Holly Armstrong

When people say Taylor is “at the top of her game.”

FUCK NO. The praise comes because she’s at the top of whatever society or critics deem THEIR game, the chessboard they box her into and define as hers.

Taylor, on the other hand, doesn’t play other people’s games. She gives and always has given a million percent. For herself. For us. She has ALWAYS been an incredible performer, musician, writer, human.

So while I’m glad critics are recognizing her for her incredible efforts, my whole heart wants to make sure Taylor knows that with or without the reviews, she’s no less amazing, no less supported, no less accomplished, and no less deserving of everything life has to offer. We stay. Always.

So this was the beginning of it all, but I didn’t know it.

Painting & writing from November 2021 ⭐️💙⭐️ yes, I fully realize the irony of a ‘midnight’ reference, but this happens all the time, and I’ve learned not to question the psych(ot)ic connection 🤷🏻‍♀️

Painting Title: Deny the Deep

Inspiration: Clean, Smokey Black Nights (by @taylorswift)

Medium: oil on canvas board, 8x10

Embroidery: @flickering.storm on Instagram

My first oil painting, the canvas where I would go to breathe when the air became too thick, is of a woman calmly drowning. 🌊

Reaching, tense, but refusing to acknowledge the panic. Her dress weighs her down but it’s all about simply keeping eyes on the surface right now. Deny the deep. 💙

It was a perfect storm. I was screaming, but no one answered. I gaslit myself. I ignored the signs. In my stubborn ignorance, this woman wasn’t me.

After the tipping point, which happened early 2022, I had lost the desire to do anything I loved. I didn’t recognize myself. My therapist asked me to bring in my latest paintings, that having been the most recent activity I’d loved. So I did. 🎨

She cried. I cried. These women who I was painting.. they represented me. For months, my heart and my brain were yelling at me to pay attention. It wasn’t until someone else took a look inside, held up a mirror, shined a little insight across the darkness, that I saw these for what they were. 🌌

So that began the process. My emotions were too much to conceptualize at once. But I felt understood when I listened to Taylor, and I felt a release when I picked up a brush. 🎶

When the imagery in my mind was too obscure to paint, I wrote. I journaled. I scribbled on the back of paintings and scraps of paper. These are words you’re seeing now. 🖋️

I painted without thinking, wrote without judgement, simply feeling my way through it, and then brought each one, upon completion, to therapy for translation.

The last year has been quite the topsy turvy hell-scape, so welcome to the land of the dark & twisty Swiftie. This feels appropriate, given the gift of Midnights we’re about to receive. ⭐️🌌

Thank you to everyone who reached out on my Swiftieversary 💛, to those who have been checking in on me, & to those who have stuck around. Love you lots 🥰 & a big hello to those who are new around here. It’s lovely to meet you.

Pursuing a path of mental health, putting yourself first, is filled with landmines - the adages, the uncertainty, the gaslighting.

So at my lowest, I grasped at the familiar, my safe space for nearly twenty years and counting. 🫶

She’s the driftwood I cling to when the waves reach new peaks, far above my head. This time was no different. She’s always been there and always will be. 🌊

I spent months playing a curated (Taylor) playlist on repeat, the same way I played that old demo cd many moons ago. 🎶

At first all I could do was listen, cry, scream, sleep. Then, I picked up a paint brush. Then a pen. Slowly, I started finding myself again. ✨

I’m still healing, so this is very much a live experience. I may not go into many details, but I’d like to share some of that art therapy process with you, especially given the inspiration most of us share.

I’m not sure where this story ends just yet, but perhaps that’s the beauty of it all.

Thank you @taylorswift ⭐️ I love you to the moon & to Saturn 🌙

It’s vintage nostalgia & sparkly patina & antique postcards. It glows, not like fire, but like magma. It’s an enduring warmth that emanates from someplace deeper than the heart. Lullabies for the soul.

One single thread of gold tied me to you 💛 @taylorswift

hoax: denial, hurt, & broken trust

mad woman: anger & revenge

my tears ricochet: acceptance & a farewell to her innocent beginnings, Teardrops on my Guitar

Here we go...

In hoax, she’s grieving the shock of treachery. He knew the pain of 2016, the part Scooter played in her dismantled reputation. He was family, had her trust, but it proved to be a hoax. That deception is dark & unforgivable.

In mad woman, out for blood, she lets her anger loose & scorches his duplicitous earth without abandon. Throughout the lyric video for mad woman, Taylor hooks the letters “st” together (presumably for T.S.). But she also hooks “ck” together. I think this is a message for Scott.

In my tears ricochet, she’s embarking upon the final stage of grief: acceptance. Seeing as her breakthrough single was Teardrops on my Guitar, a very fitting sentiment is that those same teardrops have become the ricocheting bullets that ultimately bury her past with Scott & Big Machine.

Dalí, who T says won card game bets against Rebekah, has some VERY Swiftian art - butterflies, florals, & memories. This one, Butterfly Rose, has 13 seagulls & signifies lightness & metamorphosis. #Fol

He died in 1989.