Taylor's Tour (Sam's Version)

Wasps were no match for this Bee.

I took this photo at 18x zoom.

Hope everybody either had a delightful holiday, or that you are mid-delightful holiday, and the pleasures continue, unabated, until all the bills roll in.

Today I am going to re-print something I recently wrote for the Daily Beast, because I just have to. I had so much fun writing it, and ended up reading and re-reading it many times through happy tears, like a complete drip.

The prompt was: “600 words on your personal hero of 2023” and friends, I searched my soul. I wanted it to have been profound. I wanted it to tell the story of ME!, and what a deep thinker I am, and how truly, I am an effortless fountain of wisdom.

Then my friends reminded me that all I talked about for four months straight was the fact that I took my daughters to the Taylor Swift concert and how we all agreed that it was one of the best experiences of our lives.

And so sure, there are wiser answers to this question, but I’m afraid someone else is going to have to WOW you with theirs. For now, I am compelled to share the story of an August weekend that I will simply never forget. 

Allow me to tell you why Taylor Swift is my hero.

Nothing was going to stop us.

I sprung for surprise Taylor Swift tickets for my daughter’s 13th birthday, and she wept with joy. My two daughters and I spent a full month planning our outfits, and it felt like heaven. It required us to fly across the country but we would have flown across the world. I was hell bent.

As the date approached, I tracked the comings and goings of our aircraft like a hog on a truffle. “Where Is My Plane?” Friends, I always knew. I frequently updated my cork board flowchart of backup options for cities we could fly into, rent a car, and drive overnight to SoFi stadium in case our booked flight crapped out.

Pre-dawn on the day before the show, the Uber driver taking us to the airport drove over a log and our car filled with wasps. Filled. With. Wasps. He informed me, screaming, and running from the car, that he had a deadly venom allergy and had once required a tracheotomy to save his life. I single handedly beat those wasps out of the car when he veered off the road not once but TWICE, and gamed out every possible version of “take this man to a hospital but also gtfo as soon as possible because we are making this flight, goddamn it.”

At SoFi, my child was so beside herself with excitement that she tripped on her purple Speak Now dress, ripped her knees open, and bled all over her dress. We saw an EMT and kept it moving.

Luckily bracelets outnumbered injuries.

The communion of 70,000 people in the same place for all the right reasons was magnificent; an event closest to any religious experience I have ever had. There were no haters, there was no snark. Anyone inclined that way had long ago sold their tickets, probably for a life changing profit.

We sat in the nosebleeds for a wildly unreasonable amount of money, and still my daughter thought Taylor Swift was singing directly at her. Like she was onstage, to be honest, probably a solid mile away from us, but my daughter’s first words were “SHE’S. RIGHT. THERE.” 

I can’t share with you the photos I took of my girls*, which will make me cry with happiness until the day I die. The videos I have of them screaming-singing every song just like everyone around us. How I now finally understand all those old black and white photos of kids sobbing at a Beatles concert.

Most of my musical heroes growing up were 45 year old sex pests, so yes Taylor Swift is a wonderful corrective. She is an authentic artist and an uncanny songwriter, able to simultaneously pierce the heart of a thirteen year old girl with a clever turn of phrase and a key change, but also the heart of this 54 year old battle axe? I never would have imagined. 

The amount my daughter loves her, and feels seen by her is worth anything to me. I’d get a second mortgage just to recapture that magic, and maybe I will.

So yes Taylor Swift is my fucking hero. In a world where so few people and so few things live up to their promises, Taylor Swift delivers. She knows how much her fans love her, and she gives them the kind of live experience that makes it one million percent worth it to plan something for a year, fly thousands of miles, and battle an army of wasps and wounds. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

So Happy (almost) New Year, and a toast to all the people in our lives who deliver on their promises. See you in 2024.

Love,

Sam

*Except for my Plan Bee readers.