Pictures
Pictures as a recurring image of the speaker's act of imagining, projecting, or conjuring - the verb sense of picture that summons an image into the mind rather than recording one onto paper. In Taylor's writing the picture-as-mental-act register typically marks the speaker's interior life: she pictures herself with someone, pictures them with someone else, paints pictures in the sky, or asks the listener to picture her in a particular role. The image's force lies in the speaker's authorship of the vision - what is summoned by the mind's eye rather than what was caught by a camera.
Pictures carries the charge of imaginative projection: a mental image the speaker conjures rather than receives. The motif most often surfaces around three moves: the longed-for scene (a future imagined, the lover imagined elsewhere), the feared scene (the betrayal imagined, the rival imagined), and the self-as-image (picture me as X) in which the speaker stages herself for another's perception. Where Photographs marks the relationship's residue made visible, Pictures marks the relationship still being imagined into being - the work the speaker's mind is doing to fill in what cannot be seen directly.
Appears in 10 songs
“And I can picture it after all these days”
The act of picturing, mental projection, linked to the puzzle/pieces imagery. Uncle Jerry highlights the connection between the puzzle pieces falling into place and the act of picturing: 'You know what happens when you get all the pieces together? You see the picture. And then she says I can picture it after all these years.' The internal resonance between puzzle, picture, and the later photo album scene creates a sustained image-chain about how memory assembles fragments into coherent scenes.
“Picture me thick as thieves with your ex-wife”
“I pictured you with other girls in love then threw up on the street”
“Picture of your face in an invisible locket”
“Take pictures in your mind of your childhood room”
“So I'll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep”
“And the faded picture of a beautiful night”
“And it's a sad picture, the final blow hits you”
“I'm taking pictures in my mind so I can save them for a rainy day”
“You and I are painting pictures in the sky”