To Live for the Hope of It All: Folklore and Remembrance in a Time of Separation

Story is a severance from reality: a transporting into a joy or grief that doesn’t by right belong to us. Still, in the same breath, story gives us the words to share the joys and griefs we do live in, to open ourselves to a world we hope might know us, love us better. Instead of dwelling in the real and terrifying future or rememorizing the four walls of which our bodies have seen so much since March, folklore has become salve and sanctuary, binding us to others while grounding us within ourselves. More than ever before, to share a story with someone now is to hold with them a moment of peace.

The concept of “folklore” has, despite innumerable shifts in time and context, stayed relatively consistent. The heart of folklore is tradition, at once personal and social. Storytelling, memorization, recitation, song have persisted throughout history—and though they rise under different names and different guises, they remain a lineage of fable and narration, traded and passed between generations.

We don’t hear the word “folklore” often in pop culture, but we do partake in it daily. As we stare down a new year, I’ve been considering how much of my 2020 was shaped by folklore, though at the time I didn’t think about it in those terms. It was posting a book recommendation to my Instagram stories and later receiving text messages from friends letting me know that they’d picked up that book. It was reciting a poem to a loved one, whether over the phone or across the bed. Listening to a new album on repeat and taking a 40-minute shower to belt each song from memory. It was hours-long Zoom calls about how we got here, the choices that inexplicably led us to the brutal now. In 2020 we survived on the stories, memories, experiences we exchanged with the people we cared about most—even when we couldn’t touch them or see the lines of their faces.

The loneliness we’re experiencing seems in many ways impossible to make sense of. I’ve been grasping at legends, narratives, and histories to ease that burden, of what feels like a year lost to time. I return again and again to the desire that remains as common and out of reach as ever: to be seen, held in the midst of chaos. Isolated and dreaming, I found a lifeline in Taylor Swift’s mid-2020 release folklore—a celebration of the stories that, despite everything, still bind us together.

It was just after 9 A.M. on July 23rd, 2020 when I woke up before my alarm, bleary-eyed, to a seemingly endless thread of notifications and text messages. When I parsed through them it felt like my heart was tap-dancing in my chest, already falling under the spell that was gathering all around me, to begin that night at midnight. The album was an entirely surprise announcement, posted less than 24 hours before the official release, without warning or advertisement—out of character for Swift, to say the least. The thought of 16 new songs available to hold by the next dawn felt unfathomable, a breath of hope in the endless smog of isolation. The title of the new album was folklore.

Over the hours meandering to midnight, I found myself lingering on that word, folklore, and how I saw it unfolding in the present moment. In between customers at work I jotted down memories on stray receipt paper. Writing my chapbook in a coffee shop less than a mile away from my ex-love’s apartment building. Slipping a handwritten note beneath my closed bedroom door at eight years old to tell my grandmother why I was sad. Losing a hair ribbon during a dance recital and performing, rosy-cheeked and wild-tressed, regardless. As the list grew I couldn’t help but puzzle at it. What was it about these moments that spun them into the folklore of my life? Why was naming this kind of folklore suddenly so effortless when I’d never given it a fleeting thought before now?

What I’ve come to understand is that folklore leads me to the origins of my trauma and my joy. As I tell and retell a story it gains a sheen of myth, rehearsal. It becomes a show I put on for anyone who will listen. In high school I was vocal about hating the spotlight, but as I’ve grown older I’ve come to embrace the truth, which is precisely the opposite: I am at heart a storyteller, and a storyteller by definition needs an audience. I love speaking about the maps that have traced my path to now, and I love to look behind me and see who has taken my hand, chosen to follow. The more I dance with the echoes of my past, the more those echoes ring into legend. Histories pass orally through cities, through centuries, and as I walk inside them I am held by every storyteller that came before me. That’s why it was so easy for me to name without pause these instances of my own lore, my own tradition. Folklore builds an essential part of our internal landscape. It foots us within the parts of ourselves that desire connection.

When midnight finally struck, after spending my workside hours dreaming about my own lineage, Swift’s new album didn’t disappoint. There’s so much throughout this record about the longevity of our shared stories, the ways they evolve alongside us, enthralling and present. The record at first glance appears as a patchwork of stories held together by the conceptual thread of “folklore,” yet its lyrics hint at an overarching narrative that moves non-linearly through its 17 tracks. It’s at once a body and a universe: one of torrid affairs, sudden epiphanies, deep and lasting loves.

Since the album was released I’ve found the term “folklore” reemerging in our collective consciousness. The concept has existed for as long as we’ve been reaching out to one another, but all at once it’s been sung into the modern day. Folklore is not an ancient or abstract notion anymore—it’s an enduring and critical liberation, a vital love language. Folklore is now. Folklore rests in all of our hands. In all of our mouths.

What does it mean to revitalize the language for this age-old tradition in those of us who might never before have thought of “folklore” in connection with our lives? And what does it mean that Taylor Swift’s folklore is so intricately entwined in itself? To begin, it offers us a chance to be more intentional about the ways we share ourselves with others. It’s a pertinent reminder that all we say and do is part of a grander story, a larger ritual linking us to the people who surround us and those who came before. Most important, it sets the tone for the era we’ve found ourselves in, of living through distance, reaching across time, finding ways to hold each other when we can’t truly hold each other.

Folklore, storytelling, lyric—not only do they link us to the past but to the future, the body, the world around us. When we tell a story, tweet how we’re feeling, post a song recommendation on our Instagram stories, we contribute to a body of myth that expands with each breath, shimmers in the light.

It’s a new year and I am making the choice to believe in love and its histories. Swift sings in my favorite song from folklore: “passed down like folk songs, our love lasts so long.” I must believe in it. I must believe it’s here still, even and especially when I can’t see it with bare eyes. The love lasts, and the isolation passes, and we keep telling our stories, weaving our futures. In remembering we become real.