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bebepac · 2 years

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The Vampires Live On

I am participating in @choicesflashfics week 3 Prompt # 3 “Bold of you to assume I would say yes to something like that.” by @debramcg1106 quote will be in bold.

I thought in the beginning this would be a one shot but it’s really not, I think it has the potential to be a few parts, for Halloween as I don’t like zombies, but I think vampires are okay. :)

A/N: I’m pretty sure the idea of Liam as a vampire has been used on the fandom before, so any similarities to anything currently in print on the fandom is completely unintentional. I know I’m probably not the first that has written Liam as a Vampire, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. I take this dynamic into the past and use my dynamics and OCs I have created in my story.

The Book: TRR Word Count 2425 Ratings and Warnings: Teen/ Character deaths, mentions of blood and stabbing Pairings: Liam x Riley? Song Inspiration: Hey Jude by the Beatles Summary: We get to know the “real” Riley and Liam.

Original Post: 10/22/22 at 9:36PM EST.

A/N2: This story idea actually comes from a short story I wrote when I was in high school after seeing Interview with a Vampire. So I’m totally about to Big Fat Liar myself with this fic, If you have seen that movie as I am recreating the short story from memory, and I feel like there are similarites with Twilight, and Bloodbound. This short story was originally written in 1994, and I’m tweaking it to fit my story lines for my fanfic characters. Also I don’t proclaim to be a historian here, but did google how people would address others in the 1800′s.

I was then, as I am now, and will be tomorrow. I am a vampire, nothing more and certainly, nothing less. I made the choice to give up my life in the sunlight almost one hundred and fifty years ago. I was born Alice Marie Hughes, in 1855 but in this decade, I had chosen the name Riley Antonia Brooks for myself. In this decade, in the year of our Lord 2022, you could pretty much say or do or be anyone you wanted to be, if you had the resources to back it up, and I, along with him, had made quite the nest egg for ourselves.

But back in the years when I was living a mortal existence, the year was 1873 and it was the dawn of a new age in Lumberton, a small province outside of Cordonia. My sister Clara and I, even though orphaned at a young age, were able to as adults get jobs in a local pub serving food and ales to the soldiers and other types of men that came in and out of the establishment. It was a decent wage to be made there, not only from serving, but we also entertained the men, with song and dance, just teetering on the verge of racy and seductive.

The two of us together, we were way before our time.

Clara would have loved living in this century in which I am living now. We’ll get to more of that later, more of what happened to her, and why she isn’t here with me, with us.

The pair of us together, we could charm those men too. It also didn’t hurt that my sister and I were very pleasant on the eyes. The people of that era and time found my sister and I intriguing and scary at the same time. It was because we were not only sisters, but identical. It was like looking in a mirror when we were standing side by side. Some called us witches,

and other names almost anything you could think of, but Clara always had a witty comeback for them. She was our fierce defender.

People had a very difficult time telling the two of us apart. So a lot of time both of us answered to each other’s names.

It was early summer the first time he came into the pub. He came in after a group of soldiers, taking a seat alone at a small table for two.

The young man was pressed and dressed. From his look it was evident this was not the type of place he frequented.

“Clara! Go serve him.” The shop owner meant me. It had been two years of working there, and he still had no idea which sister was which. I nodded, heading in the direction of the man seated by himself.

“Good Evening My Lord, is there an ale or spirit that strikes your fancy?”

He glanced up from his timepiece to stare me directly in the eyes. His eyes were two sapphires that in the dim lighting from the candles seemed to create their own sparkle from the lack of lighting. His smile was enchanting, I found myself staring at his teeth, as I had never seen teeth so brilliantly white before.

“What would you recommend?”

“I do not drink those types of libations, My Lord, but I could bring you the one that seems to be the preferred by our clientele.”

I brought him the whiskey that men from his station typically ordered when they were there.

“Do you require anything else at this moment? Supper is still being served for a bit.”

“I’m not hungry, but I heard there would be a show here? Sisters who perform?”

“Yes, My Lord there is. It will begin shortly. May I take my leave?”

“Yes Miss…….. Miss….”

“Alice Hughes.”

“Alice. I will not forget that name. As the face that it is attached to is unforgettable as well. I am Richard Reese.”

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lord Reese.”

“You as well Miss Hughes.”

My sister and I quickly went to our small changing room to put on our identical costumes waiting in the hallway for Maxwell to introduce us.

When we walked out to the small stage and the music began to play, Richard sat up in surprise.

So much for an unforgettable face, he kept looking between my sister and myself, another in a stream of people that could not tell us apart. He was attentive to the entire show watching our every move.

When we separated to make our rounds across the room, keeping in our seductive, sultry characters, to flirt with men at their tables, I realized his eyes were now following me and me alone, either he knew I was truly Alice, or he decided at that moment to pick one of us to watch.

Once the show was concluded, we were allowed to have the patrons request time with us to sit at their tables. We always decided separately as that’s how we found the two of us made more money. I was just finishing up with another client when I saw his hand raised. Since Clara was free she walked in his direction. She was there only a few seconds before she walked back over to me.

“He said he wants Alice.”

I walked back over to him sitting down.

“You requested me My Lord?”

“You should be confident like this all the time, Alice. You changed into a different person when you walked out on that stage.”

“It’s a character My Lord.”

“It’s more than that. I’ve never seen someone so radiant before.”

“Then you must not get out much during daylight hours.”

“No. I do not, the evening is my morning, it has been for quite some time.”

“Mine too pretty much.”

I stood.

“Where are you going?”

“Your time is up.”

I continued working, when I glanced up, he was gone. Clara and I pooled our money, giving the house its share, and bagging up our little fortune.

“I will walk with you two home. It’s not safe. There was another murder last night.”

“Thank you Maxwell for looking out.” Clara’s eyes were locked on Maxwell, and his were on her.

The next three nights Richard showed up for the show, and afterwards requested time with me.

“Looks like you have a fan.” Clara said with a smile as she saw Richard waving his hand in my direction beckoning me to come over to his table.

That night when I sat down from the table across from him, he pushed a small purse towards me.

“How much?”

“Excuse me My Lord?”

“For the night. I’m sure this is enough.”

“Bold of you to assume I would say yes to something like that.”

He appeared not to understand. “Is it not enough? I have more.” He produced a second equally large purse of coins.

“I do not sell my body for money My Lord.”

“You sell sex. That whole show was nothing but sex.”

“No. We sell the illusion of sex.

We do not give it, or show all our bare skin to any of you. We sell smiles, interest in your meaningless conversations you wish to have with us, and flirtations. We do not sell ourselves. If that’s what you are looking for from me, you are mistaken, and please do not return here.”

I jumped up from the table walking away.

“Alice….” His voice sounded sad and apologetic, but I kept walking.

Later that evening I talked to Clara as we walked home, with Maxwell following us for safety and protection.

“He made a mistake about what we do here, Alice.

He’s a man, that’s what they do.”

“He thought we were prostitutes.”

“And, there are places with actual prostitutes next door, but did he go there? No?”

“I told him if that is all he’s looking for from me not to return tomorrow.”

“He’ll be back.” Maxwell commented.

“How do you know?”

“He fancies you Alice, and when you’re around him, you look like you fancy him too.

He will be there tomorrow.”

The next evening, Richard was back; his hand was first in the air when their show concluded.

“I really meant no disrespect to you Miss Alice or to your character. I never meant to insinuate something false about you. Please accept my apology.”

“I accept your apology My Lord.”

When it came time for me to leave he kept plunking out coins to keep me at his table to continue our conversations. I was there and only there the whole evening. Richard asked to take me on a proper evening outing in two nights. Our first day we wouldn’t be working. I was actually excited about our… first date.

That next night was when my whole world changed, even though it started out like any other evening. Our shift at the Pub, our show, and Richard…

Clara and I were giggling and talking as we walked until Maxwell shushed us.

We halted in our tracks as Maxwell looked around the area as if on high alert.

Two men wearing masks emerged running from the shadows yelling for us to give them all of our money.

Maxwell refused them. I wanted to just give them the money. But Maxwell insisted that they were not going to take what we all had worked that night and every night to get.

Maxwell whispered “run.” to us, the split second before he lunged towards the two men, the fight ensuing. Maxwell managed to critically wound one, but the other got the jump on him, shooting him. Maxwell’s lifeless body hit the ground.

Clara protectively pushed me behind her.

“Run Alice. Save yourself.”

“I won’t leave you. We’ll give you our money, it doesn’t matter.” I screamed.

“No we won’t. Maxwell died for us. They’re not getting a coin from us while I'm breathing.”

Clara pulled her blade from the folds of her dress advancing towards the man. I tried to help her when it looked like the unwounded man was starting to overpower her, by jumping on his back. Using my fists to hit his back and face. I was thrown off his back, losing consciousness when I hit the ground.

When I woke, he was standing over Clara’s trembling body, blood was pouring from her neck in rivers. Clara was gasping for breath trying to hold the wound closed.

I screamed at the sight. Now I know Richard heard my fearful scream from miles away.

The monster of a man stood wiping the bloody blade on his pants.

Tears were streaming down Clara’s cheeks as she stared at me. “Run Alice… Please…”

I was frozen in fear as he started to advance towards me.

“You can have it. Please don’t hurt me.” I begged, throwing the small purse of coins in his direction.

“It’s not even about that anymore. Now it’s your turn.”

Finally my legs had unfrozen and I could move. I tried to run away. He grabbed me from behind pulling me by my hair. I screamed again. He turned me around and pushed me to the ground.

“Alice….” She held her neck with one hand while reaching for me with the other.

“Clara.”

I was about to die mere feet away from my sister, and I couldn’t hold her hand as our hands only a few crucial inches away from connecting.

I gasped in shock when he slit my throat. It wasn’t pain I felt in those moments, I could feel life spilling from me. I felt tired, as my eyes started to drift closed.

A hand clasped mine, causing me to open my eyes. Clara had managed to slide herself the last few crucial inches to take my hand.

“I’ll go first, to make sure it’s safe for you. Then you follow. Like always.” She whispered.

“Okay. I’m not afraid.”

“That’s sweet.” The man grumbled, picking up the purse of coins. He was standing there for the second before I blinked, and I heard a loud crunching sound and he was on the ground dead and Richard was next to me.

“Oh Alice!!!!” Richard whimpered. “I can save you.”

“Save my sister first.”

“I can not. It’s too late for her.”

I realized I was still holding her hand, but her grip had relaxed. Clara had died in those few moments since I last glanced at her.

“I don’t want to die Richard.”

“I can save you, but you have to give me permission to. I can give you another life, but you have to choose it.”

“I choose it.”

Richard bit his wrist blood trickled from the puncture wound.

He held his wrist to my lips.

“Drink from me and I promise you will live.”

So I drank from him.

Not even a minute later I felt excruciating pain throughout my body. It felt like what little blood left in my body was burning its way from the inside, out.

“What’s happening to me Richard?”

“You have to die first. I’ll be by your side when you wake up. Don’t be afraid.”

I could hear everything around me as my body shut down, my eyes drifting closed, my breaths and my heartbeat slowing. Then I noticed, there were no sounds coming from Richard. NO heartbeat, no breath. What did I consent to, in order to save my life?”

Then I felt my heart stop beating.

Vivid. Dreams. Were they dreams? I saw my parents, I saw Maxwell, and lastly my sister.

“I will miss you Alice. You have a different destiny now.”

I woke up in a dark room. I felt his presence immediately even though he hadn’t spoken. When my eyes adjusted, I could see him clearly, though it was dark, he was sitting in a chair reading a book.

He sat the book on the chair and walked over to me.

“You’re finally awake, Alice, how do you feel?”

I immediately touched my throat; there was no longer a wound.

