’t want to be sad, so I’m being proactive. This might be a “secret” still, but we agreed to hold our own mini-PCA over Zoom some time before the end of the semester. Since the conference was going to be after all our M.A. defenses, we kind of branched out into different topic areas. We were going to present on new, fun things like Supernatural and horror movies and, yes, Taylor Swift. And we were so excited to see different sides of each other’s scholarship, and I didn’t want to miss out on that, so I suggested a mini-conference. I love public speaking and PowerPoints. I did a lot of theatre in high school (and I’m kind of a ham, in general), and there’s not much difference in playing a character on stage and presenting a paper. I also hate when people just read their paper straight through. I’m not an auditory learner, so it bores me to tears. I love a good, engaged presenter who throws in crummy puns and gives you a PowerPoint to look at—so that’s what I try to bring to my presentations. It’s not conventional, but it works for me. People either love it or they hate it.

A sneak peak of what should have been by PCA presentation!

So, what’s my paper on, you ask? Well, not to give too much away, but it’s called “‘I’ll Drive’: Freedom and Driving in the Lyrics of Taylor Swift.” Basically, driving has always been connected to freedom and independence, and I argue that a close reading of repeated references to driving in Swift’s lyrics conveys an evolution from social constraint to increased agency and freedom. The connection between women and driving is laden with historical context, and driving has traditionally been associated with freedom. For example, Saudi Arabian women have only been legally allowed to drive since 2017, and firsthand accounts say that driving “allows women to assert a modicum of individuality and freedom of choice” (Shalhoub). So, I trace images of cars and driving through Swift’s 7-album discography—I’ve been a fan for over a decade, so this was a labor of love, for sure—and, as time progresses, she goes from explicitly driving in her first, self-titled debut (and once in her second album) to exclusively being in the passenger seat in Red (2012) and 1989 (2014) There are instances of “implied driving” in these albums (and one heavily implied instance in Reputation (2017) but she no longer says “I drive” … until her latest album, Lover (2019). If we trace Swift’s personal life and career alongside her albums and driving references, we can see the lack of her own driving in her songs reflects the lack of control in her career: the Kanye West feud and subsequent ridicule she faced, her own struggles with eating disorders, the public slut-shaming by the media, and the rocky relationship with her former record label. Lover was created and released at a time when Swift is the most in-control of her career and life that she’s ever been: now with Republic Records, she owns the master recordings of all her future music; she left the public eye and social media for a year to write and prioritize her relationships with her family and longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn; to quote her own music, she’s “doing better than [she] ever was” (Swift).

So yeah. That’s my paper. Tune in later to get all the details and see the insane amount of energy I put into the PowerPoint lol.

But there’s still more good!

Here you can see where I've sorted and color-coded everyone by their year
and dorm. Just looking at this makes my inner Ravenclaw very happy.

My other project has been a massive Harry Potter AU spreadsheet featuring all of the grad students. I got their birthdays so I could figure out when they would turn 11 and start at Hogwarts; I put everyone in Houses, and I sorted everyone into their dorms! So now I know who I’d be living with if my grad school community attended Hogwarts. (I may have—with the help of others—also added some of the professors in as Hogwarts employees, but given the eyes that will read this and the fact that I haven’t officially graduated yet, I won’t go into detail about that.) It was just so nice to have a project and imagine a world that isn’t this one. I’ve basically been picturing myself at Hogwarts since I was 7-years-old, but to build a world around it makes it feel even more immersive and real—even more real than this mess we’re actually living through. I spent 3 hours on Zoom with Molly, Mikayla, Lexi, Dustin, and Noelle talking about character arcs and story plots and how we would have met and what jobs we’d want in the Wizarding World, and it felt so nice to be able to answer “What do you want to do with your life?”, even if it’s in a fictional world. I think this is what they call “escapism,” haha.

So that’s what I’ve been up to recently. These weird niche interests are what’s keeping me going. I’m not even ashamed of it. I’m just trying to make the best of this absolutely wild situation.

It’s kind of like a quote from Daniel Heath Justice’s The Way of Thorn and Thunder: “Yes, much had been lost, but not all” (125). I’ve lost a lot this semester, and my heart aches for those things, but I refuse to just “lay down and die,” so to speak. I want to salvage as much as possible. Like I said last time, I can’t afford to lose hope. It’s all I have left.

"Yes, much had been lost, but not all" (pg 125) is a good message for these times.

"Your strength & bravery are very much needed at this grim time. But, for now, rest & let your heart be light; you've had far too many burdens on your strong, young shoulders lately" (pg 132)

— Katie Cline (@katiebethbug) April 14, 2020

May the odds be ever in our favor,

Katie

Works Cited

Justice, Daniel Heath. The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles. University of New Mexico Press, 2013.

Swift, Taylor. “Call It What You Want.” Reputation, Big Machine Records, 10 November 2017.