Transfixed by Rose Golden Glows

On perspective and looking in people's windows

There’s a lot to discuss with Taylor Swift’s 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department, known on the internet as simply, “TTPD.” Certainly, I haven’t shut up about it in the year since its release. I am not sure if any Taylor Swift album has ever been as hotly debated as this one; at least, not since the release of the reputation album in 2017. To be fair to critics, I do think when you choose to release a 31 song “anthology,” it’s easy to miss small moments of beauty in what is otherwise a lengthy and wordy ode to her muses. But, where you might feel distracted by the bombastic pop pieces in the first half of the record, peeling back the layers of the second half helps one find so many moments of intense clarity.

In just 2 minutes and 11 seconds, the shortest song in her expansive catalog, Swift delivers a simple yet powerful trip into the nostalgic side of her mind in I Look in People’s Windows. With its simple guitar, floaty vocal harmonies, and plucked strings accompaniment, she captures the wistful air of a walk through the city at night, peering into the high-rises with lights left on and blinds undrawn. While nostalgia can have us thinking about the past, Swift also reviews nostalgia through a lens of wondering how the past fits into the present, and considering if it ever fits into the future.

The narrator wonders what would happen if she ran into the object of the song downtown one day, and if there’s a chance that their reunion would produce a different result. There’s a second guessing of previous correspondence, a realization that both parties got carried away into other places, and then the wondering of what could’ve been. In a way, the sudden awareness of the strings feels like being jolted back to reality after realizing your mind has wandered. There’s a moment between the first chorus and the second verse where the strings almost evoke a feeling of being pulled back into place. She goes from thinking “why DID you react that way?” in one line, to pondering, “would you be different if I ran into you now?”

Because the song isn’t just about looking back, it’s about the wondering about what possibilities await you. There’s the pondering of what the hesitation in a conversation meant, but there is also a thought in the back of one’s mind of what could happen if that person walked back into your life after a period without them. We’ve all probably felt a moment where you’ve not spoken to someone in a long time, perhaps after some conflict, and you fantasize about what would happen if you ran into them out of the blue. Would there be an opportunity for reconciliation? Would you acknowledge the awkwardness of the moment? Or, would you simply pretend you didn’t see each other, and continue walking? Would it feel differently, considering that time has passed, life has been lived without each other, and perspectives have shifted?

There’s something so uniquely city-like about this song that really calls to my city girl heart. One of the things I love most about living in Boston, and an urban area more generally, is that I am constantly reminded of my own insignificance. I board the train and I’m around dozens of other people who are trying to get to work. I work in a building with hundreds of others. I stroll downtown to find a new coffee shop and I am greeted by tons of new faces each day. You go to a bar one weekend and meet a crowd of people, and then the next weekend you could go to the same bar and examine a completely different sea of faces, with none the same from the weekend prior. The city tends not to show you the same thing twice, and there’s a granting of anonymity that feels oddly freeing. By constantly being around others and sharing close space with them, you are always reminded that you are just one person who’s ambitions, cares, and desires are likely the same as your neighbor’s, despite any differences. You both have to catch the train, or call your mom (hi, mom!), or figure out what you’re having for dinner. From my view, the world has always felt a lot closer and a little less divided in a city.

This song came on my Apple Music playlist shuffle a few weekends ago around 8pm on Saturday night, and I found myself unabashedly pulling up the blinds in my own city apartment and looking…well, in people’s windows. I usually keep my blinds drawn most of the time to prioritize my own privacy, but in the spirit of this song I opened them. I saw four women sitting across a kitchen table from each other, a bottle of wine open between them, hands animatedly gesticulating between them. I saw an adjacent couple to the left sitting on their couch, glued to something in front of them, presumably a movie or tv show. Another neighbor, this time to the right, on the phone with someone while sitting at his computer, perhaps finishing up something for work.

I tend to use my time commuting in and out of the city on the train everyday to reflect on things. The MBTA’s green line is an above ground trolley, so you get to watch the city pass by on your ride downtown. We all complain about the train in Boston, but truthfully it is one of my favorite parts of my day. I tend to listen to music and really listen to the songs while I reflect on different ideas. This is where many of the ideas for this blog have been born. Recently, the reflection has been of the concept of surrender. It’s a buzzword I hear on the internet a lot, primarily from influencers peddling pseudoscientific mental health jargon, and I’ve never quite understood its application.

But, I’ve been dealing with an ongoing health issue (a short term problem that we believe will thankfully resolve) for the last couple of months, I’ve come to appreciate the term. The last eight weeks have been awash with calling doctor’s offices, trips to urgent care, new medications, and dealing with chronic pain symptoms all while maintaining a full time job, an incredibly rigorous law program, and maintaining the expectations of my personal life.