“I feel….fine.. How long have I been sleeping?”

“It took three days for your body to heal and for death to pass.”

“So I did die?”

“You died a mortal death. But you Alice Hughes are still a living being.”

My stomach growled.

“You’re hungry. I knew you would be. Let’s go get someone to eat.”

“Someone?”

He softly laughed, lighting several candles.

“Look at yourself Alice. I mean really look at yourself.”

I peered at myself in the mirror. I was the same, yet I was different. My skin did not have the same glow it once did, but at the same time, it was glowing. My eye color had changed from the deep brown I knew, to a shade of sapphire almost identical to Richard’s.

“Have you ever heard of the First Family of Cordonia?”

“The Royal family?”

“One in the same. But what the world doesn’t know is… that we are Vampire.”

#bebepac writes #halloween story #choices fanfiction #choicesflashfics #liam x riley #liam x riley forever #the royal romance #bloodbound maybe?#choices fic writers creations

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groovyships · 2 years

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Okay so it's nearly 3 in the morning where I'm at and I'm down bad with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever so forgive me if this is incomprehensible. (This is also NOT targeted at my MCR mutual, you know who you are and you're the coolest. Your genuine excitement over MCR is refreshing and you're wonderful /p)

It's one thing to hate a band, that's completely fine. But it's another to lie about a band's influence to justify hating them. Literally just hate the Beatles. Nobody cares. You do not have to lie about literal well known facts to justify your hatred of the Beatles.

I'm so passionate about MCR's music. I've loved MCR ever since I was a little kid. I've memorized the entirety of The Black Parade. Behind all of the hippie vibes is an honest to god emo who used to unironically own spike bracelets and had perfected raccoon eyeliner.

So that's why it pains me to see younger emos throwing fits on Tumblr about how MCR wasn't inspired by The Beatles, instead bringing up Queen as an example. Yes! They were inspired by Queen! I'm always impressed when someone can pinpoint musical inspirations in the songs they listen to! However, and I hate to break it to you,

THE BLACK PARADE WOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED WITHOUT SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND AND THIS WAS COMPLETELY INTENTIONAL

The Black Parade was MADE to be the emo's Sgt. Pepper's. And this is a GOOD thing.

I typed up an entire paragraph explaining the origins of how Sgt. Pepper's came to be, but tbh I don't even need to tell you anything about the music or the story or the construction for you to be able to realize that THIS

was inspired by THAT

Or that THIS

was inspired by THAT.

Visual similarities aside. Listen to me. Listen to me and realize that I am not trying to sell you on the Beatles. I could not give less of a shit if you do not like them. Look into my eyes.

If I told you there was a concept album about a fictional traveling band with heavy military inspiration, made by a REAL band to allow for more creative exploration, that went on to revolutionize rock and roll as we know it. I'd be talking about both albums. Again, The Black Parade was made to be the antithesis of everything Sgt. Pepper's was. Not out of spite, or hatred, but out of genuine inspiration. I'd also like to point out that TBP was heavily inspired by The Wall, another amazing concept album from a band that Tumblr seems to hate because they don't know how to enjoy things critically.

I like TBP more than Sgt. Pepper's. I think it's more effective at story telling, it has more songs that I like to listen to separately. It's a genuine masterpiece that stands the test of time. But it's obviously Beatles inspired, and that's fine. It doesn't even sound like anything the Beatles have made, and I'm not accusing it of that.

Please. Despise the Beatles all you want. Be my guest. But just. Stop lying about your faves being inspired by them just because you don't like them?? How pretentious is that?

And before anyone comes after me, I'd like for them to just read this response from an interview Gerard had. Yes. Your fave grew up with and likes the Beatles. It's not the end of the world. You will survive this. People are allowed to like things that you don't like.

#Wish I could've found the original post that inspired this rant it was so willfully ignorant #The Beatles #My Chemical Romance #long post #Sorry mutuals I know you guys like to forget that I'm a Beatles fan when you can. I like to forget too

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grabyourluck-blog · 2 years

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3 Article Myths that Hold You Hostage

New Post has been published on https://www.referral-master.com/3-article-myths-that-hold-you-hostage/

3 Article Myths that Hold You Hostage

There is so much misinformation out there on article marketing, I want to try to set the record straight. Granted, some of this misinformation has been repeated so many times that you may be incredulous by what I’m about to tell you. Then again, you might be one of the savvy ones who see through the nonsense of article spinners and the like.

First myth: If you post an article on your website and again on Ezine Articles (or any other article directory) then you’ve got to significantly rewrite it so that it’s not duplicate content, right?

Wrong.

So long as it is ORIGINAL content, as in it’s your own content (whether you wrote it or hired someone to write it) you can post the exact same article on your own website and again on the article directories. That’s because Ezine Articles doesn’t care if the article has already been published — as long as it is credited to the original author.

And as far as I know, this holds true for every article directory. If there’s a directory out there demanding unique content, then they don’t know what they’re doing. It would be like asking the Beatles for a unique version of Yellow Submarine before a radio station would play it. It’s just plain crazy.

Second myth: You should publish your article to the ezine directory first, and once it’s accepted then you should publish it to your own website.

Rubbish.

Why would you give your own original content to an article directory before your own website?

If you’re thinking it somehow helps with SEO, it doesn’t. If you’re thinking they won’t take it if it’s already on your website, see above.

You publish it to your own site first to make your site the authority site and to give your site the link juice.

Your main goal in publishing articles to article directories isn’t SEO and it isn’t getting traffic from the directory. It’s to get relevant authority sites to pick up and publish your content, thus giving you valuable backlinks and yes, targeted traffic.

Third myth: “But if other websites are picking up my article, isn’t that duplicate content?”

No. Before the Internet, when the Associated Press would write an article, that article could be picked up by hundreds of different newspapers, with each paper printing the exact same article and byline.

Enter the Internet. Just like the AP, news sites generate content that is then picked up by hundreds of different websites. Each website posts the same identical article with the same byline. It’s called syndication, and it’s perfectly fine. You will NOT be penalized in any way for it, and it can provide valuable backlinks and targeted traffic to your website.

How does Google perceive syndicated content? When a particular article appears on multiple websites, Google perceives it as being POPULAR and adds SEO weight to it, depending on how many instances it discovers. And if it finds your content on high PR and authority sites, it gives it even more weight.

So with those 3 myths officially debunked, stop being held hostage by fake news and get to work on getting your own article content published, circulated and syndicated online!

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icinch · 2 years

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3 Article Myths that Hold You Hostage

New Post has been published on https://www.cinchhomebiz.com/3-article-myths-that-hold-you-hostage/

3 Article Myths that Hold You Hostage

Wrong.

Second myth: You should publish your article to the ezine directory first, and once it’s accepted then you should publish it to your own website.

Rubbish.

Why would you give your own original content to an article directory before your own website?

If you’re thinking it somehow helps with SEO, it doesn’t. If you’re thinking they won’t take it if it’s already on your website, see above.

You publish it to your own site first to make your site the authority site and to give your site the link juice.

Third myth: “But if other websites are picking up my article, isn’t that duplicate content?”

So with those 3 myths officially debunked, stop being held hostage by fake news and get to work on getting your own article content published, circulated and syndicated online!

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podcastdrita · 2 years

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Ringo starr today

Q: Oh, good! No weird side effects or anything? Starr: I've got both jabs and I'm feeling groovy. That (concert) is seven or eight minutes long in the original (film) – it's now 43 minutes. It's beautiful and it's joyful and we play live on the roof. So I love Peter and I love what he's doing. And every time he came to LA, he'd come over with his iPad and say, "Look at this." And I'd say, "Yes! There's laughter and there's joy," and (footage) of the band being the band: digging each other, fooling around. And we found 56 hours of unused film, so we gave (Jackson) that. I remember lots of humor, lots of laughter. We had lots of those moments, but we had a lot of loving, too, and that was never shown. It was based on a couple of seconds of what two guys (McCartney and George Harrison) went through. Starr: Yeah, I'm always moaning that the Michael Lindsay-Hogg (documentary) was miserable and it was. 27) is a recut of the 1970 film "Let It Be" about the making of the band's final album. Q: Peter Jackson's new documentary "The Beatles: Get Back" (in theaters Aug. 'Let It Be' at 50: Why the Beatles' last album is a 'mess,' but still spawned a masterpiece But I never know where they're coming from. I can't sit there like, "I'm going to write now." I write a lot of lines down that I feel could be good songs later. Rex frontman) Marc Bolan came over for dinner one night and that's how he talked: "Hey, back off! Ah, boogaloo!" Then I go to bed at night and I can hear (the chorus), "Back off boogaloo." I ran downstairs trying to put it on tape but none of my machines worked, so I was stealing batteries from my children's toys. It came out of the blue like "Back Off Boogaloo." (T. I thought I was writing a big blues number. Q: "Don't Pass Me By" is a personal favorite of mine. It was great because they were all joining in. Starr: Well, "With A Little Help from My Friends," that gave me a whole career, really. Q: Do you have a favorite Beatles song you sang lead on? I was a rock star and they made me a balladeer! (Laughs.) Then they started writing for me and ruined my whole career. They're records I love, so we did my versions. Starr: No, they'd always say, "We've got a song for you." When they couldn't be bothered writing for me, I started by doing Carl Perkins ( "Honey Don't," which the Beatles covered in 1964) or "Boys" (by The Shirelles, recorded by the Beatles in 1963). Did you ask Paul McCartney to write you a song or how did you wind up singing "Yellow Submarine?" Q: The Beatles' "Revolver" album turns 55 later this year. I mix it myself with salad and fruits and put it all in the spinner. Every morning it's berries, no matter what else is on the plate. It's always with berries. I have a protein drink (during) the day and a protein bar. The two B's, baby! I don't know if it's good for everybody, but I set my palate on what I want. Starr: Yeah, I'm telling you: blueberries and broccoli. Is it really just the broccoli, blueberries and vegetarian diet that keep you so young? I had two tours I had to let go of, and I've already canceled the May/June one this year because I don't think it'll be safe. six times? You've got to help protect yourself if you can, but I was really pissed off. I have a beautiful box here (on Zoom), but I've been in it a lot. So there's "zooming in" in that way, and I think we are all zooming in a little emotionally. When you see the (cover of) the EP, it's a big camera lens behind me. Question: Your EP is titled "Zoom In," which is a very apt title for right now. Review: Paul McCartney's experimental 'McCartney III' is a welcome return The jovial Starr, 80, who just released the new book "Ringo Rocks: 30 Years of the All Starrs," recently caught up with USA TODAY for a wide-ranging chat over – what else? – Zoom: Starr recorded the five-track effort over Zoom with famous pals including Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl, who feature on the wistful "Here's to the Nights." He also invited some musicians into his Los Angeles home studio, which "was a lifesaver for me, to be able to hang out with another musician with a mask on, at least 10 feet or 6 feet away." "There's not a lot of hugging and I'm a big hugger, but you've got to stop all that lately," says the legendary Beatles drummer, whose new solo EP, "Zoom In," is out Friday. If there's one thing Ringo Starr misses most about pre-pandemic life, it's probably the hugs.

#Ringo starr today

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path-of-my-childhood · 3 years

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Musicians On Musicians: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift

By: Patrick Doyle for Rolling Stone Date: November 13th 2020

On songwriting secrets, making albums at home, and what they’ve learned during the pandemic.

Taylor Swift arrived early to Paul McCartney’s London office in October, “mask on, brimming with excitement.” “I mostly work from home these days,” she writes about that day, “and today feels like a rare school field trip that you actually want to go on.”

