On Waters So Inviting

I almost jump in

While evermore doesn’t always feel like the most cohesive of Swift’s albums, it absolutely has no skips. The individual songs shine especially well when isolated. It’s the perfect album to spin on shuffle for a fall drive. The latest of Swift’s long discography, evermore is the sister album to folklore, both of which she dropped suddenly in the heat of the coronavirus pandemic. I think I speak for all of us when I say that it was the best gift she could’ve given us, especially in the context of that lonely time.

Featured as track #3, gold rush moves in a quick-paced flurry. Aptly named, the underlying pace makes you feel like you’re traveling through time. But it doesn’t always start off quickly - the song eases you in with a slow, almost operatic introduction that is quite unlike Swift’s usual introductions. Then, the tone shifts suddenly as the narrator paints a picture of a relationship that feels marred in anxiety and the inevitable shift of time. As the narrator unveils this story of a love both perfect and doomed we are treated to moments of chordal dissonance.

I’m also just going to say it: this song is so gay. It’s really, quite amazingly queer. I was talking to a friend of mine this week (and also a loyal reader of this blog, thank you Ciara!) about how many of these lyrics speak to the secretive nature of relationships that so many queer couples experience. I equated some of it to my own experience, making me particularly biased to the gay-argument I’m about to make. But come on, what is more gay than a closeted relationship peppered with light hand holding under a dinner table that no one can see? Thank you, Taylor!

This song makes me think of a girl I dated my sophomore year of college. We’ll call her Wednesday Addams (she would not appreciate this reference if she read this, but we did not part on amicable terms so please allow me this one barb). With blond highlights in her hair, the line “with your hair falling into place like dominoes” flashes me back to nights in her college apartment dancing around her miniscule kitchen. She was a naturally popular type. We would often go to parties and she would immediately get sucked into a crowd - everybody wants you, but I don’t like a gold rush. I’m not exactly a shy person at a party, but compared to her I was the wallflower she toted behind her from house to house.

Our big problem, though, was that we had not yet told people in our life about our sexual orientation. My college friend’s knew, but I was more worried about folks back home. She was, too, having come from a particularly religious family. There’s a period of in-between that a lot of people in our community experience where you know who you are, and are comfortable with that fact, but haven’t quite made it to the point where it’s common knowledge for everyone in your life. “Coming out” in films is always seen as this one moment where you tell your parent’s that you’re gay (in my case, bisexual), but is actually a slow process until eventually everyone knows or you stop caring whether people know. For my younger readers that stumbled here from the TS subreddit, please keep in mind that this was pre-marriage equality - I certainly hope your experience is better.

The relationship was a whirlwind, and due to its nature, looked very different in front of others than in private. Gold rush speaks to both of those moments, including a scene of the narrator appraising her partner’s contrarian attitude and the domestic angle of an Eagles shirt hanging off a bedroom door. There’s a swooning romance to the idea of a quick brush - Wednesday and I did our fair share of a brush on the shoulder that could be meaningless should the wrong observer see it but in reality was actually full of meaning to us.

The line that really gets me is: I don’t like that falling feels like flying ‘till the bone crush. As foreshadowed, this relationship didn’t end well. Hidden relationships seldom do. That’s part of the reason I find it poignant that Swift ends the piece with I almost jump in - a callback to the introduction. Neither of us jumped in entirely, but we also weren’t in a place in our lives where that was ever possible. The narrator of this song knows it is bound to end the second that it begins, but the misty way in which she discusses it says that she never regrets the time spent.

Gold rushes in real life aren’t permanent, nor was this relationship the song paints. They’re fleeting, beautiful moments of bounty that you later look back to with a certain fondness. At the same time, you remember the sudden crush of the ending which adds a certain melancholy. This song goes by quickly, but emits all of this and more. As humans, we’re prone to chasing the rush because we’re sure it’ll be worth it, even if we know to expect the pain. In my case, I’ll always say it was worth it even though we had our fair share of coastal towns we never found. Despite being left somewhat broken-hearted (to be fair to Wednesday, I rebounded pretty quickly) I learned a lot about myself and became honest with the folks back home about the sexuality, which I have never once regretted or questioned again.

The song ends with an outro that matches the intro, that slower operatic ethereal voice that slowly fades out. There’s a promise that you’ll look back on that moment and smile, which I do when I think of Wednesday. There was a beauty to how flawed the moment was that always comes to mind when gold rush plays. There was a beauty in our late nights and smoke breaks behind the apartment complex. People can be as fleeting as moments in time and then it fades into the gray of my day old tea.