Mad About Taylor Swift

By Kyle De Wolf

According to The Week, it has been a “bad week for Taylor Swift,” after hundreds of pieces of her fan mail were found unopened in a dumpster near her office in Nashville. A spokesman said that mail the singer’s managers had intended to give her “was accidentally put with letters headed to the recycling center.”

When I wrote a letter to Taylor Swift last year, her security goons “accidentally” send an e-mail to the prison officials here, asking that I not be allowed to send any more letters to Taylor Swift, even though they acknowledged that there was nothing inappropriate or threatening in my letters, as if I were some low-life who had obviously gotten above myself.

Those of us who have idolized Taylor Swift because of her good-girl image and the emotional vulnerability and hopeless romanticism displayed in her songs have to come to grips with the fact that she’s a rich bourgeois musician who does not care about the proletarian masses who buy her merchandise. We’re just so many dollar signs in her eyes. When she makes 50 million dollars a year, a few dollars more or less hardly makes a difference, and marginal utility kicks hopeless saps like us to the curb.

I understand that it’s hard to read and write a personal reply to hundreds of fan letters. So here’s a clue, Ms. Swift: Hire staff to sort fan letters. Write a generic reply that can be copied and sent to each person. Pick a few fan letters each week to read and write a personal response. Include a nice autographed photo and some other goodies so that fans feel good even if they don’t get a person response. Create an address to receive fan mail and put it out there so that fan letters don’t end up in the trash. You’ve got money. You can afford to build a little organization to handle your fan mail, and invest just enough time and attention in the project to make it special. Gosh, you’d think this was rocket science.

I may buy an MP3 player on Thursday, due to the paucity of good music on the radio and television these days. News like this discourages me from spending any of my hard-earned money on Ms. Swift’s insincere love numbers. I fully support her right to blaze through a dozen boyfriends in a couple of years; monogamy is overrated; but when you haven’t had a relationship that lasted more than 3 or 4 months it does tend to make your professions of heart-break seem less than genuine. She needs to expand her repertoire. Country music isn’t supposed to be all about the romantic trials of privileged rich women who date privileged rich men. Some of us have real problems. Yes, I’m hurt and angry, but I think I’m making a good point here, and she’d do well to consider it, because I’ve always been on her side in the past.

In a total reversal of my previous outburst, I still love Taylor Swift. This morning when I noticed that “22” was playing on MTV, I had to rush to get my radio and my ear phones so that I could listen. I have as much self-discipline as a gang of fat cops at Dunkin’ Donuts. I also got to listen to Cher Lloyd, whom I still don’t know anything about, but she’s adorable and she sounds like a million bucks.

You’ll never know how much you miss sticky notes until you come to prison. I have a memory like a goldfish. I wouldn’t remember my own name if it wasn’t printed on my shirt. I may be suffering from early Alzheimer’s. An unexpected windfall has come into my possession, and now I have 200 golden squares of adhesive delight. It’s like an external brain.

I decided to buy an MP3 player and fill it up with a nice mix of Rage Against The Machine, Black Flag, Taylor Swift, and Miley Cyrus. What else? It will be a significant investment of funds, but I have no choice. I’m starved for good music, and it sucks to rely on MTV, which assaults me with hours of Nicki Minaj’s post-modern bullshit. An MP3 player costs $70 and each song cost $1.50. I ripped the taxpayers off for $4,000 a couple years ago when I applied for stop-loss pay. The fat cats in congress decided to toss us minions $500 for each month we were kept in service past our ETS date. So of course I lined up with my hand out like an upside down Nazi salute. So I might as well spend that money listening to hardcore anti-establishment music and slick bubble gum pop drivel.

In all seriousness, I would like to focus on music that I can learn to play, especially socially conscious music with some heart and some soul. If you have any suggestions, please let me know, and some day I’ll croak it out for you on a nearby street corner. $1for a song and $5 to shut up.

Last night I read the article about Taylor Swift in Vanity
 Fair, which described her as “adorkable.” (Maybe that’s why I can’t stay mad at her.) Roach said, “That’s Taylor Swift! Shes’s sooo hooot!” Taylor said that she needed a security team because men
had written her letters threatening to “tie her up in their
basements,”

“C’mon,” Roach insisted. “Don’t you think she’s hot?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

So maybe that’s why her goons assumed that I was just
some low-life creep. But I don’t even have a basement!

I’m an anarchist, which means that while I don’t have a 
lot of respect for laws or governments, I do have a lot
of respect for women’s freedom and autonomy.

I would never tie up anyone who didn’t want to be tied up. I would never use violence or coercion against a woman. Some men view sex as a matter or conquest and domination, and all too many feminists share this assumption. I view sex as a mutual exchange of pleasure between equal partners;
it has nothing to do with power.

