Mynameisntlame - Es Me B

It just occurred to me that “I love you it’s ruining my life” could be interpreted two different ways:

1) I love you (partner) and it’s ruining my life (the life that I’ve built for myself with other people and the public)

2) I love you (fans) and it’s ruining my life (private life and relationship)

I’ve been thinking about it as the first one this whole time and I still think that’s probably how she means it, but I’m also now enjoying thinking about the possibility that she’d use both interpretations in the song (we know she loves a switch up of lyric meanings throughout the song)

Like she misses interacting with her fans and the public and the outside world and it’s causing issues in her private relationship bubble

But then she realizes that that’s her life — that’s the life she always wanted and that she worked so hard to create for herself

So it becomes ‘but I still love you (YB) and it’s getting in the way of me living my life how I want to live it’

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? (Thoughts and ideas)

- The title immediately drew comparisons to the 1962 play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Fun fact, the film version stars Burton and Taylor)

- The title of this play, written by Edward Albee, is itself a play on the song Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf from Disney’s Three Little Pigs and English novelist Virginia Woolf

- Wolf died by suicide at age 59 in 1941, leaving behind a note in which she expressed love for her husband and sorrow for the anguish she was causing him.

- Albee described the title choice by saying while at a bar he, “saw "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf – who's afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical, university intellectual joke.”

- The play is in 3 acts: Fun & Games, Walpurgisnacht (name of an annual witches' meeting), and The Exorcism

- Married couple (George and Martha) are the central figures in the play and have a toxic relationship where they openly engage in verbal abuse

- Albee has said Martha and George were based on two of his friends, married New York socialites Willard Maas and Marie Menken; Maas was a professor of literature at Wagner College and Menken was an experimental filmmaker and painter. Maas and Menken were known for their parties: drinking started 4 pm Friday and ended in the wee hours of night on Monday"

- Primary conflict between George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Was also derived from Maas's and Menken's tempestuous and volatile relationship.

- George’s lack of ambition has made him pathetic to Martha, who calls him a "great big fat flop”

- The couple engages in a series of ‘games’ aimed at taunting each other and subsequently a younger couple (Nick and Honey) they’re entertaining as guests

- The main game is their fictional son - they pretend to have a son within the context of their relationship to deal with the fact they are infertile, but the game is ruined when Martha breaks it’s only rule of not talking about their ‘son’ to anyone and George responds by creating a narrative killing the son

- Martha wants to create a new imaginary child but George insists that they can’t

- The plot in short: couple was living a lie that worked because they kept it secret but it killed the relationship once it got out

- The playwright, Edward Albee, has said that the title of the play "means who's afraid of the big bad wolf ... who's afraid of living life without false illusions."

- Tying this to the song: Taylor appears to be further making a play on words and the title landing at ‘who’s afraid of little old me’

- Does this relate to her role as songwriter and therefore narrator of the relationship story? And what she can expose of the truth via the illusion? And who might be afraid of that?

- Did the illusion of the relationship protect Joe, for example, and this new album might share the truth of the situation, which in turn could alter people’s perspectives on it and him?

- The theme of reality versus illusion is explored in many of Albee’s works

- In this play, it’s been said that Albee's characters create illusions to help them evade feelings of their own inadequacy – as "George and Martha have evaded the ugliness of their marriage by taking refuge in illusion." The play demonstrates "how his characters must rid themselves of falsehood and return to the world in which they must live."

- The distinction between truth and illusion is deliberately unclear at times

- Are the stories about the child, a "murder" by George of his parents, or a pregnancy of the couple they’re entertaining illusions?

- Regardless they seem real to the characters

- Illusions may be exorcised in the play, but no truth or apparent reality is supplied in its place: “All truth", George says, "[becomes] relative".

- Some criticisms of the play included that it opposed the notion of a ‘perfect American family and societal expectations’ because it “attacks the false optimism and myopic confidence of modern society"

- Albee displays this contrast through each character and their expectations

- Societal norms of the 1950s (nuclear family of mom/dad/2 kids where dad works, mom is homemaker in a peaceful and serene ‘perfect’ life

- Play smashes this convention showing reality is not perfect: families of Honey and Martha were dominated by their fathers, with no sign of a mother figure in their lives. George and Martha's chance at a perfect family was ruined by infertility and George's failure to become a prominent figure at the university

- This ties to Taylor’s comments with her denial playlist: she acknowledged she had gotten “so caught up in the idea of something that you have a hard time seeing the red flags possibly resulting in moments of denial, & maybe a little bit of delusion.”

- Does the song then delve into this further: looking at the lies she and Joe were telling each other and themselves in order to keep a relationship going?

- Did something(s) happen that exposed the lies and therefore pierced the veil of delusion exposing the weakness in the relationship?

- Couple be a specific event or action or many smaller ones over time

- But where illusion/delusion meets truth, there is no turning back and unseeing

- This could go a in couple ways: is there a revelation(s) about the relationship and what we know or knew of it that would change that? Does the revelation of this deconstruct or dismantle how we view it now?

- Alternatively, is she getting into these themes of truth vs illusion/delusion to underscore the unreliability of the narrator when the narrator is a then-active participant in it?

- You can’t both be examining it with a critical eye and also living if where you are actively deluding yourself because you’re so focused on the idea of it over the reality of it

- With the song title a question, it begs the question who is it posed to? Is it Joe who might be terrified of what she could reveal and explore in this album and impact that will have? Is it the listener? Herself?

- In summary thematically we’ve got: perfect 1950s family vs reality theme; lies and delusion to keep a relationship going theme; hints at aggression/lack of ambition/meanness from the male member of the couple; hints at delusion/desperation/taunting/annoyance/chafing at societal expectations from the female member of the couple; the author named in the play’s title dying by suicide leaving a letter expressing sorrow for the anguish she caused him; depression; the real life inspiration for the characters known for hosting drunken parties for their friends - was doing that a way of bandaging over problems and masking them behind alcohol and hosting to avoid being left alone together… and then obviously delusion/missing red flags is huge but looking specifically at the title she went with making it about herself: her ‘weapon’ is her songwriting and ability to expose the truth of the lie they were living

- Weighing up all of the above it is most likely the song’s focus will be delusion or illusion vs truth because it can connect what we’re seeing with the playlists: even her songwriting furthered the delusion but it can also clear up the truth

- Taylor connecting this album with this play was no accident and she wants to link all these themes present and circling around the play to the album because they all fit. Apart from this song: her commentary on the playlists on delusion - is this connected to the legal aesthetic: evidence, files, our discussion of her wanting to present her case? Maybe this confirms she was building the case for herself to clear her of her delusion?

You need to draw and make art or else all the images will stay in your head and you'll get sick