Spirits and demons
Spirits and demons is the animating essence: the soul, the spirit, the thing that makes a body or a relationship alive, and the demon that has to be driven out of one. It covers that essence whether it persists, departs or is exorcised. In ivy the spirit is the soul that outlasts the body. In How Did It End? what falls silent is the thing that kept the relationship alive rather than the relationship itself. In So Long, London the essence has simply gone. On the demon side, The Black Dog calls a priest to drive one out and invisible string keeps the speaker's demons chained. A presence with no essence behind it belongs with Haunting or Ghosts.
Naming the essence lets Taylor treat a soul or a relationship's life as a thing that can leave, be held, or be forced out. Casting an inner torment as a demon raises it from psychology to something with a body to wrestle, which is why these songs reach for a priest or a chain rather than for a feeling.
Appears in 8 songs
“How the death rattle breathing Silenced as the soul was leaving”
What leaves is the thing that made the relationship alive, not the relationship itself, and it is silenced inside the bridge's chain of breath and death and deflation. The song opened by conducting the post-mortem and still ends not knowing.
“And hire a priest to come and exorcise my demons Even if I die screaming”
The demon/spirit imagery operates on multiple levels, the black dog itself is a demon spirit from folklore, and the speaker needs an exorcism to rid herself of the man/the depression/the black dog. Uncle Jerry reads the exorcism as connected to the Malleus Maleficarum tradition of torturing witches to drive out their black dog spirit.
“I'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones”
The spirit represents the soul or inner life that persists beyond death, where the spirit meets the bones is the place where the immaterial self encounters the physical remains, i.e., a grave. Uncle Jerry connects this to Miller Williams' poem 'Compassion' ('you do not know what wars are going on down where the spirit meets the bone') and to Lucinda Williams' album title, arguing the line is likely borrowed or an homage.
“The spirit was gone, we would never come to”
The death of the relationship rendered in explicitly spectral terms, not emotional withdrawal but the departure of something essential and immaterial. The spirit is what animated the love; its absence haunts the shell of what remains.
“Time breaks down your mind and body, don't you let it touch your soul”
The song keeps putting the same two people into different lives. The bridge is the one place it names a part time must not have: the mind and body are conceded, the soul is told to stay out of reach.
“And you can aim for my heart, go for blood But you would still miss me in your bones”
The speaker persists as a spirit presence in the antagonist's very skeleton, not merely a memory but a bodily haunting he cannot escape.
“Chains around my demons”
The demons represent the speaker's inner torments, past traumas, and destructive patterns that the invisible string (and the person at the other end of it) has helped contain.
“And you've got your demons, and darling, they all look like me”
The demons belong to the lover, and the line gives them her face. The torment is his and the likeness is hers, which makes the speaker the thing he carries rather than the one carrying it.