Anyway I don’t want to go out with Taylor Swift or have sex with her; she seems to be stuck on monogamy, and I probably 
wouldn’t be faithful to her for five seconds once I met Miley Cyrus
 or Selena Gomez. She inspired me as a singer/songwriter, and she made me feel like,
 well hell, if she can do it, I could do it too. So I’ve been learning as much as I can about music. But obviously it would be beneath her to talk to someone like me.
 Like I care about that little dork anyway. I wouldn’t even 
bother to tie her up in my basement, even if she begged me.

I love Taylor Swift’s new Diet Coke commercial. Okay, I’m pathetic. I’m supposed to be mad at her, but it’s hard to stay mad at Taylor Swift. Anyway, “22” is a great song and a great video. When I was 22, I was on my second deployment in Iraq. On my 22nd birthday, one of my platoon members, Matt Zeimer, was killed in action. He was 19. In retrospect, I think I like Taylor Swift’s version of being 22 better than mine.

Matt Zeimer was a good kid. I didn’t know a whole lot about him. He was new. He beat my record for hanging upside down on a tree. In my platoon we would make the new guys grasp the trunk of a tree and hang upside down for as long as they could. Before me the record was about 2 minutes. I clocked in at 7 minutes, a record I held for a long time. That son of a bitch held on for over 14 minutes, and he was smoking, holding his arms out like an airplane, lifting his torso up and flying like Superman… We only made him get down because we didn’t want to cause permanent brain damage. His face was slowly turning purple.

At first we thought he was killed by an enemy sniper, but an investigation later concluded that it was friendly fire. A tank round overshot an enemy position and killed 3 soldiers on the roof of COP Grant. TIME Magazine wrote an article about the incident, which infuriated our platoon leaders because it said that he was poorly trained. You can send it to me if you have it. I frequently disagreed with my superiors because they could be very jingoistic and never wanted to take any criticism from liberal journalists. Yet the liberals were often proven right and the chest-thumpers were often proven wrong. So I have no idea. I’d like to read it someday. All I know is that the spirit of man never dies, and surely the Blessed Mother holds him close in her arms.

I found out that Kacey Musgraves co-wrote Miranda Lambert’s new song, “Mama’s Broken Heart,” which offers yet more proof of her songwriting genius.

I read that Taylor Swift wants to make strong statements about social issues and green issues like global warming. She wants to write songs that aren’t about her latest sad breakup story. She wants to makes a difference and leave an impact on the world that will be remembered.

I am hopeful as ever (or hopeless, whichever you prefer). In fact, we could talk about social issues and progressive songwriting, if she didn’t assume that I just wanted to tie her up in my basement. I would love to see her become the next Joan Baez. Imagine Taylor Swift as a voice for peace and social justice (and not just heartbroken schoolgirls)!

I still have not put any of her songs on my MP3 player. I am still mad about the fan letters in the dumpster and the snide remarks about stalkers. I have been told that it is not “stalking” the first time you “accidentally” bump into somebody at the grocery store.

She could hire people to read her fan letters and write generic replies that she could sign. Her security goons took time out of their day to slap a no contact order on me and humiliate me. If I had gotten so much as a thank you card with a note like, “Keep your head up, kid! You’ll get there,” it would have made my whole bid. Her approach shows no creativity whatsoever.

She could redeem herself in my eyes by writing one really good song that makes a statement or tells a story about one of the little people who don’t drive Maseratis. She hobnobs with the Kennedys, so I assume that she is a Democrat and leans ever so slightly to the left, if only out of noblesse oblige. She could visit a soup kitchen and listen to the stories of the less privileged.

I suppose that I’m a dreamer. In the real world, princesses don’t care about poor people or prisoners. What the hell was I thinking?

Anyway, a man cannot be enthusiastic about a young woman or else people will think that he’s obsessed with her or wants to tie her up in his basement. I hereby pledge that I will not drive to Nashville just to park outside her apartment building or rifle through her garbage. Besides, I only had one dream about having sex with her. All my other dreams about meeting her were perfectly innocent.

I am looking forward to hearing Taylor Swift’s statements about social issues and green issues. She could meet with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova to learn how to make a strong statement. She could even sing one of my favorite songs:

“Kill the police! Burn down the prisons!
 C-O-M-M-… Communism!”

Well, she probably won’t say that. But it would be cool if she did.

Kyle De Wolf is an incarcerated Iraq War veteran, 28 years of age, and a revolutionary anarchy-pacifist dedicated to the non-violent overthrow of all oppressive ideologies and institutions.  He wants to build a dictatorship of life, love and liberty.  He also writes a blog for Between The Bars.  He is currently doing a 7.5 year bid at FCC Allenwood for his crime of passion.  He is guilty as sin and proudly acknowledges the fact.