Swift showed up without a team, doing her own hair and makeup. In addition to being two of the most famous pop songwriters in the world, Swift and McCartney have spent the past year on similar journeys. McCartney, isolated at home in the U.K., recorded McCartney III. Like his first solo album, in 1970, he played nearly all of the instruments himself, resulting in some of his most wildly ambitious songs in a long time. Swift also took some new chances, writing over email with the National’s Aaron Dessner and recording the raw Folklore, which abandons arena pop entirely in favor of rich character songs. It’s the bestselling album of 2020.

Swift listened to McCartney III as she prepared for today’s conversation; McCartney delved into Folkore. Before the photo shoot, Swift caught up with his daughters Mary (who would be photographing them) and Stella (who designed Swift’s clothes; the two are close friends). “I’ve met Paul a few times, mostly onstage at parties, but we’ll get to that later,” Swift writes. “Soon he walks in with his wife, Nancy. They’re a sunny and playful pair, and I immediately feel like this will be a good day. During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. We walk into his office for a chat, and after I make a nervous request, Paul is kind enough to handwrite my favorite lyric of his and sign it. He makes a joke about me selling it, and I laugh because it’s something I know I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. That’s around the time when we start talking about music.”

Taylor Swift: I think it’s important to note that if this year had gone the way that we thought it was going to go, you and I would have played Glastonbury this year, and instead, you and I both made albums in isolation.

Paul McCartney: Yeah!

Swift: And I remember thinking it would have been so much fun because the times that I’ve run into you, I correlate with being some of the most fun nights of my life. I was at a party with you, when everybody just started playing music. And it was Dave Grohl playing, and you...

McCartney: You were playing one of his songs, weren’t you?

Swift: Yes, I was playing his song called “Best of You,” but I was playing it on piano, and he didn’t recognize it until about halfway through. I just remember thinking, “Are you the catalyst for the most fun times ever?” Is it your willingness to get up and play music that makes everyone feel like this is a thing that can happen tonight?

McCartney: I mean, I think it’s a bit of everything, isn’t it? I’ll tell you who was very... Reese Witherspoon was like, “Are you going to sing?” I said “Oh, I don’t know.” She said, “You’ve got to, yeah!” She’s bossing me around. So I said, “Whoa,” so it’s a bit of that.

Swift: I love that person, because the party does not turn musical without that person.

McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.

Swift: If nobody says, “Can you guys play music?” we’re not going to invite ourselves up onstage at whatever living-room party it is.

McCartney: I seem to remember Woody Harrelson got on the piano, and he starts playing “Let It Be,” and I’m thinking, “I can do that better.” So I said, “Come on, move over, Woody.” So we’re both playing it. It was really nice... I love people like Dan Aykroyd, who’s just full of energy and he loves his music so much, but he’s not necessarily a musician, but he just wanders around the room, just saying, “You got to get up, got to get up, do some stuff.”

Swift: I listened to your new record. And I loved a lot of things about it, but it really did feel like kind of a flex to write, produce, and play every instrument on every track. To me, that’s like flexing a muscle and saying, “I can do all this on my own if I have to.”

McCartney: Well, I don’t think like that, I must admit. I just picked up some of these instruments over the years. We had a piano at home that my dad played, so I picked around on that. I wrote the melody to “When I’m 64” when I was, you know, a teenager.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: When the Beatles went to Hamburg, there were always drum kits knocking around, so when there was a quiet moment, I’d say, “Do you mind if I have a knock around?” So I was able to practice, you know, without practicing. That’s why I play right-handed. Guitar was just the first instrument I got. Guitar turned to bass; it also turned into ukulele, mandolin. Suddenly, it’s like, “Wow,” but it’s really only two or three instruments.

Swift: Well, I think that’s downplaying it a little bit. In my mind, it came with a visual of you being in the country, kind of absorbing the sort of do-it-yourself [quality] that has had to come with the quarantine and this pandemic. I found that I’ve adapted a do-it-yourself mentality to a lot of things in my career that I used to outsource. I’m just wondering what a day of recording in the pandemic looked like for you.

McCartney: Well, I’m very lucky because I have a studio that’s, like, 20 minutes away from where I live. We were in lockdown on a farm, a sheep farm with my daughter Mary and her four kids and her husband. So I had four of my grandkids, I had Mary, who’s a great cook, so I would just drive myself to the studio. And there were two other guys that could come in and we’d be very careful and distanced and everything: my engineer Steve, and then my equipment guy Keith. So the three of us made the record, and I just started off. I had to do a little bit of film music - I had to do an instrumental for a film thing - so I did that. And I just kept going, and that turned into the opening track on the album. I would just come in, say, “Oh, yeah, what are we gonna do?” [Then] have some sort of idea, and start doing it. Normally, I’d start with the instrument I wrote it on, either piano or guitar, and then probably add some drums and then a bit of bass till it started to sound like a record, and then just gradually layer it all up. It was fun.

Swift: That’s so cool.

McCartney: What about yours? You’re playing guitar and piano on yours.

Swift: Yeah, on some of it, but a lot of it was made with Aaron Dessner, who’s in a band called the National that I really love. And I had met him at a concert a year before, and I had a conversation with him, asking him how he writes. It’s my favorite thing to ask people who I’m a fan of. And he had an interesting answer. He said, “All the band members live in different parts of the world. So I make tracks. And I send them to our lead singer, Matt, and he writes the top line.” I just remember thinking, “That is really efficient.” And I kind of stored it in my brain as a future idea for a project. You know, how you have these ideas... “Maybe one day I’ll do this.” I always had in my head: “Maybe one day I’ll work with Aaron Dessner.”

So when lockdown happened, I was in L.A., and we kind of got stuck there. It’s not a terrible place to be stuck. We were there for four months maybe, and during that time, I sent an email to Aaron Dessner and I said, “Do you think you would want to work during this time? Because my brain is all scrambled, and I need to make something, even if we’re just kind of making songs that we don’t know what will happen...”

McCartney: Yeah, that was the thing. You could do stuff - you didn’t really worry it was going to turn into anything.

Swift: Yeah, and it turned out he had been writing instrumental tracks to keep from absolutely going crazy during the pandemic as well, so he sends me this file of probably 30 instrumentals, and the first one I opened ended up being a song called “Cardigan,” and it really happened rapid-fire like that. He’d send me a track; he’d make new tracks, add to the folder; I would write the entire top line for a song, and he wouldn’t know what the song would be about, what it was going to be called, where I was going to put the chorus. I had originally thought, “Maybe I’ll make an album in the next year, and put it out in January or something,” but it ended up being done and we put it out in July. And I just thought there are no rules anymore, because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, “How will this song sound in a stadium? How will this song sound on radio?” If you take away all the parameters, what do you make? And I guess the answer is Folklore.

McCartney: And it’s more music for yourself than music that’s got to go do a job. My thing was similar to that: After having done this little bit of film music, I had a lot of stuff that I had been working on, but I’d said, “I’m just going home now,” and it’d be left half-finished. So I just started saying, “Well, what about that? I never finished that.” So we’d pull it out, and we said, “Oh, well, this could be good.” And because it didn’t have to amount to anything, I would say, “Ah, I really want to do tape loops. I don’t care if they fit on this song, I just want to do some.” So I go and make some tape loops, and put them in the song, just really trying to do stuff that I fancy.

I had no idea it would end up as an album; I may have been a bit less indulgent, but if a track was eight minutes long, to tell you the truth, what I thought was, “I’ll be taking it home tonight, Mary will be cooking, the grandkids will all be there running around, and someone, maybe Simon, Mary’s husband, is going to say, ‘What did you do today?’ And I’m going to go, ‘Oh,’ and then get my phone and play it for them.” So this became the ritual.

Swift: That’s the coziest thing I’ve ever heard.

McCartney: Well, it’s like eight minutes long, and I said, “I hate it when I’m playing someone something and it finishes after three minutes.” I kind of like that it just [continues] on.

Swift: You want to stay in the zone.

McCartney: It just keeps going on. I would just come home, “Well, what did you do today?” “Oh, well, I did this. I’m halfway through this,” or, “We finished this.”

Swift: I was wondering about the numerology element to McCartney III. McCartney I, II, and III have all come out on years with zeroes.

McCartney: Ends of decades.

Swift: Was that important?

McCartney: Yeah, well, this was being done in 2020, and I didn’t really think about it. I think everyone expected great things of 2020. “It’s gonna be great! Look at that number! 2020! Auspicious!” Then suddenly Covid hit, and it was like, “That’s gonna be auspicious all right, but maybe for the wrong reasons.” Someone said to me, “Well, you put out McCartney right after the Beatles broke up, and that was 1970, and then you did McCartney II in 1980.” And I said, “Oh, I’m going to release this in 2020 just for whatever you call it, the numerology...”

Swift: The numerology, the kind of look, the symbolism. I love numbers. Numbers kind of rule my whole world. The numbers 13... 89 is a big one. I have a few others that I find...

McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.

Swift: Yeah, it’s lucky for me. It’s my birthday. It’s all these weird coincidences of good things that have happened. Now, when I see it places, I look at it as a sign that things are going the way they’re supposed to. They may not be good now, they could be painful now, but things are on a track. I don’t know, I love the numerology.

McCartney: It’s spooky, Taylor. It’s very spooky. Now wait a minute: Where’d you get 89?

Swift: That’s when I was born, in 1989, and so I see it in different places and I just think it’s...

McCartney: No, it’s good. I like that, where certain things you attach yourself to, and you get a good feeling off them. I think that’s great.

Swift: Yeah, one of my favorite artists, Bon Iver, he has this thing with the number 22. But I was also wondering: You have always kind of seeked out a band or a communal atmosphere with like, you know, the Beatles and Wings, and then Egypt Station. I thought it was interesting when I realized you had made a record with no one else. I just wondered, did that feel natural?

McCartney: It’s one of the things I’ve done. Like with McCartney, because the Beatles had broken up, there was no alternative but to get a drum kit at home, get a guitar, get an amp, get a bass, and just make something for myself. So on that album, which I didn’t really expect to do very well, I don’t think it did. But people sort of say, “I like that. It was a very casual album.” It didn’t really have to mean anything. So I’ve done that, the play-everything-myself thing. And then I discovered synths and stuff, and sequencers, so I had a few of those at home. I just thought I’m going to play around with this and record it, so that became McCartney II. But it’s a thing I do. Certain people can do it. Stevie Wonder can do it. Stevie Winwood, I believe, has done it. So there are certain people quite like that.

When you’re working with someone else, you have to worry about their variances. Whereas your own variance, you kind of know it. It’s just something I’ve grown to like. Once you can do it, it becomes a little bit addictive. I actually made some records under the name the Fireman.

Swift: Love a pseudonym.

McCartney: Yeah, for the fun! But, you know, let’s face it, you crave fame and attention when you’re young. And I just remembered the other day, I was the guy in the Beatles that would write to journalists and say [speaks in a formal voice]: “We are a semiprofessional rock combo, and I’d think you’d like [us]... We’ve written over 100 songs (which was a lie), my friend John and I. If you mention us in your newspaper...” You know, I was always, like, craving the attention.

Swift: The hustle! That’s so great, though.

McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.

Swift: Yeah, I think, when a pseudonym comes in is when you still have a love for making the work and you don’t want the work to become overshadowed by this thing that’s been built around you, based on what people know about you. And that’s when it’s really fun to create fake names and write under them.

McCartney: Do you ever do that?

Swift: Oh, yeah.

McCartney: Oh, yeah? Oh, well, we didn’t know that! Is that a widely known fact?

Swift: I think it is now, but it wasn’t. I wrote under the name Nils Sjöberg because those are two of the most popular names of Swedish males. I wrote this song called “This Is What You Came For” that Rihanna ended up singing. And nobody knew for a while. I remembered always hearing that when Prince wrote “Manic Monday,” they didn’t reveal it for a couple of months.

