In no particular order:

You don't ever say too much / You don't really read into my melancholia (I just get such a clear image of her Person from this)

I feel you no matter what / The rubies that I gave up (instinctively I love the touching on the eternity of love that this hints at, as well as the crashing disappointment of it ending/being given up)

I wake up screaming from dreaming / one day I'll watch as you're leaving / and life will lose all its meaning / for the last time

Time can't stop me quite like you did (this song makes me feel so fragile and full of LIGHT Maria!!)

You've got no reason to be afraid (closely followed by "You can face this" which is is the phrase I armor myself with these days)

Does it feel like everything's just like second-best after that meteor strike? (It balances out everything in Question! It makes it real because it was just a crashing burst of light in the sky for a moment and that was all it was supposed to be!)

I miss you / But I miss sparkling (it's everyone's favorite but I love it regardless, it makes me BEAM)

You know how much I hate that everybody just expects me to bounce back / Just like that

Looked up at me with honor and truth (I get a similarly clear image of him from this)

Do I really have to tell you how he brought me back to LIFE

I miss who I used to be / The tomb won't close

I wander through these nights / I prefer hiding in plain sight

Dreams of your hair and your stare and sense of belief / In the good in the world you once believed in ME (this song is slowly but surely becoming my favorite and this line is always with me now)

This is such a good list, I am simply BASKING in it!!

Eden you a such an absolute sweetheart! Thank you, and I am! I hope you're having a lovely summer.

And ding ding ding ding!! You even got which specific LotR movie I'd pick if forced to choose only one! Amazing! Ever After is perhaps a bit of a given for anyone following me but hey it's a perfect movie.

Stardust would 1000% make top 25 but it JUST missed out top 20.

1. Ever After

2.

3. The Two Towers

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11. Penelope

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18. Tangled

19.

!!!!

1. Raining by Luci Shaw. Luci Shaw was one of the first poets whose work really stirred my heart (I loved the sound of The Road Not Taken and Edward Lear/Lewis Carroll’s poetry, but I didn’t think too deeply about poetry until I read Luci Shaw!). This one is from her collection The Green Earth: Poems of Creation and was one of my favourite poems in middle school. It’s about rain and patience and love!! I can’t find the full text online but my favourite line is “Like rain or sorrow, love takes its time/to name its music/or to find a rhyme”.

2. Love’s As Warm As Tears by C.S. Lewis. There’s not much I can say about it except that I read it right when I needed it most. It’s simple and succint and true and beautiful.

3. Love (III) by George Herbert is much more recent a discovery, and like the C.S. Lewis poem, it also brings me to tears. “Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,/Guilty of dust and sin” is like an arrow to the chest every time I read it. “But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack/From my first entrance in,/Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning/If i lacked anything”...... how can I read that and not cry?? It reminds me of my own failure and at the same time of God’s immeasurable grace. I love it.

4. I Worried by Mary Oliver has a lot to do with worry: worrying about the future, about the steps you take in life, and about all the little things that I worry about, too (like health... the consequences and effects of my mistakes)... but it’s also about learning to let go, learning to surrender your worries and anxiety, learning to rejoice and to sing as the sparrows do :)

I feel so WEIRD!!! Because part of me is like.. is this album like folklore? Similar sounds???? Like is it really folklore part 2?

Or is she like.. doing MORE? Is she like “THIS ISNT COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!! Yet is IS!!”

Like that’s what I want to know.

I feel like it’s folklore part 2. So I’m already like in a “oh still folklore era/I’m as excited about the pond sessions.”

But I also don’t want to put her in a box?? Because if anyone could give off the same aesthetic but be like “THIS IS A SISTER ALBUM THAT IS ITS OWN” it’s Taylor.

I hope the rug is just ripped from underneath me. I hope these songs will compliment folklore but feel like it’s own album.

I’m excited!!! My wallet is not!!!!!!!