Darkness
Darkness as setting and state - the literal night-time setting in which much of Taylor's writing takes place, and the figurative state of not knowing where one stands. In Taylor's writing the dark holds the speaker's most candid voice: the night address to a lover, a former self, or an absent other when daytime conventions are off - and at the same time marks the limit of what the speaker can see, decide, or admit. The image extends to adjacent figures (night, midnights, sleeplessness, the unlit room) that share the same combined register.
Darkness carries the doubled charge of intimacy and uncertainty: the night as the place in which the speaker is most candid with herself or her addressee, and the dark as the condition in which she cannot tell what is happening or what she is responding to.
Appears in 16 songs
“Midnights become my afternoons”
Darkness and midnight as states that have overtaken the speaker's entire life, the night is no longer contained to nighttime but has spread into every hour, whether as depression, schedule inversion, or nightmare intrusion.
“So I wander through these nights”
Night is the setting for the speaker's most honest self-disclosure, wandering through darkness is when the mask comes off and the speaker reveals who she really is behind the guiding-light persona.
“Perched in the dark Telling all the rich folks anything they wanna hear”
Darkness represents both the literal nighttime setting and the speaker's figurative uncertainty about how to respond to genuine emotional connection after a life of deception.
“Sleepless in the onyx night”
The dark period of the speaker's past, sleepless suffering, loneliness, and emotional turmoil, rendered through the mineralogical register as a funerary, mournful state that precedes the opalite transformation
The entire poem operates in a dark, Gothic register. Uncle Jerry catalogues the diction: 'Pierce holes hit die screaming heartbroken kills hate shaken hazing cruel smoke fire exercise' and concludes: 'If you put about all those words together and it's this dark place. It's this castle of a Toronto. It's this Frankensteinian Gothic tradition that she's drawing on for this poem.'
“So scarlet, it was maroon”
The progressive darkening through the song, from morning to silence, from scarlet to maroon, enacts the relationship's descent into darkness. The colour spectrum itself moves from light red to near-black, and the album (Midnights) reinforces this dark register.
“We're dancin' 'round the kitchen in the refrigerator light”
Darkness/nighttime as the setting for the most intimate scene, the kitchen dance happens in the middle of the night, lit only by the refrigerator. Uncle Jerry reads the darkness as both romantic and foreboding.
“It's a goddamn blaze in the dark”
Darkness serves as the condition in which the illicit love must be kept hidden. Uncle Jerry reads 'blaze in the dark' as potentially 'a light in the darkness or black fire.' In the sapphic reading, the darkness represents the need for secrecy: 'it is that love affair that for this time and place, we have to keep dark, especially since one of them is married.'
“You booked the night train for a reason”
Night signals the ominous, somber tone of the narrative, loss and grief before the story has even been told.
“Pacing the rocks, staring out at the midnight sea”
The midnight setting marks the darkened end of Rebekah's arc, isolated, alone, haunted. The darkness of midnight contrasts with the sunny arrival, placing Rebekah in a state of solitude and possibly grief after her husband's death and the town's rejection.
“Drunk under a streetlight, I”
The streetlight creates an intimate pocket of illumination within surrounding darkness, the couple in a private circle of light while the world around them is dark, representing the intimacy and privacy of the relationship.
“In the cracks of light I dreamed of you”
The cracks of light represent recovery breaking through the gray depression, the first signs of hope emerging from the speaker's sustained darkness.
“I want your midnights”
Midnight holds a triple register: the peak celebration of New Year's Eve, the partner's depressive low points, and intimate private moments. The speaker wants all three, the joy, the difficulty, and the privacy.
“The lingering question kept me up / 2 a.m., who do you love? / I wonder 'til I'm wide awake”
The darkness/night setting structures the second half of the song, the speaker is alone at 2 a.m., unable to sleep, pacing in the dark. Uncle Jerry identifies the nighttime setting as the place where the speaker's most candid thoughts emerge, the prayer, the pacing, the obsessive wondering all happen in the dark hours after the party.
“Those days turned into nights Slept next to her, but I dreamt of you all summer long”
The day-to-night transition marks the shift from innocence to transgression. Uncle Jerry reads daytime as a symbol of openness and things that come to light, while nighttime represents when 'naughty things happen.' The progression from days to nights tracks James's innocent act turning into something illicit.
“darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream”
The nightmare/daydream opposition, the speaker is darkness disguised as light, danger dressed as beauty. Uncle Jerry names this his favorite line in the work.