McCartney: Yeah, it also proves you can do something without the fame tag. I did something for Peter and Gordon; my girlfriend’s brother and his mate were in a band called Peter and Gordon. And I used to write under the name Bernard Webb.

Swift: [Laughs.] That’s a good one! I love it.

McCartney: As Americans call it, Ber-nard Webb. I did the Fireman thing. I worked with a producer, a guy called Youth, who’s this real cool dude. We got along great. He did a mix for me early on, and we got friendly. I would just go into the studio, and he would say, “Hey, what about this groove?” and he’d just made me have a little groove going. He’d say, “You ought to put some bass on it. Put some drums on it.” I’d just spend the whole day putting stuff on it. And we’d make these tracks, and nobody knew who Fireman was for a while. We must have sold all of 15 copies.

Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.

McCartney: And we didn’t mind, you know?

Swift: I think it’s so cool that you do projects that are just for you. Because I went with my family to see you in concert in 2010 or 2011, and the thing I took away from the show most was that it was the most selfless set list I had ever seen. It was completely geared toward what it would thrill us to hear. It had new stuff, but it had every hit we wanted to hear, every song we’d ever cried to, every song people had gotten married to, or been brokenhearted to. And I just remembered thinking, “I’ve got to remember that,” that you do that set list for your fans.

McCartney: You do that, do you?

Swift: I do now. I think that learning that lesson from you taught me at a really important stage in my career that if people want to hear “Love Story” and “Shake It Off,” and I’ve played them 300 million times, play them the 300-millionth-and-first time. I think there are times to be selfish in your career, and times to be selfless, and sometimes they line up.

McCartney: I always remembered going to concerts as a kid, completely before the Beatles, and I really hoped they would play the ones I loved. And if they didn’t, it was kind of disappointing. I had no money, and the family wasn’t wealthy. So this would be a big deal for me, to save up for months to afford the concert ticket.

Swift: Yeah, it feels like a bond. It feels like that person on the stage has given something, and it makes you as a crowd want to give even more back, in terms of applause, in terms of dedication. And I just remembered feeling that bond in the crowd, and thinking, “He’s up there playing these Beatles songs, my dad is crying, my mom is trying to figure out how to work her phone because her hands are shaking so much.” Because seeing the excitement course through not only me, but my family and the entire crowd in Nashville, it just was really special. I love learning lessons and not having to learn them the hard way. Like learning nice lessons I really value.

McCartney: Well, that’s great, and I’m glad that set you on that path. I understand people who don’t want to do that, and if you do, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s a jukebox show.” I hear what they’re saying. But I think it’s a bit of a cheat, because the people who come to our shows have spent a lot of money. We can afford to go to a couple of shows and it doesn’t make much difference. But a lot of ordinary working folks... it’s a big event in their life, and so I try and deliver. I also, like you say, try and put in a few weirdos.

Swift: That’s the best. I want to hear current things, too, to update me on where the artist is. I was wondering about lyrics, and where you were lyrically when you were making this record. Because when I was making Folklore, I went lyrically in a total direction of escapism and romanticism. And I wrote songs imagining I was, like, a pioneer woman in a forbidden love affair [laughs]. I was completely...

McCartney: Was this “I want to give you a child”? Is that one of the lines?

Swift: Oh, that’s a song called “Peace.”

McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.

Swift: “Peace” is actually more rooted in my personal life. I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living. I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.

McCartney: So how does that go? Does your partner sympathize with that and understand?

Swift: Oh, absolutely.

McCartney: They have to, don’t they?

Swift: But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids. Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture - the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song “Peace” is talking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave? Stella always tells me that she had as normal a childhood as she could ever hope for under the circumstances.

McCartney: Yeah, it was very important to us to try and keep their feet on the ground amongst the craziness.

Swift: She went to a regular school...

McCartney: Yeah, she did.

Swift: And you would go trick-or-treating with them, wearing masks.

McCartney: All of them did, yeah. It was important, but it worked pretty well, because when they kind of reached adulthood, they would meet other kids who might have gone to private schools, who were a little less grounded.

And they could be the budding mothers to [kids]. I remember Mary had a friend, Orlando. Not Bloom. She used to really counsel him. And it’s ’cause she’d gone through that. Obviously, they got made fun of, my kids. They’d come in the classroom and somebody would sing, “Na na na na,” you know, one of the songs. And they’d have to handle that. They’d have to front it out.

Swift: Did that give you a lot of anxiety when you had kids, when you felt like all this pressure that’s been put on me is spilling over onto them, that they didn’t sign up for it? Was that hard for you?

McCartney: Yeah, a little bit, but it wasn’t like it is now. You know, we were just living a kind of semi-hippie life, where we withdrew from a lot of stuff. The kids would be doing all the ordinary things, and their school friends would be coming up to the house and having parties, and it was just great. I remember one lovely evening when it was Stella’s birthday, and she brought a bunch of school kids up. And, you know, they’d all ignore me. It happens very quickly. At first they’re like, “Oh, yeah, he’s like a famous guy,” and then it’s like [yawns]. I like that. I go in the other room and suddenly I hear this music going on. And one of the kids, his name was Luke, and he’s doing break dancing.

Swift: Ohhh!

McCartney: He was a really good break dancer, so all the kids are hanging out. That allowed them to be kind of normal with those kids. The other thing is, I don’t live fancy. I really don’t. Sometimes it’s a little bit of an embarrassment, if I’ve got someone coming to visit me, or who I know…

Swift: Cares about that stuff?

McCartney: Who’s got a nice big house, you know. Quincy Jones came to see me and I’m, like, making him a veggie burger or something. I’m doing some cooking. This was after I’d lost Linda, in between there. But the point I’m making is that I’m very consciously thinking, “Oh, God, Quincy’s got to be thinking, ‘What is this guy on? He hasn’t got big things going on. It’s not a fancy house at all. And we’re eating in the kitchen! He’s not even got the dining room going,’” you know?

Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.

McCartney: But that’s me. I’m awkward like that. That’s my kind of thing. Maybe I should have, like, a big stately home. Maybe I should get a staff. But I think I couldn’t do that. I’d be so embarrassed. I’d want to walk around dressed as I want to walk around, or naked, if I wanted to.

Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.

McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.

Swift: I remember what I wanted to know about, which is lyrics. Like, when you’re in this kind of strange, unparalleled time, and you’re making this record, are lyrics first? Or is it when you get a little melodic idea?

McCartney: It was a bit of both. As it kind of always is with me. There’s no fixed way. People used to ask me and John, “Well, who does the words, who does the music?” I used to say, “We both do both.” We used to say we don’t have a formula, and we don’t want one. Because the minute we get a formula, we should rip it up. I will sometimes, as I did with a couple of songs on this album, sit down at the piano and just start noodling around, and I’ll get a little idea and start to fill that out. So the lyrics - for me, it’s following a trail. I’ll start [sings “Find My Way,” a song from “McCartney III”]: “I can find my way. I know my left from right, da da da.” And I’ll just sort of fill it in. Like, we know this song, and I’m trying to remember the lyrics. Sometimes I’ll just be inspired by something. I had a little book which was all about the constellations and the stars and the orbits of Venus and...

Swift: Oh, I know that song - “The Kiss of Venus”?

McCartney: Yeah, “The Kiss of Venus.” And I just thought, “That’s a nice phrase.” So I was actually just taking phrases out of the book, harmonic sounds. And the book is talking about the maths of the universe, and how when things orbit around each other, and if you trace all the patterns, it becomes like a lotus flower.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: It’s very magical.

Swift: That is magical. I definitely relate to needing to find magical things in this very not-magical time, needing to read more books and learn to sew, and watch movies that take place hundreds of years ago. In a time where, if you look at the news, you just want to have a panic attack - I really relate to the idea that you are thinking about stars and constellations.

McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?

Swift: Yes. I was reading so much more than I ever did, and watching so many more films.

McCartney: What stuff were you reading?

Swift: I was reading, you know, books like Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I highly recommend, and books that dealt with times past, a world that doesn’t exist anymore. I was also using words I always wanted to use - kind of bigger, flowerier, prettier words, like “epiphany,” in songs. I always thought, “Well, that’ll never track on pop radio,” but when I was making this record, I thought, “What tracks? Nothing makes sense anymore. If there’s chaos everywhere, why don’t I just use the damn word I want to use in the song?”

McCartney: Exactly. So you’d see the word in a book and think, “I love that word”?

Swift: Yeah, I have favorite words, like “elegies” and “epiphany” and “divorcée,” and just words that I think sound beautiful, and I have lists and lists of them.

McCartney: How about “marzipan”?

Swift: Love “marzipan.”

McCartney: The other day, I was remembering when we wrote “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: “kaleidoscope.”

Swift: “Kaleidoscope” is one of mine! I have a song on 1989, a song called “Welcome to New York,” that I put the word “kaleidoscope” in just because I’m obsessed with the word.

McCartney: I think a love of words is a great thing, particularly if you’re going to try to write a lyric, and for me, it’s like, “What is this going to say to that person?” I often feel like I’m writing to someone who is not doing so well. So I’m trying to write songs that might help. Not in a goody-goody, crusading kind of way, but just thinking there have been so many times in my life when I’ve heard a song and felt so much better. I think that’s the angle I want, that inspirational thing.

I remember once, a friend of mine from Liverpool, we were teenagers and we were going to a fairground. He was a schoolmate, and we had these jackets that had a little fleck in the material, which was the cool thing at the time.

Swift: We should have done matching jackets for this photo shoot.

McCartney: Find me a fleck, I’m in. But we went to the fair, and I just remember - this is what happens with songs - there was this girl at the fair. This is just a little Liverpool fair - it was in a place called Sefton Park - and there was this girl, who was so beautiful. She wasn’t a star. She was so beautiful. Everyone was following her, and it’s like, “Wow.” It’s like a magical scene, you know? But all this gave me a headache, so I ended up going back to his house - I didn’t normally get headaches. And we thought, “What can we do?” So we put on the Elvis song “All Shook Up.” By the end of that song, my headache had gone. I thought, you know, “That’s powerful.”

Swift: That really is powerful.

McCartney: I love that, when people stop me in the street and say, “Oh, I was going through an illness and I listened to a lot of your stuff, and I’m better now and it got me through,” or kids will say, “It got me through exams.” You know, they’re studying, they’re going crazy, but they put your music on. I’m sure it happens with a lot of your fans. It inspires them, you know?

Swift: Yeah, I definitely think about that as a goal. There’s so much stress everywhere you turn that I kind of wanted to make an album that felt sort of like a hug, or like your favorite sweater that makes you feel like you want to put it on.

McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?

Swift: Like a good cardigan, a good, worn-in cardigan. Or something that makes you reminisce on your childhood. I think sadness can be cozy. It can obviously be traumatic and stressful, too, but I kind of was trying to lean into sadness that feels like somehow enveloping in not such a scary way - like nostalgia and whimsy incorporated into a feeling like you’re not all right. Because I don’t think anybody was really feeling like they were in their prime this year. Isolation can mean escaping into your imagination in a way that’s kind of nice.

McCartney: I think a lot of people have found that. I would say to people, “I feel a bit guilty about saying I’m actually enjoying this quarantine thing,” and people go, “Yeah, I know, don’t say it to anyone.” A lot of people are really suffering.

Swift: Because there’s a lot in life that’s arbitrary. Completely and totally arbitrary. And [the quarantine] is really shining a light on that, and also a lot of things we have that we outsource that you can actually do yourself.

McCartney: I love that. This is why I said I live simply. That’s, like, at the core of it. With so many things, something goes wrong and you go, “Oh, I’ll get somebody to fix that.” And then it’s like, “No, let me have a look at it...”

Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.

