I caught myself looking at
the screen a lot that night at
Ford Field. It’s where I’m most
used to seeing Taylor Swift,
how my brain most comfortably
processes her — broken up
between camera angles, the
editing making her into a
collection of discrete, two-
dimensional images that can be
twisted small enough to fit into
a Twitter icon, or stretched out
to a massive, inhuman size on
the screens at the end zone of a
football stadium.
And yet, the real Taylor was
right there, golden haired and
sparkling in her many catsuits
and
dresses.
Her
presence
looms so large in culture
and
memory
that
seeing
her, tiny and present and so
fundamentally real, felt like an
earnest shock to the system.
When the booming opening
bass notes of “Ready For It”
kicked off the show, we saw
her silhouette rising above the
crowd, hooded and huge, but
when the glow dropped, it was
just her. Alone on the massive
stage, tiny across the waves of
people and lights in the crowd.
The “Reputation” tour is
an impeccable tour de force
pop production, with lighting,
stage design and choreography
expertly conceived to create
an experience that feels both
massive and intimate. Apart
from a small issue with the
sound that slightly pitched up
Taylor’s voice (though that
might just be a consequence of
broadcasting a mic feed across
a ridiculously huge and kind
of weirdly shaped venue), the
show was impeccable, and full
of brilliant creative details.
Taylor Swift has never been
much for subtlety, and in live
performance, the melodrama
was deliciously entertaining.
Ninety foot snakes popped up
during “Look What You Made
Me Do,” dancers were mounted
atop golden thrones in “King
Of My Heart” and Taylor held
her arms out as though she was
being crucified on no less than
two separate occasions. When
the lyrics called for her to “beg
you on my knees to stay” you
can bet she dropped all five
feet, 11 inches of herself to the
floor. The girl commits.
Like in her previous tour
promoting 1989, each person
in the audience was given a
bracelet that lit up along with
the show, and the result was
a stadium that felt like a self-
contained galaxy, each of us
equipped with our own little
stars that shone in purples,
reds, pinks, blues, golds. And
really, the show felt like a world
unto its own, a complete multi-
sensory,
multi-dimensional
experience. It was a perfect
tribute to Taylor’s many old
and
new
identities,
never
condescending
towards
her
past selves because she clearly
understands the intimate way
her audience invests our lives
in her own history. Such is the
power of a Taylor Swift song —
personal to her, the writer, and
FOR RENT
Raise the ruff!
It’s Friday!!!
ACROSS
1 “__ Told Me
(Not to Come)”:
1970 #1 hit
5 Folly
11 “Caught you!”
14 River to the
Caspian
15 Spacecraft
section
16 Apprehend
17 Skin tone
achieved via
pure will?
19 “__ had enough!”
20 Its contents need
attention
21 Mont Blanc, e.g.
22 Romances
23 Storied engineer
Jones
24 Ballet
performance on
skis?
26 Extinct bird
28 Forest
29 List-ending abbr.
32 __ sort
34 Tea variety
37 TV show
destined for early
cancellation?
42 Protuberance
43 “Glee”
cheerleading
coach
44 Small point
45 Purple shade
48 Copious
quantities
51 Horse chatter?
54 Kitchen light
58 UPS Store
supply
59 Mined find
60 Road
construction
sight
61 Six-pack
components
62 Lame justification
for the letter
substitution
in four puzzle
answers?
64 Beluga yield
65 Serious attacks
66 Bone: Pref.
67 Nursery layer
68 Marine group
that’s well-
armed?
69 Disorder
DOWN
1 Clara Schumann
works, e.g.
2 Large
performance
venue
3 Fountain
creations
4 “Great” ninth-
century English
monarch
5 “Perhaps”
6 Pentagon org.
7 Perfect
8 Criminal
9 Keep time with
manually
10 Urge
11 Paper named for
a vegetable
12 Chaos
13 More than
rotund
18 BLT basic
22 Cooled one’s
heels?
24 Waiting room
piece
25 Figure (out)
27 Medico
29 Wane
30 Commercial
prefix
suggestive of
accuracy
31 Broke down
33 Balaam’s mount
35 Paris agreement
36 Health care
worker, briefly
38 Deft
39 Farmer’s habitat?
40 Elephant tooth
41 Souvenir from a
concert
46 __ power
47 One may be
magic
49 Peak
50 “2 Broke Girls,”
for one
51 Garbo and
Gable, e.g.
52 Like certain
subjects in
certain company
53 Free
55 Cad
56 Boots
57 Sources of shade
60 He played Ricky
in early TV
62 Spanish pronoun
63 “Sure ’nuff”
By David Alfred Bywaters
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/07/18
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
09/07/18
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
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NOW.