But, most importantly, I think I finally accepted that I simply cannot do everything perfectly, or be everywhere all at once. I can’t be in the kind of pain I’ve been in and expect to be able to hold focus for 17 hour work-days, everyday, every week. I can’t experience that kind of nausea and fatigue and expect to be able to show up perfectly at work. I probably can’t be a perfect friend or neighbor, and show up for people like I enjoy being able to in the ways I’m used to, if I’m physically unable to do so. I’m going to have to bow out of things unexpectedly or frustrate some people by not showing up the way they expected me to, and that’s just going to have to suffice for now.

I realized how incredibly consumed I am with what other people think of me. It ranges from whether I am socializing in the “right” way, to if others will perceive me as successful and well-adjusted. But, when you’re suddenly at a point where you physically cannot pretend that you’re okay, it really stops you in your tracks and makes you think about the way you walk through the world. For me, this has been in realizing that it’s not the end of the world if I miss a deadline, or some arbitrary metric I set for myself. I’ll need to drop out of things last minute or ask for help, and that doesn’t make me a lesser person for doing so. I’ll need to set clear boundaries and do what I need to do to care for myself, even if it means upsetting someone.

I’ve been grateful to have a lot of folks support me, especially my local community at work and school, and I want to emphasize that I’m not going through anything particularly uncommon, and nowhere near life-threatening, but I’ve never experienced a chronic health issue of this magnitude before, and it has been humbling. I’ve had to have conversations about fertility and whether I want to have kids someday, knowing full well I’m a single woman who is nowhere close to being ready to seriously consider the possibility of children. I’ve had to hunt down a doctor’s office with availability in this specialty - shockingly hard to do, even in Boston, a medical research hub - and basically beg for an appointment slot. I’ve had to have a lot of uncomfortable conversations about my health with folks in my life.

Okay, I promise I’m wrapping this all back into the Taylor Swift song…

In a way, this experience has felt a lot like walking slowly down a bustling city block alone at night while looking in people’s windows. You’re having this moment of quiet and solitude and reflection, but the world is just going on around you. People are sipping wine with their friends, freaking out over the latest drama, and having conversations over dinner with their spouses, and you’re just sort of pausing for a moment while they go on. I think grief can often feel a lot like this, but in a stabbing, painful way. But in this situation, it has felt like contentment in the face of a lot of hardship - it felt like surrender. I was going through something really painful, but at the same time, I’ve felt emotionally lighter than I’ve felt in years, like a fog has lifted.

The narrator in I Look At People’s Windows spends much of the song psychoanalyzing interactions from years ago. She’s obsessed with them - the tilt of the head, the catch in their breath - she sees all of them and she counts them, pondering over the causation. But at the end of the song, she is once again jolted from past to present while looking in people’s windows. Perhaps her own fog lifted. She realizes that life was happening around her while she was focused on this other person and what they thought of her. Like the narrator of this song, I realized that my health, my happiness, and my life, were not going to wait for someone else to advocate for them and put them first. It has to be me who prioritizes doing things that are best for me, even if it means moving the bar of success down a little, disappointing someone, or changing course.

In a way, at the end of the song, the chords leave us off in a curious end note that feels a bit open-ended. This person’s eyes might meet hers, and they might return to her life one day, but there’s almost a resignation that it probably won’t be imminent. She’s taking a slow stroll and they’re entertaining a bustling party. The characters are experiencing completely different parallel universes, but still in each other’s line of sight. There is an air of acceptance that what once was cannot be at this moment, and that’s okay.

I imagine the narrator in this song wandering around a city center, almost wraith-like, simply observing the world around her and considering her own place in it. I imagine her thinking about all the moments in a day or in a relationship with a particular person where she didn’t quite perform, but ultimately leaning into the hope that comes with what could be. Swift has an uncanny ability to capture both wistful nostalgia and the question of what will come in the future. The song doesn’t necessarily leave you with regret - the circumstances between her and this other person just exist. She keeps walking down the road, perhaps knowing that at some point, she will walk into her own building and return to the hustle and bustle of being one of the people in those homes with lights on and wine glasses clinking.

Right now, with this new perspective I’ve gained from what was ultimately a not-so-great situation, I feel excited about what I’ll be able to do now that I realize I cannot be so focused on achieving an impossible goal of pleasing everyone in the universe. I’m still just looking in people’s windows for the time being - finishing up my fourth semester of law school, and continuing to work on my health with my doctors - but I know that soon I’ll be back inside the homes with lights on, wine glasses clinking, and music playing. I’ll return back to the same hustle and bustle, but this time with a different outlook on what it means to be successful in my day to day life.

I Look In People’s Windows is the shortest song in Taylor Swift’s catalog, but with no lack of substance or beauty. Similarly, this few month period of challenge will be a blip in the story of the rest of my life, but its impact, and the lessons gained from it, I hope will stay with me for much longer. There is, after all, a collateral beauty to everything, if only we look around to find it.