McCartney: “Maybe I can put that picture up.” It’s not rocket science. The period after the Beatles, when we went to live in Scotland on a really - talk about dumpy - little farm. I mean, I see pictures of it now and I’m not ashamed, but I’m almost ashamed. Because it’s like, “God, nobody’s cleaned up around here.”

But it was really a relief. Because when I was with the Beatles, we’d formed Apple Records, and if I wanted a Christmas tree, someone would just buy it. And I thought, after a while, “No, you know what? I really would like to go and buy our Christmas tree. Because that’s what everyone does.” So you go down - “I’ll have that one” - and you carried it back. I mean, it’s little, but it’s huge at the same time.

I needed a table in Scotland and I was looking through a catalog and I thought, “I could make one. I did woodwork in school, so I know what a dovetail joint is.” So I just figured it out. I’m just sitting in the kitchen, and I’m whittling away at this wood and I made this little joint. There was no nail technology - it was glue. And I was scared to put it together. I said, “It’s not going to fit,” but one day, I got my woodwork glue and thought, “There’s no going back.” But it turned out to be a real nice little table I was very proud of. It was that sense of achievement.

The weird thing was, Stella went up to Scotland recently and I said, “Isn’t it there?” and she said, “No.” Anyway, I searched for it. Nobody remembered it. Somebody said, “Well, there’s a pile of wood in the corner of one of the barns, maybe that’s it. Maybe they used it for firewood.” I said, “No, it’s not firewood.” Anyway, we found it, and do you know how joyous that was for me? I was like, “You found my table?!” Somebody might say that’s a bit boring.

Swift: No, it’s cool!

McCartney: But it was a real sort of great thing for me to be able to do stuff for yourself. You were talking about sewing. I mean normally, in your position, you’ve got any amount of tailors.

Swift: Well, there’s been a bit of a baby boom recently; several of my friends have gotten pregnant.

McCartney: Oh, yeah, you’re at the age.

Swift: And I was just thinking, “I really want to spend time with my hands, making something for their children.” So I made this really cool flying-squirrel stuffed animal that I sent to one of my friends. I sent a teddy bear to another one, and I started making these little silk baby blankets with embroidery. It’s gotten pretty fancy. And I’ve been painting a lot.

McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?

Swift: Acrylic or oil. Whenever I do watercolor, all I paint is flowers. When I have oil, I really like to do landscapes. I always kind of return to painting a lonely little cottage on a hill.

McCartney: It’s a bit of a romantic dream. I agree with you, though, I think you’ve got to have dreams, particularly this year. You’ve got to have something to escape to. When you say “escapism,” it sounds like a dirty word, but this year, it definitely wasn’t. And in the books you’re reading, you’ve gone into that world. That’s, I think, a great thing. Then you come back out. I normally will read a lot before I go to bed. So I’ll come back out, then I’ll go to sleep, so I think it really is nice to have those dreams that can be fantasies or stuff you want to achieve.

Swift: You’re creating characters. This was the first album where I ever created characters, or wrote about the life of a real-life person. There’s a song called “The Last Great American Dynasty” that’s about this real-life heiress who lived just an absolutely chaotic, hectic...

McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?

Swift: She’s a real person. Who lived in the house that I live in.

McCartney: She’s a real person? I listened to that and I thought, “Who is this?”

Swift: Her name was Rebekah Harkness. And she lived in the house that I ended up buying in Rhode Island. That’s how I learned about her. But she was a woman who was very, very talked about, and everything she did was scandalous. I found a connection in that. But I also was thinking about how you write “Eleanor Rigby” and go into that whole story about what all these people in this town are doing and how their lives intersect, and I hadn’t really done that in a very long time with my music. It had always been so microscope personal.

McCartney: Yeah, ’cause you were writing breakup songs like they were going out of style.

Swift: I was, before my luck changed [laughs]. I still write breakup songs. I love a good breakup song. Because somewhere in the world, I always have a friend going through a breakup, and that will make me write one.

McCartney: Yeah, this goes back to this thing of me and John: When you’ve got a formula, break it. I don’t have a formula. It’s the mood I’m in. So I love the idea of writing a character. And, you know, trying to think, “What am I basing this on?” So “Eleanor Rigby” was based on old ladies I knew as a kid. For some reason or other, I got great relationships with a couple of local old ladies. I was thinking the other day, I don’t know how I met them, it wasn’t like they were family. I’d just run into them, and I’d do their shopping for them.

Swift: That’s amazing.

McCartney: It just felt good to me. I would sit and talk, and they’d have amazing stories. That’s what I liked. They would have stories from the wartime - because I was born actually in the war - and so these old ladies, they were participating in the war. This one lady I used to sort of just hang out with, she had a crystal radio that I found very magical. In the war, a lot of people made their own radios - you’d make them out of crystals [sings “The Twilight Zone” theme].

Swift: How did I not know this? That sounds like something I would have tried to learn about.

McCartney: It’s interesting, because there is a lot of parallels with the virus and lockdowns and wartime. It happened to everyone. Like, this isn’t HIV, or SARS, or Avian flu, which happened to others, generally. This has happened to everyone, all around the world. That’s the defining thing about this particular virus. And, you know, my parents... it happened to everyone in Britain, including the queen and Churchill. War happened. So they were all part of this thing, and they all had to figure out a way through it. So you figured out Folklore. I figured out McCartney III.

Swift: And a lot of people have been baking sourdough bread. Whatever gets you through!

McCartney: Some people used to make radios. And they’d take a crystal - we should look it up, but it actually is a crystal. I thought, “Oh, no, they just called it a crystal radio,” but it’s actually crystals like we know and love.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: And somehow they get the radio waves - this crystal attracts them - they tune it in, and that’s how they used to get their news. Back to “Eleanor Rigby,” so I would think of her and think of what she’s doing and then just try to get lyrical, just try to bring poetry into it, words you love, just try to get images like “picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,” and Father McKenzie “is darning his socks in the night.” You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, “preparing his Bible,” which would have been more obvious. But “darning his socks” kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy. And that’s the magic of songs, you know. It’s a black hole, and then you start doing this process, and then there’s this beautiful little flower that you’ve just made. So it is very like embroidery, making something.

Swift: Making a table.

McCartney: Making a table.

Swift: Wow, it would’ve been so fun to play Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary together.

McCartney: It would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? And I was going to be asking you to play with me.

Swift: Were you going to invite me? I was hoping that you would. I was going to ask you.

McCartney: I would’ve done “Shake It Off.”

Swift: Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.

McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!

Swift: One thing I just find so cool about you is that you really do seem to have the joy of it, still, just no matter what. You seem to have the purest sense of joy of playing an instrument and making music, and that’s just the best, I think.

McCartney: Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?

Swift: We’re really lucky.

McCartney: I don’t know if it ever happens to you, but with me, it’s like, “Oh, my god, I’ve ended up as a musician.”

Swift: Yeah, I can’t believe it’s my job.

McCartney: I must tell you a story I told Mary the other day, which is just one of my favorite little sort of Beatles stories. We were in a terrible, big blizzard, going from London to Liverpool, which we always did. We’d be working in London and then drive back in the van, just the four of us with our roadie, who would be driving. And this was a blizzard. You couldn’t see the road. At one point, it slid off and it went down an embankment. So it was “Ahhh,” a bunch of yelling. We ended up at the bottom. It didn’t flip, luckily, but so there we are, and then it’s like, “Oh, how are we going to get back up? We’re in a van. It’s snowing, and there’s no way.” We’re all standing around in a little circle, and thinking, “What are we going to do?” And one of us said, “Well, something will happen.” And I thought that was just the greatest. I love that, that’s a philosophy.

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: And it did. We sort of went up the bank, we thumbed a lift, we got the lorry driver to take us, and Mal, our roadie, sorted the van and everything. So that was kind of our career. And I suppose that’s like how I ended up being a musician and a songwriter: “Something will happen.”

Swift: That’s the best.

McCartney: It’s so stupid it’s brilliant. It’s great if you’re ever in that sort of panic attack: “Oh, my God,” or, “Ahhh, what am I going to do?”

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: All right then, thanks for doing this, and this was, you know, a lot of fun.

Swift: You’re the best. This was so awesome. Those were some quality stories!

#this just might be the longest post I have ever posted #I have so much work so I'll read and edit later #taylor swift #paul mccartney #Rolling Stone magazine #interview #folklore era

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morrak · 2 years

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Untitled Wednesday Library Series, Part 59

Well, I’m back.

A friend who’s not (yet) on tumblr but occasionally reads these (hi) recently said she can tell I’m usually tired when writing them up. I maintain an old vice in thinking I’m hard to draw a bead on, but I admit I usually leave these for the end of a day. Do I wish I could spare enough brain to strop them into something more worthwhile? Definitely. Is that likely to happen soon? No, and that’s a shame. I don’t like wasting time or a swing at most of these items.

This one is especially important to put good wood on, I feel. From 1986, from Harvard’s Office for Information Technology, from various authors and original publishers, proximally from a friend who is yet on tumblr, From Sand to Circuits and Other Inquiries, edited by one John Simon.

The How

This series’ start was forestalled by a couple months of waffling about a title and format. I’ve since decided I fucked up by settling for the How/Text/Object/Why skeleton, but I think the name is justified: my collection is, it turns out, somehow big enough and subject to sufficient lending and churn to be called a library. That means I can safely use the words ‘acquisition’ and ‘donation’ here.

I sent out a batch of poetry collections — some I was looking to dearchive, but mostly a bunch of new copies of my favorite little Simic book — a while back and got a flood of delightful rejoinders. This gem is the kind gift of @believerindaydreams, who I’ve put off thanking for too long. Thank you.

The Text

A collection of articles, all quite different but united by each of: being obviously crafted under careful direction from Simon; talking about computers; and being more quaint than anything. The lineup of contributors is precisely what you’d expect for something of this pedigree.

Not much of this has aged very usefully, but it’s more fun to poke through than it should be. There are Beatles references, there are unqualified brain-computer analogies at the level of corpus callosum-bus, and boy are there ever some corporate namedrops.

Some answers to questions you might ask: Yes, Čapek is mentioned in the article about robotics. Yes, it hurts to read. Yes, the one about Xerox development is interesting and a better read than most treatments written since. Yes, the typesetting one utterly fucks. Yes, the library speculation came true within a few years and we’re living in the future of that future.

Much of this was obviously prepared for freestanding use in magazines, and that’s its own kind of fun. Simon’s writing — that’s about 75% of the book, mind you — is sharp and clear but a little short on pacing or interest. Not fun to read but fun to have read, which contributes to the feel of artifactness, maybe. I like it for that.

The Object

So very good. D, I don’t know where you found this, but the condition is aces. Not a single blemish on the pages, and the cover only has normal friction and even exposure wear. Sometimes academic presses put out things of practical beauty; all glued fabric covers should be canted and embossed like this. Some of the page registration is off, but whatever.

The diagram and printing work is inspired, really. The illustrators are rightfully named and thanked in both the front and rear matter. Lots of fine touches.

The Why, Though?

Because it’s got a bad joke and a picture of a dog in it and for no other reasons.

Now that’s how you write an article about the neurosystems of the microcomputer.

#images #untitled wednesday library series #on computers

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ljblueteak · 2 years

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Paul McCartney, Bertrand Russell, Vietnam and “Re-Writing History”

Okay, so I knew how quickly Beatle news could be sensationalized and clickbaited so that whatever was actually said could be distorted, but oh wow did I not realize that Paul discussing his meeting Bertrand Russell and talking about Vietnam had led to outlets scoffing at the idea that Paul had ever expressed a political thought in his life or could have, along with the rest of the Beatles, been interested in making political statements (and the way it’s discussed, like it would be beyond ridiculous to suggest he could *possibly* have been more aware of a particular issue before the others, is maddening. Yes, I see. Paul potentially drawing attention to a particular issue they all cared about erases everything any other Beatle may have said or done about the issue. If one of them’s more known for it, it’s obviously outrageous that any of the others had any thoughts about it on any level).

