I don’t think I have it in me to be an influencer. For one, I’m too slow (mentally and physically alike). For another, turning sharing into a career deprives one of the simple joy of sharing. Even more so, going public costs: with the limelight comes scrutiny; what you say online stays online; the weaknesses you reveal can and will be used against you; and as The Tortured Poets Department reveals, there is danger in catering to an audience, no matter how innocuous-seeming.

Taylor Swift's relatable image has been one of her biggest selling points. In the past, she’s carefully coalesced her personal narratives into shared experiences for millions. But on The Tortured Poets Department, she seems ready to break free from the shackles of her iconography. Feeding the monstrosity that’s obsessed with her came with the reward of popularity, but at the price, it finally dawns, of suffocating demands from those parasocial connections.

When celebrity grows to engulf your humanity, when fans feel like they know you enough to claim ownership over your decisions, romantic or otherwise, what’s left for you? This is Taylor Swift asking.

With 31 tracks, the album is her most sprawling, but I also think it’s her bravest. She admits to being broken: self-destructive tendencies ("I might just die, it would make no difference"), fantasies about toxic relationships (“I've seen this episode and still loved the show”), avoidant attachment (“As she was leaving, it felt like breathing”), alcoholism (“I was a functioning alcoholic”). She mocks her fans (“The saboteurs protested too much”), her six-year relationship that she likens to jail (“It's gonna be alright, I did my time”), and a small man (“You didn’t measure up to any measure of a man”).

She’s touched upon some of those in folklore and evermore, though only as the narrator. This time around, however, we’re invited into her world, one in which she’s ruined, lustful, bitter, and unapologetically furious. To feel her unvarnished contempt of all the less visible sacrifices she’s had to make to stay on top for over a decade — it can be cold and lonely atop.

As much as people feel overexposed to her chart-topping success and ubiquitous gossip, maybe she’s sick of it too. Here, she longs to escape the byproducts of celebrity, to have a life that’s fully hers, even if it costs her pristine image and deconstructs the fame machine. She fights the tendency to appear likable, one that's pervaded much of her discography. She creates for herself, as she explains: the process of writing was a “lifeline” for her. The result is compelling because of how honest she is about it all.

So there’s her answer to the price of going public: stop giving a fuck. Return art to the artist. Let the process of creation justify the product. Just like life: the journey alone should justify the end.

And I agree. After going public on Instagram and what not, I’ve learned that, with all peace and love, no one cares — so I should care less too. I learned that everybody moves on, and that one person’s cringe doesn’t really mean anything. That the world is bigger than me, and I’m shielded by others’ apathy.

Maybe it’s a mental illness to engage in self-revisionism, but I kind of enjoy living double lives and smearing the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, between my inner and outer voices. That’s what creating allows you to do: you can capture today for tomorrow, define things on your terms, and weave those snapshots into alternative histories. Publicizing, then, is part of the metaphysical quest to prove one’s existence beyond oneself by impacting an oblivious world. One that only knows what you let it see. With certain contexts removed, whatever I display is the truth, and that’s the power trip.

There’s a Chinese saying that to be perceived is to be misunderstood. To be misunderstood is the price I'll pay. Long as I can control my narrative by creating and releasing, I'll let go of the interpretation to the world and the spectators in it. “This is the part where I spit it all out, and you decide what you think of me,” I’d sing. I want to craft who I am, but not be the arbiter of what I can be.

So I need not be relatable. It’s fine if only few understand. But somehow I’m sure, no matter what, some will. Dear reader, aren’t you still reading?

In the song 愚月 wrote for his 23rd birthday, he sings:

那时流行什么东西 (What was once in style)
现在恐怕还是一样 (Probably still the same)
但你看我还是做我想做的 (But you see, I’ve been doing what I wanted)
此刻也能被你播放 (And you’re playing this song today)

I’m 23 too. I hope that'll be the case for me too. For all the smoke and mirrors I deploy, I still publish myself as an open book online, so that those pages might fly somewhere I can’t physically be, and touch someone far, far away.

Creating is an outlet. Not a performance. Art is personal. It can be a private view. Understanding is few and far between. Thus pointless to hope for. Life is long. We need something by which to remember the pain.

Such is what I've come to believe, and so is the case for The Tortured Poets Department. Meet someone, kiss someone. Love someone, lose someone. How do we record history for our future self? How do we project from now into eternity? How do we preserve the vibrations of emotions through time? What can we do but pen it all down.