Taylor’s corner: A night at
Swift’s ‘Reputation’ tour
ASIF BECHER
Daily Books Editor
BIG MACHINE
CONCERT REVIEW
personal to everyone who hears
it.
It’s unsurprising, then, that
the best parts of the show
found
Taylor
performing
alone. Her stage presence and
easy intimacy with tens of
thousands of people at once
just can’t be taught. The night’s
highlight was “Delicate,” when
Taylor stepped into a sparkling
gold cage that floated her up
over the crowds and across
the stadium. The screens that
usually displayed close-ups of
her face were blacked out and
speckled only in purple starry
lights to match our bracelets,
so that all you could see in the
stadium were spots of lights and
the gold orb containing Taylor,
floating above our heads. “I
know that it’s delicate,” she
sang, her voice hushed and
tender, and the song washed
over 50,000 people.
She made a great effort to
bridge old and new material
— the jaded cool-girl affect
of “Style” merged seamlessly
with the sweet earnestness of
“Love Story”; the righteous
anger of throwback “Should’ve
Said No” melded with the petty
fury of “Bad Blood.” The true
stroke of genius, though, was
when she sat at the piano and
played “Long Live” and “New
Years Day” together, weaving
together
with
devastating
precision two of the sweetest
songs in her catalogue. “Hold
on to the memories / they will
hold on to you,” she sang before
her voice dropped to a low
murmur, “And I had the time
of my life with you.” She let the
piano notes hang in the air for
a bit before she looked up at us,
and her face broke into a smile
as the audience let out the
loudest cheer of the night. We
cried, we loved Taylor Swift.
As I was confronted with the
jarring presence of a person
who I’d only ever understood
through screens, I found myself
thinking a lot that night about
what that must feel like to be
Taylor Swift, actual human
being, so small on a such a big
stage, everyone looking at you
and everyone seeing something
different in your image. What it
must feel like to run through a
crowd of people carrying signs
with your name and your face,
hordes of strangers reaching
for you with arms outstretched
and trying to grab at different
parts of you. What do we want
from Taylor, and what does she
want from us? What is it like
to have complete strangers say
they love you? What is it like to
maybe love them back?
It’s long been commented
that Taylor’s most valuable
skill as a pop star is her ability
to make a sentiment, song
or moment intended to be
consumed by millions feel as
though it’s directed at each
individual person experiencing
it. And to be sure, there’s
an element of manipulation
to that, the way her public
persona deliberately cultivates
a
parasocial
relationship
between her and her fans.
Through
little
tidbits
of
admissions in her music, social
media and public profile, her
fans feel like we know her
when we clearly don’t, like we
might even love her.
It’s a strange paradox —
intimacy created not despite
distance between audience and
performer, but rather because of
it. Still, I think the distance can
be desensitizing sometimes.
It’s easy to take a pop star of
Swift’s
popularity,
impact,
fame and notoriety and see her
only as a nexus of conversation,
a figure onto which we can
project pretty much anything.
A concept that we can discuss,
use as a framework for debates
about gender, class, race and
pretty much every other topic
you can possibly think of. It’s
easy to forget in all the talk
about the concept of Taylor
Swift™, that there’s a very real
Taylor Swift. It’s only in these
rare spaces where it’s possible
to make a real life contact
and connection that we can
remember there’s a version
of Taylor who’s just a person.
Talented and charismatic and
wildly wealthy and popular,
sometimes kind and sometimes
vicious, sometimes hungry and
sometimes tired, sometimes
her best self and sometimes
her worst self — but at all times
human.
“Can I tell you guys a secret?”
she asked halfway through the
show, standing alone on stage in
a glittery leotard and oversized
patchy jacket, strumming her
guitar. “This tour is the most
fun I’ve ever had.” She looked
out at us and smiled, and there
was a cunning glint in her eyes
as she let us into her world,
each of us made to believe we
were her co-conspirators and
the keepers of her secrets. I
saw real love in that look, too —
but I’m sure someone else saw
something different.
She ended the show with
a mashup of “We Are Never
Ever Getting Back Together”
and “This Is Why We Can’t
Have Nice Things,” storms of
confetti raining down on us and
the lights on our wristbands
going haywire with colors.
The screens and the stage
were configured to look like an
opulent mansion as she danced
around in her glittering purple
dress, leading the audience
in a cathartic, floor-stomping
chant. She took a bow and the
doors of the mansion locked.
Then said she loved us one last
time — and in a flash, she was
gone.
Taylor Swift has
never been much
for subtlety, and in
live performance,
the melodrama
was deliciously
entertaining
6A— Friday, September 7, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com