Outlets like The Guardian and NME and so on in 2008 ran with quotes suggesting Paul said “I politicized the Beatles,” but those words don’t appear in the interview with Jonathan Power that created this “controversy” (what’s even more ridiculous is that what Paul told Power is basically the same thing he said in Many Years From Now in 1997). The Guardian is especially mocking: “Bono, meanwhile, was honoured in Paris this weekend, at the Peace Summit. ‘I am an over-awarded, over-rewarded rock star,’ Bono said after receiving the Man of Peace prize. ‘You are the people who do the real work.’Somewhere in England, Paul McCartney is squeaking: ‘Me too!’”

Here’s what Paul actually said:

POWER: In the 2007 film Across the Universe the director weaves a love story around Beatles music and, like quite a few other people, she seems to be saying that you somehow encapsulated this mood of the 1960s—you formed in 1960 after all—and you transmitted it like nobody else had been able to transmit it. Do you think that is true?

McCARTNEY: Maybe. But the nice thing about it was that we didn’t do it consciously. We sort of stumbled into things. For instance, Vietnam. Just when we were getting to be well-known someone said to me, “Bertrand Russell is living not far from here in Chelsea why don’t you go and see him?” and so I just took a taxi down there and knocked on the door. There was an American guy who was helping him and he came to the door and I said, “I’d like to meet Mr Russell, if possible.” I waited a little and then met the great man and he was fabulous. He told me about the Vietnam war—most of us didn’t know about it, it wasn’t yet in the papers—and also that it was a very bad war. I remember going back to the studio either that evening or the next day and telling the guys, particularly John [Lennon], about this meeting and saying what a bad war this was. We started to investigate and American pals who were visiting London would be talking about being drafted. Then we went to America, and I remember our publicist—he was a fat, cigar-chomping guy, saying, “Whatever you do, don’t talk about Vietnam.” Of course, that was the wrong thing to say to us. You don’t tell rebellious young men not to say something. So of course we talked about it the whole time and said it was a very bad war. Obviously, we backed the peace movement.

After this story blew up, Power wrote “It seems that the press has a mindset about the McCartney-John Lennon relationship that demands anything that Paul says be squeezed into a mould—even if the words don’t really fit at all” and went on to say “One report, and the world is given misleading information by editors too uncaring or unmotivated or just plain lazy to make a call to Prospect to ask for the original wording. Not one journalist called me.The fact is that the interview carries not a word of rivalry with John Lennon. Nor does it say anything about which Beatle discovered the Vietnam war first.”

The NME has a Times quote from Tariq Ali, who John seems to have first met in ‘71, saying that “It was John Lennon who was concerned about the war. He never mentioned McCartney, and I never thought of asking him to join us.”

But an article by Tom Garner on historyanswers.co.uk seems to be the only one that bothered to explain why the John of ‘71 may not have talked about Paul’s views on Vietnam: “At the peak of Lennon’s 1970s peace protests, the Beatles had acrimoniously broken up and Lennon was often actively critical of McCartney so it is unlikely he would have given him credit as a political influence.” (There’s a line in that article about Paul crediting Russell that’s confusing because it’s not in Prospect but comes from a Radio Times interview)

Here’s the bit from MYFN because this post just isn’t long enough:

“Bertrand Russell was then ninety-two years old but was still very active in the peace movement....

Paul: I sat around waiting, then went in and had a great little talk with him. Nothing earth-shattering. He just clued me in to the fact that Vietnam was a very bad war, it was an imperialist war and American vested interests were really all it was about. It was a bad war and we should be against it. That was all I needed. It was pretty good from the mouth of the great philosopher. ‘Slip it to me Bert.’

I reported back to John, ‘I met this Bertrand Russell guy, John,’ and I did all the big rap about the Vietnam and stuff and John really came in on it all. And then he did How I Won the War.” (125-126)

In Fab, Howard Sounes suggests that this meeting with Russell happened in 1966 and indirectly (possibly) explains why Paul may have brought up How I Won the War in MYFN by making the connection between Paul��s meeting with Russell and anti-war movies:

Paul and Jane were granted a meeting with the philosopher Bertrand Russell to gain the Nobel Laureate’s views on Vietnam and the Cold War, which Paul and Jane were both concerned about, half expecting Armageddon to come by way of nuclear strike from the East. ‘I think that made us more determined to enjoy ourselves and live for the moment,’ Jane has said. When Paul told the philosopher that the Beatles had a mind to make their next picture an anti-war film, Russell suggested Paul speak to his friend, the author Len Deighton, who was developing the First World War Musical Oh What a Lovely War as a picture.

Deighton invited Paul to dinner to discuss the movie....Paul expressed an interest in the Beatles starring in Oh What a Lovely War, the project falling down when it came to how they would use music in the picture, as Deighton recalls:

I couldn’t use Beatle music as the whole point of Oh What a Lovely War was that all the dialogue, words, and music were taken from those actually sung or spoken at the time of the war 1914-18. Paul explained that they wanted to be in a film with a more direct reference to modern war. Kindle location 2764/15190

It’s just amazing that parts of the press turned this into “Paul can’t possibly have been into politics because he didn’t do a bed-in and I’ve never paid attention to anything politics-related he’s said except to maybe sneer at it so he’s got to be lying, and while he’s at it, he’s obviously trying to take John’s mantle because there’s no way he could ever have possibly met with an anti-war person before John or have had any influence on him ever. I mean c’mon. He was known as The Cute One and wrote Frog Chorus and that’s all you need to know. Brb--have to photoshop Paul into all the bed-in photos because he’s obvi claiming he did more!”

#Paul McCartney #Bertrand Russell #Paul and the press #Paul and politics #long post #all brought to you by googling Paul and Bertrand Russell and getting...all that

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idontwanttospoiltheparty · 1 month

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I'm not sure you need people to announce that they're just here for fun? it's tumblr...surely that can be assumed?

i dunno sometimes it seems like when you say this stuff it's a bit of a straw man argument because I don't really see anyone on here taking this stuff that seriously. we are not larries! no one is claiming Paul's kids are fake or anything lmao. yes people like to look at the history but again it's tumblr, it's just for fun.

maybe there is a whole other delusional side to beatles tumblr that i am not seeing, but i think maybe if people are getting mad when you argue with their dumb little posts it's just cause they think that you, in fact, DO want to spoil the party!

I have been waiting for someone to make this joke ever since I got that url. Have had to make it myself often <3

1. "we are not larries" is an incredibly low bar.

2. the specific contents of theories isn't the only thing that makes them conspiratorial. it's about the way they're argued.

3. Actually, I am thinking of One Specific Event from about a year and a half ago that was treated as people "spoiling the party" when in fact it was an example of good faith engagement with a seriously worded discussion post.* Maybe you missed that, and it's not like it's a super common occurrence. But in hindsight, I don't find it surprising given the climate here.

*I can provide more details on this specific thing in DMs if someone is curious. I don't wanna hash it out on main, especially since I was only peripherally involved.

4. This isn't about whether tumblr is your space to have fandom fun – I do assume that. It's about whether someone is making arguments in jest or if they mean them seriously. Both of these things might be fun to someone (but maybe I could have worded that point better in the original tags).

5. No, no fake kids, and this fandom isn't plagued by a central figure who's to blame for all the "bad stuff". Plus, it's "decentralized", so no singular entity is controlling some super specific narrative. This definitely keeps the space in check. That's part of it though: it's all very sociological, which makes my issue difficult to address because most single posts aren't a problem in of themselves, but there's a tangible vibe to the whole thing. That's also why I want to tread lightly here; I know a lot of it is a joke, but it's hard to tell what isn't. Like, yeah, I've been passive-aggressive lately, but I've also been watching this for a long time. And I regularly see things I perceive as a strawman against my position as well as absolutist rhetoric, which reads just as much as picking a fight as any of my recent posts do. If you talk about there only being "one explanation" for something, what is that, other than putting forward your theory as true? Is it really Not Serious? Every time? Even when the post is presented in a serious way, with sources and evidence? People on this site talk about what they expect Mark Lewisohn to include in his Definitely Trying To Be Serious And Factful biography series. Those demands are never serious? And I don't want to just ruin people's fun for no reason! But I also have a hard time dismissing every single thing that Sounds Kind Of Serious as Probably A Joke (and I do do it, pretty regularly) And I semi-often see people doing things that set off my alarm bells, even when they are not proclaiming Stella McCartney to be a lifelong actress. (reminder that several people on here freaked about the For Paul tapes story being semi-debunked last November; like actively scorned people who were trying to figure out how that story came about and where it originated. That's not normal, sorry to say! And, funnily enough, about a year ago, there was a blog on here pushing a very very very esotheric version of McLennon [and even trying to monetize it] and while most people dismissed them for the kook they were, they splashed onto the tumblr scene in an identical way [saying something that amounted to: "how dare you imply this apocryphal Paul McCartney quote might be fake?"] –––– so my question is: is it not that serious? I Don't Know You Tell Me!)

6. This is @ me mostly, I guess. I just feel like this space has become more and more of a monoculture. Shipping is the default angle with which everything is approached. If John and Paul write songs that are maybe not about each other that's not often seen as worth diving into. (See: Beautiful Boy tinhatting). I actually want to try and change this; get more diverse content on this site, but I guess I assume it's not welcome, which is on me, really. I have slides explaining my specific reading of Double Fantasy (yes, seriously) and there isn't really much stopping me from posting them, outside the fact that most people on here seem to have a very different relationship to the songs from the album than I do, so I assume they won't care. But y'know, I'll try to just Make More Content and see what that does. (For the record I know that sounds whiny. And I do seriously want to do better on that front)

#ask #anon #discourse #fiona.docx

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cometcaper · 3 years

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I thought I'd share my playlist for the anniversary of the boathouse kiss. :)

Song translations, MANY thoughts, and timeline under the break.

Noise warning for song 19, Hinahanap-Hanap Kita. 4:23 to the end. Loud high pitched beeps.

YouTube music version to be made soon.

Translations for foreign songs:

Ewan [Dunno] — Apo Hiking Society — Filipino/Tagalog

Amour plastique [Plastic love] — Videoclub — French

Panalangin [Prayer] — Apo Hiking Society/Moonstar88 — Filipino/Tagalog

Hinahanap-Hanap Kita [I'm Looking For You] — Rivermaya — Filipino/Tagalog

This is a collaborative playlist made with my friend.

Thought Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy would be a good starter song. Something about the music. Represents a good start of Alec persuing Maurice, like, hey, I can be yours... Whatcha doin'?

I added Puppy Princess because of the chorus but I know some people don't like that song so... You can skip if you'd like. KISS MEEEEE KIISS ME WITH YIIR EYESSS CLOSED . ALL I WANT IS YOU YEAH YOU. TELL ME I'M NOT FUNNY TELL ME I'M LEGIIIIT

Ewan. OH MY GOD this song is so them. Alec cares for Maurice, and doesn't like not being taken seriously or being treated badly and brushed off.

"I don't know why you're like that, you're difficult to talk to and you're a snob" COME ON IS THAT NOT THEM — Just a smile from you, and I'll be in heaven. Please give me a response, anything but "No idea"... What a perfect representation of Alec's continuous persuit of Maurice, always talking, always trying...

I could go on with every lyric.

Edit: I just realised this song fits so well for Alec's letters and meeting at the museum. Must resist the urge to add the same exact track twice.

