can give you a few examples of this which, for better or worse, highlight your influence on my monastic and priestly life. There may or may not be a video of me belting out the lyrics of “Love Story” in a car with college students on the way to a campout. And there may or may not be photographic evidence of a monk clad in black and white taking the dance floor at a wedding reception, unable to restrain myself—excuse me, himself—from busting a move when “Shake It Off” began to play. (Please note my preference for anonymity to protect my sources.) There may or may not even be a photo showing that I—I mean, that fellow—was involuntarily crowd-surfed during the song. If you wish to see these jaw-dropping realities, you should actually keep your Facebook active and send me a friend request, since I’m only on Facebook. Looking over this paragraph, I imagine Saint Benedict must be thinking there is no more hope for monasticism.
But back to you, Taylor. In my interactions with high school and college students, it is evident how many of them you have reached with your music. The word that keeps popping up with regard to you, especially among girls, is “relatable.” The lyrics of your songs seem to come straight from your journal entries, because they have a fresh honesty to them that immediately resonates with your listeners. They relate to you in ways other music stars don’t even want their fans to relate to them. I imagine many artists strive to create the soundtrack of a young generation, but your fans feel as though you yourself have gone through the same experiences that have happened to them, and that attracts them to you. Whether they are celebrating, crying, or just happily singing along to your tunes, you have a gift for providing music for the pivotal moments of young lives, and many people process their experiences and emotions by means of your songs.
I have also noticed, at least up until recently, how refreshing your choice of themes can be. No one else writes, credibly at least, about how much they love their mom, or muses on the pains of growing up and leaving childhood behind, or praises friendship as a worthwhile human institution, or dreams about breaking up a jilted lover’s wedding. (Regarding that last item: for all your sweetness, you have always channeled a rather terrifying vengeance, and I am frankly relieved that I will never be an ex-boyfriend of yours.) Although I do grow a bit weary of all your love and heartbreak stuff (I never was a teenage girl, after all), you present even those topics differently from other artists, largely because most mainstream music is little more than mindless innuendo, or background beats for a sleazy music video.
So I was grateful to you for the way you refused to accept and promote cheap forms of love. It seemed to me that you encouraged young boys to dream of courting a girl honorably, and inspired young girls to dream of a noble prince who will treat them like the worthy princesses they are. Even those earlier breakup songs remind everyone that a girl’s heart is not to be toyed with or abused, and boys definitely need to have that message drilled into their dense heads constantly. It’s a downright shame that you are in the minority of artists that do this. So I want to encourage you to keep writing those lyrics that no one else writes, though I fear this encouragement is coming a bit too late.
I desperately wanted you to avoid falling into the same trap laid for so many young female artists: accepting the social pressure to conform to the stock-type of the angry, hyper-sensual, and nauseatingly selfish star who makes raunchy music videos to satisfy the lusty masses and withers the roots of her original musical passion. Recently, however, you did just that: you essentially killed off the old Taylor. I want her back!
I worry, Taylor, that in the midst of penning angry and vengeful lyrics and making senseless music videos channeling unproductive and narcissistic rage, you fail to realize how undistinguished and conventional you are becoming, even as you think you are creating a trailblazing new sound. But fear not: I am here to offer some solid life-coach advice! I would humbly propose an amazing and novel subject for a song that would surely be a smash hit on the airwaves, and perhaps offer a soothing balm to your soul scarred by lost loves:
You, Taylor, should write a song about nuns.
You probably weren’t expecting that. You might even suspect me of being a total loser who writes lame letters featuring impossibly stupid ideas, but I am quite earnest. Let me explain the genesis of this idea, as well as why I think it is brilliant and a good career move for you.
I recently spent ten days hanging out with a group of contemplative nuns in Wisconsin. They belong to the Cistercian Order, just as I do, so that means we wear the same black and white clothes (except I don’t wear a veil as they do, and they probably wash their habits more often). I took great delight in crashing a women’s convent, even if it’s not much of a party as Hollywood defines the term. Aside from celebrating Mass and hearing confessions, I gave an occasional conference on various religious topics, and talked with whoever wanted to chat with me about their relationship with God.
I must say that my monastic life is a cakewalk compared to theirs: they have to be in church at 3:50AM! (I was lazy and didn’t get up to join them for their earliest prayers in those wee hours!) They observe a pretty darn strict form of silence, never leave their monastery except for the occasional doctor’s visit, and have little contact with the outside world, aside from the altar bread they make and send out to parishes and monasteries (like mine) to earn their income.
The heart of their prayer, as it is for all monks and nuns, is the chanting of the Psalms. Try as I might to strain my marvelous falsetto to its maximum cadence, I could not reach their soprano pitch, so instead I listened to their chanting. In the midst of their singing one day, my attention began to wander, as it often does during prayer. (I like to think of my brain as a gloriously disorganized circus.) My meandering mind led me to ponder what you, a singer of songs and melodies rather different than Gregorian chant, would have to say about these nuns and why they do what they do. If nothing else, I think they have a devotion to music similar to yours—a passion even, a response to something they have experienced, an answer to a call they have heard.
It’s easy enough to understand the spark of love between a girl and a guy and to write romantic lyrics about it; poets have done that for centuries. But what could possibly prompt a young girl to abandon absolutely everything in the “real world,” promise never to marry or have kids or a job or a bank account, and to promise instead that she will pray several hours a day, wear the same clothes (and no makeup) for the rest of her life, be obedient to a superior, and hardly ever leave the convent? Sounds nuts, doesn’t it?!
The nuns themselves would tell you that love motivates them to do all that. Now there are obviously a huge number of ways the term “love” is used (and abused) to encapsulate different realities. Love, as the nuns understand the word, certainly has a different definition than the one you sing about . . . and yet I consider their passion to be just as crazy, all-consuming, and worthy of throwing away your life for as you do about romantic love (in your non-breakup songs, of course). When a woman enters a convent, she entrusts herself entirely to God. Love impels her to make that choice freely, and to allow herself to be drawn closer every day to Jesus Christ.
The purity of their love is what astounds me, Taylor. They have absolutely no worldly motivation to enter a cloistered convent, no desire for fame or glory. They live quietly, totally out of any spotlight that could shine on them. They have precious little in the way of creature comforts—they only eat ice cream a couple times a year, for crying out loud—and yet they shine with a brilliance that convinces me they are truly joyful as they learn how to live for Christ, their heart’s true love. They understand that the love which compelled them to enter the convent is not a fleeting feeling, but rather a commitment which frees them to love without compromise and without turning away when the feeling of being in love fades away. Their chant, together with their personal prayer and work, is a daily love letter to God, and they write a new page of that love story every morning.
Perhaps the best way to unite the love expressed in the chanting of the nuns and your singing can be found in Scripture. I have in mind one particular book from the Old Testament called the Song of Songs. When you read