So about Touch Me... Some of the lyrics apply better in other versions. Spotify just has this version tho. Touch me, just like that.

All I've Ever Known. Maurice discovered so much that night about touch and sharing and being with someone. He wants to be with Alec. "All I've ever known is how to hold my own, but now I want to hold you too. [Hold you close, I don't wanna ever have to let you go. Hold you tight, I don't wanna to back to the lonely life.]" Alec opened up his eyes and he'll never be the same.

Can't Help Falling in Love With You. 'Did you ever dream you'd a friend, Alec? ... Someone to last your whole life...' 'Alec, you're a dear fellow and we've been very happy.'

I'd Like To Walk Around In Your Mind was added from Maurice's perspective. Perhaps it fits Alec too...

I think Love At First Sight has the double meaning of the literal title, as well as "wouldn't you like to kiss her" perhaps being... Something Maurice would hear.

I Don't Dance. Based on this post/edit. Please watch this video oh my God.

Pink in the Night. Alec yearns for Maurice in the boathouse. He hasn't come. He hears his heart breaking tonight.

Every lyric is perhaps pulled straight from Alec's brain, to be honest. I remember seeing a post with this song in other contexts with them too. So yes, a few meanings.

Amour plastique. Alec reminiscences on the night in the Russet room. Why hasn't he come?

In my mind, everything goes wild. I lose myself in your eyes. I drown myself in the vagueness of your loving gaze.

And at night I cry tears that stream down my cheeks. I think of you only when the days ends, only when my sad demons descend upon my mind, into the bottomless abyss.

Waiting in the boathouse at night, when the day ends.

I ring out in kisses all down your chest. Lost in the avalanche of my heart astray. Who are you? Where are you?

The moments of then repeat in his mind. Where is Maurice?

I suppose Hopelessly Devoted To You and I'm A Fool To Want You are self explanatory. Maurice should really come... Alec really toughed it out, 2 days he spent in the boathouse, really wanted to see Maurice, really knew they had something, and doesn't want to be treated like a dog. Generally, his 1st letter.

Moon Song. My friend said they added it as a general love song. — Why do you treat me like this? Why didn't you come to the boathouse? — Alec's 2nd letter as a whole. Plus bits of 1st.

And you pushed me in, and now my feet can't touch the bottom of you. ... So I will wait for the next time you want me, like a dog with a bird at your door.

Ewan would fit here tbh.

Panalangin. My only prayer in this lifetime: to be beside you, to be together with you, that's my prayer.

"I since cricket match do long to ... place both arms round you and share with you, the above now seems sweeter than words can say."

And this heart won't allow if you will be away from me, my love, please listen.

It also fits the end of museum.

I Want You. Maurice, can you come to the boathouse already? Alec has no power to teleport you there. I hold one card that I can't use.

I found you. I found the door, but when I stepped through, there was no floor. He found Maurice, bit he's not being here for Alec.

You're coming back And it's the end of the world We're starting over And I love you, darling And I am done, dear

Alec wishes this would happen. Also, he does come back later and they love again over, and "it is finished".

Credit for suggesting the next two songs goes to @beatle-capaldi!!! He also wrote was in quotations!

English Summer Rain

The Most Radical Thing To Do

Hinahanap-Hanap Kita. 1st letter, he's looking for Maurice. Thinking about them together.

In my thoughts and dreams, in every turn of destiny, I look for you. Also applies to that hotel/post-hotel feeling. I look for you, even if I try to forget you, saying goodbye, looking back...

Wildest Dreams. They think a lot of each other. They share once more. But they must say goodbye. Alec saw this coming. Maurice hopes that Alec will remember him like this.

I Hear a Symphony. Alec truly opened up Maurice's eyes. Maurice was meant to be with him. He helped Maurice, changed his life. But now Alec is leaving on ship... Or is he? The symphony leads into...

An orchestral sountrack. The Boathouse. Unfortunately the Maurice soundtrack is not on spotify. It's on my personal YouTube music version. I added it because it just captures the boathouse the only way the sountrack itself can.

The Word of Your Body (Reprise). MLM people have moment of romantic tension, which culminates in confessions of love. Just had to add it. "Haven't you heard the word of your body?" perfectly describes Alec gifting and showing Maurice the wonder of truest physical affection and love. He lets Maurice be okay with himself, and again, changes everything. Every lyric is perfect.

Also, sorry JBW, I like other versions more... Too bad Spotify is mean.

I See The Light. Yeah. Every lyric. Maurice is Rapunzel. Movie Blond too. Both the morning at Russet room and the museum. And the world has somehow shifted. All at once everything is different, now that I see you. "By now they were in love with each other consciously."...

Suddenly Seymour. Suddenly see more, yeah? Clive = ass and someone gives him affection for once, wow! Sidenote, I want to sing this with them and their accents... Suddenly SCUDDER...

Helpless. Musical theatre songs seem to be good retellings of their love story. It's why they belong in post boathouse. Summaries and retellings. They're also good at conveying love they'd feel for each other in general, all times ever. Like loving men, retelling a story.

I'll Cover You. Cute love song feat. gays. I like to imagine them dancing around, declaring their love and devotion for each other. Walking and dancing around like in the original scene, sometime post canon. In my own imagination, I thought of Alec as Angel and Maurice (Christopher) as Collins.

Video Games. They must love spending time together. I thought this to be Maurice POV. Only worth living if somebody is loving you I mean, come on.

It's you, it's you, it's all for you. Everything I do. I tell you all the time, heaven is a place on Earth with you.

Un sospiro. I headcanon that Maurice picks up the piano and plays for Alec. Perhaps he picked it up bc of/after Clive, but now can play it for someone who gives a shit.

Something about the melody reminds me of them. And then it gets more intense... A bit like the passions of love, showing up in sharing and touch and more, too.

Liebestraum. I mean, it means love dream/dream of love. I just had to. Also I just like Liszt.

Take Me Up With You, Dearie. This song is just so sweet... So soft... Edwardian to boot... I love how quintessentially 1909 it is. Discovered it in a YT video. The thought of them getting married makes me cry. This song in general makes me want to cry, it's so romantic, tender, and exudes my favourite era...

Let us float, float, float through the clouds, and just have a lot of fun. We'll go up, up, up as two and then come down as one.

Put Your Head on My Shoulder. We Belong Together. I always imagine Maurice and Alec slowdancing to songs that come on the radio together, when the 1950s hits... Alec probably rests his head on his shoulder as this plays and they dance...

I'm using a lot of ellipses, am I secretly Rupert Graves?

Welcome to the 70s and 80s. They love dancing together and being with each other. Now, Panalangin can be a happy song. My only prayer for this lifetime ... To be together with you. And this heart won't allow if you will be away from me.

Just the Two of Us. What a nice, vibey song. Great title, great scenario of them dancing to this...

Tiny Dancer. Your Song. MLM people in the 70s + Radio, being happy and in love with each other. — I just thought I should add some Elton. A different friend, and I, like him. Maurice sings to Alec, "And you can tell everybody this is your song." That I put down in words how wonderful life is with you in the world.

Electric Love. Fun fact: this song got me to share the playlist. Got me thinking about them and their anniversary again. The funky busy instrumental describes well their passionate love. The highs of electric LOOOOOOVE describe the intensity of them.

Alt text continued: themselves together under and the love. And the love. The song has its own tension and it perfectly pictures their own tension. So yeah, this is THEIR song quite literally.

Sorry if my music taste is perhaps basic. I just made it for when I hear songs that are Them.

Falling for Ya. Alec falls for Maurice. "I saw you when you first drove up, Mr Hall..." Something about Maurice, right? Plus really nice vintage vibes with the music. The bit about Into your arms and it's a secure sure sounds like Maurice. Awh, they're falling for *each other*...

Rainbow Connections. Gay and bi people. Marriage. Everything that Maurice and Alec went through to get here, where they were meant to be. Clive. Working for Clive. Leading up to now.

All the things that had to go right, all the things that had to go wrong, that lead us to the place where we were going all along.

On the YT version there's a soft/jazzy cover of Panalangin here. Because they're old and spending time together and being happy. What a throwback, a defined meaning in their lives over time.

Still Into You. After all these decades... Old and grown, together... True soulmates... Two men can defy the world... Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood. Imagine Maurice meeting Alec's mom in this context. If only.

Postmodern Jukebox cover, because they are a quintessentially 20th century couple. They exude vintage.

Some piano playing for Alec. Soft, tender, romantic, emotional, true. Feels like nighttime. Feels like Maurice and Alec. And a throwback to the pre 1914 world as well. Claire de Lune feels like... A credits of life piece. Time spent in the early 1980s. Nocturne feels like that too, but more romantic. Smidge less nighttime. Ah yes, Gymnopédies. The truest credits feel of them all. None of these actually are credits for Maurice and Alec, but I struggle to find the word for this feeling. But yeah. These all have Them vibes to me. Piano of the time just does I suppose. Glad to be reminded of them at any time.

What a long playlist. Like going through almost their whole lives together. 1:52 hrs. Almost like a movie. Imagine that. A full movie of THEIR lives... But leaving to the imagination was a good thing. Led to this such action. Thank you E.M. Forster.

Timeline:

1. Pendersleigh

4. & 5. Russet Room. Night, then Morning

9. Cricket

10. Boathouse Nights

18. The Museum

20. The Hotel

21. After

23. The Boathouse

24. They Still Roam the Greenwood

I just like to imagine them dancing to songs on the radio, for decades to come...

#maurice 1987 #maurice 1914 #maurice #maurice hall #alec scudder #Spotify

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sgt-paul · 3 years

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MUSICIANS ON MUSICIANS: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift

❝ During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. ❞

interview below the cut:

Paul McCartney: Yeah!

McCartney: You were playing one of his songs, weren’t you?

McCartney: I mean, I think it’s a bit of everything, isn’t it? I’ll tell you who was very … Reese Witherspoon was like, “Are you going to sing?” I said “Oh, I don’t know.” She said, “You’ve got to, yeah!” She’s bossing me around. So I said, “Whoa,” so it’s a bit of that.

Swift: I love that person, because the party does not turn musical without that person.

McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.

Swift: If nobody says, “Can you guys play music?” we’re not going to invite ourselves up onstage at whatever living-room party it is.

McCartney: I seem to remember Woody Harrelson got on the piano, and he starts playing “Let It Be,” and I’m thinking, “I can do that better.” So I said, “Come on, move over, Woody.” So we’re both playing it. It was really nice.… I love people like Dan Aykroyd, who’s just full of energy and he loves his music so much, but he’s not necessarily a musician, but he just wanders around the room, just saying, “You got to get up, got to get up, do some stuff.”

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: Well, I’m very lucky because I have a studio that’s, like, 20 minutes away from where I live. We were in lockdown on a farm, a sheep farm with my daughter Mary and her four kids and her husband. So I had four of my grandkids, I had Mary, who’s a great cook, so I would just drive myself to the studio. And there were two other guys that could come in and we’d be very careful and distanced and everything: my engineer Steve, and then my equipment guy Keith. So the three of us made the record, and I just started off. I had to do a little bit of film music — I had to do an instrumental for a film thing — so I did that. And I just kept going, and that turned into the opening track on the album. I would just come in, say, “Oh, yeah, what are we gonna do?” [Then] have some sort of idea, and start doing it. Normally, I’d start with the instrument I wrote it on, either piano or guitar, and then probably add some drums and then a bit of bass till it started to sound like a record, and then just gradually layer it all up. It was fun.

Swift: That’s so cool.

McCartney: What about yours? You’re playing guitar and piano on yours.

Swift: Yeah, on some of it, but a lot of it was made with Aaron Dessner, who’s in a band called the National that I really love. And I had met him at a concert a year before, and I had a conversation with him, asking him how he writes. It’s my favorite thing to ask people who I’m a fan of. And he had an interesting answer. He said, “All the band members live in different parts of the world. So I make tracks. And I send them to our lead singer, Matt, and he writes the top line.” I just remember thinking, “That is really efficient.” And I kind of stored it in my brain as a future idea for a project. You know, how you have these ideas… “Maybe one day I’ll do this.” I always had in my head: “Maybe one day I’ll work with Aaron Dessner.”

McCartney: Yeah, that was the thing. You could do stuff — you didn’t really worry it was going to turn into anything.

Swift: That’s the coziest thing I’ve ever heard.

McCartney: Well, it’s like eight minutes long, and I said, “I hate it when I’m playing someone something and it finishes after three minutes.” I kind of like that it just [continues] on.

Swift: You want to stay in the zone.

McCartney: It just keeps going on. I would just come home, “Well, what did you do today?” “Oh, well, I did this. I’m halfway through this,” or, “We finished this.”

Swift: I was wondering about the numerology element to McCartney III. McCartney I, II, and III have all come out on years with zeroes.

McCartney: Ends of decades.

Swift: Was that important?

Swift: The numerology, the kind of look, the symbolism. I love numbers. Numbers kind of rule my whole world. The numbers 13 … 89 is a big one. I have a few others that I find…

McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.

McCartney: It’s spooky, Taylor. It’s very spooky. Now wait a minute: Where’d you get 89?

Swift: That’s when I was born, in 1989, and so I see it in different places and I just think it’s…

McCartney: No, it’s good. I like that, where certain things you attach yourself to, and you get a good feeling off them. I think that’s great.

Swift: Love a pseudonym.

McCartney: Yeah, for the fun! But, you know, let’s face it, you crave fame and attention when you’re young. And I just remembered the other day, I was the guy in the Beatles that would write to journalists and say [speaks in a formal voice]: “We are a semiprofessional rock combo, and I’d think you’d like [us].… We’ve written over 100 songs (which was a lie), my friend John and I. If you mention us in your newspaper…” You know, I was always, like, craving the attention.

Swift: The hustle! That’s so great, though.

McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.

McCartney: Do you ever do that?

Swift: Oh, yeah.

McCartney: Oh, yeah? Oh, well, we didn’t know that! Is that a widely known fact?

Swift: [Laughs.] That’s a good one! I love it.

Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.

McCartney: And we didn’t mind, you know?

McCartney: You do that, do you?

McCartney: Well, that’s great, and I’m glad that set you on that path. I understand people who don’t want to do that, and if you do, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s a jukebox show.” I hear what they’re saying. But I think it’s a bit of a cheat, because the people who come to our shows have spent a lot of money. We can afford to go to a couple of shows and it doesn’t make much difference. But a lot of ordinary working folks … it’s a big event in their life, and so I try and deliver. I also, like you say, try and put in a few weirdos.

McCartney: Was this “I want to give you a child”? Is that one of the lines?

Swift: Oh, that’s a song called “Peace.”

McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.

McCartney: So how does that go? Does your partner sympathize with that and understand?

Swift: Oh, absolutely.

McCartney: They have to, don’t they?

Swift: But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids. Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture — the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song “Peace” is talking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave? Stella always tells me that she had as normal a childhood as she could ever hope for under the circumstances.

McCartney: Yeah, it was very important to us to try and keep their feet on the ground amongst the craziness.

Swift: She went to a regular school .…

McCartney: Yeah, she did.

Swift: And you would go trick-or-treating with them, wearing masks.

Swift: Ohhh!

Swift: Cares about that stuff?

Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.

Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.

McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.

McCartney: It was a bit of both. As it kind of always is with me. There’s no fixed way. People used to ask me and John, “Well, who does the words, who does the music?” I used to say, “We both do both.” We used to say we don’t have a formula, and we don’t want one. Because the minute we get a formula, we should rip it up. I will sometimes, as I did with a couple of songs on this album, sit down at the piano and just start noodling around, and I’ll get a little idea and start to fill that out. So the lyrics — for me, it’s following a trail. I’ll start [sings “Find My Way,” a song from “McCartney III”]: “I can find my way. I know my left from right, da da da.” And I’ll just sort of fill it in. Like, we know this song, and I’m trying to remember the lyrics. Sometimes I’ll just be inspired by something. I had a little book which was all about the constellations and the stars and the orbits of Venus and.…

Swift: Oh, I know that song — “The Kiss of Venus”?

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: It’s very magical.

Swift: That is magical. I definitely relate to needing to find magical things in this very not-magical time, needing to read more books and learn to sew, and watch movies that take place hundreds of years ago. In a time where, if you look at the news, you just want to have a panic attack — I really relate to the idea that you are thinking about stars and constellations.

McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?

Swift: Yes. I was reading so much more than I ever did, and watching so many more films.

McCartney: What stuff were you reading?

Swift: I was reading, you know, books like Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I highly recommend, and books that dealt with times past, a world that doesn’t exist anymore. I was also using words I always wanted to use — kind of bigger, flowerier, prettier words, like “epiphany,” in songs. I always thought, “Well, that’ll never track on pop radio,” but when I was making this record, I thought, “What tracks? Nothing makes sense anymore. If there’s chaos everywhere, why don’t I just use the damn word I want to use in the song?”

McCartney: Exactly. So you’d see the word in a book and think, “I love that word”?

Swift: Yeah, I have favorite words, like “elegies” and “epiphany” and “divorcée,” and just words that I think sound beautiful, and I have lists and lists of them.

McCartney: How about “marzipan”?

Swift: Love “marzipan.”

McCartney: The other day, I was remembering when we wrote “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: “kaleidoscope.”

Swift: “Kaleidoscope” is one of mine! I have a song on 1989, a song called “Welcome to New York,” that I put the word “kaleidoscope” in just because I’m obsessed with the word.

Swift: We should have done matching jackets for this photo shoot.

McCartney: Find me a fleck, I’m in. But we went to the fair, and I just remember — this is what happens with songs — there was this girl at the fair. This is just a little Liverpool fair — it was in a place called Sefton Park — and there was this girl, who was so beautiful. She wasn’t a star. She was so beautiful. Everyone was following her, and it’s like, “Wow.” It’s like a magical scene, you know? But all this gave me a headache, so I ended up going back to his house — I didn’t normally get headaches. And we thought, “What can we do?” So we put on the Elvis song “All Shook Up.” By the end of that song, my headache had gone. I thought, you know, “That’s powerful.”

Swift: That really is powerful.

McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?

Swift: Like a good cardigan, a good, worn-in cardigan. Or something that makes you reminisce on your childhood. I think sadness can be cozy. It can obviously be traumatic and stressful, too, but I kind of was trying to lean into sadness that feels like somehow enveloping in not such a scary way — like nostalgia and whimsy incorporated into a feeling like you’re not all right. Because I don’t think anybody was really feeling like they were in their prime this year. Isolation can mean escaping into your imagination in a way that’s kind of nice.

Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.

McCartney: “Maybe I can put that picture up.” It’s not rocket science. The period after the Beatles, when we went to live in Scotland on a really — talk about dumpy — little farm. I mean, I see pictures of it now and I’m not ashamed, but I’m almost ashamed. Because it’s like, “God, nobody’s cleaned up around here.”

But it was really a relief. Because when I was with the Beatles, we’d formed Apple Records, and if I wanted a Christmas tree, someone would just buy it. And I thought, after a while, “No, you know what? I really would like to go and buy our Christmas tree. Because that’s what everyone does.” So you go down — “I’ll have that one” — and you carried it back. I mean, it’s little, but it’s huge at the same time.

I needed a table in Scotland and I was looking through a catalog and I thought, “I could make one. I did woodwork in school, so I know what a dovetail joint is.” So I just figured it out. I’m just sitting in the kitchen, and I’m whittling away at this wood and I made this little joint. There was no nail technology — it was glue. And I was scared to put it together. I said, “It’s not going to fit,” but one day, I got my woodwork glue and thought, “There’s no going back.” But it turned out to be a real nice little table I was very proud of. It was that sense of achievement.

Swift: No, it’s cool!

McCartney: But it was a real sort of great thing for me to be able to do stuff for yourself. You were talking about sewing. I mean normally, in your position, you’ve got any amount of tailors.

Swift: Well, there’s been a bit of a baby boom recently; several of my friends have gotten pregnant.

McCartney: Oh, yeah, you’re at the age.

McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?

Swift: Acrylic or oil. Whenever I do watercolor, all I paint is flowers. When I have oil, I really like to do landscapes. I always kind of return to painting a lonely little cottage on a hill.

McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?

Swift: She’s a real person. Who lived in the house that I live in.

McCartney: She’s a real person? I listened to that and I thought, “Who is this?”

McCartney: Yeah, ’cause you were writing breakup songs like they were going out of style.

Swift: That’s amazing.

McCartney: It just felt good to me. I would sit and talk, and they’d have amazing stories. That’s what I liked. They would have stories from the wartime — because I was born actually in the war — and so these old ladies, they were participating in the war. This one lady I used to sort of just hang out with, she had a crystal radio that I found very magical. In the war, a lot of people made their own radios — you’d make them out of crystals [sings “The Twilight Zone” theme].

Swift: How did I not know this? That sounds like something I would have tried to learn about.

McCartney: It’s interesting, because there is a lot of parallels with the virus and lockdowns and wartime. It happened to everyone. Like, this isn’t HIV, or SARS, or Avian flu, which happened to others, generally. This has happened to everyone, all around the world. That’s the defining thing about this particular virus. And, you know, my parents … it happened to everyone in Britain, including the queen and Churchill. War happened. So they were all part of this thing, and they all had to figure out a way through it. So you figured out Folklore. I figured out McCartney III.

Swift: And a lot of people have been baking sourdough bread. Whatever gets you through!

McCartney: Some people used to make radios. And they’d take a crystal — we should look it up, but it actually is a crystal. I thought, “Oh, no, they just called it a crystal radio,” but it’s actually crystals like we know and love.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: And somehow they get the radio waves — this crystal attracts them — they tune it in, and that’s how they used to get their news. Back to “Eleanor Rigby,” so I would think of her and think of what she’s doing and then just try to get lyrical, just try to bring poetry into it, words you love, just try to get images like “picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,” and Father McKenzie “is darning his socks in the night.” You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, “preparing his Bible,” which would have been more obvious. But “darning his socks” kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy. And that’s the magic of songs, you know. It’s a black hole, and then you start doing this process, and then there’s this beautiful little flower that you’ve just made. So it is very like embroidery, making something.

Swift: Making a table.

McCartney: Making a table.

Swift: Wow, it would’ve been so fun to play Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary together.

McCartney: It would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? And I was going to be asking you to play with me.

Swift: Were you going to invite me? I was hoping that you would. I was going to ask you.

McCartney: I would’ve done “Shake It Off.”

Swift: Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.

McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!

McCartney: Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?

Swift: We’re really lucky.

McCartney: I don’t know if it ever happens to you, but with me, it’s like, “Oh, my god, I’ve ended up as a musician.”

Swift: Yeah, I can’t believe it’s my job.

Swift: “Something will happen.”

Swift: That’s the best.

McCartney: It’s so stupid it’s brilliant. It’s great if you’re ever in that sort of panic attack: “Oh, my God,” or, “Ahhh, what am I going to do?”

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: All right then, thanks for doing this, and this was, you know, a lot of fun.

Swift: You’re the best. This was so awesome. Those were some quality stories!

#paul mccartney #old paul #taylor swift #*m #💖#grandpaul #silver stubble #(aahh king)#(I LOVE HIM SO MUCH F*CK OFF EVERYONE)#(the thumbs lads. its always about the thumbs)

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