The tragic love of “cowboy like me”
Now you hang from my lips
Like the Gardens of Babylon
— Taylor Swift, cowboy like me
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World–an extraordinary feat of ascending tiered terraces embellished with trees, plants and shrubs. Resembling a mountainous county, the gardens were considered a horticultural prowess. The catch is, that their exact existence and location remain unknown. To hang from the lips like the Gardens of Babylon, an elusive kiss from a hazy love that may or may not have existed but is kept alive by the idea that it is beautiful enough.
You had some tricks up your sleeve
Takes one to know one
You’re a cowboy like me
— Taylor Swift, cowboy like me
When thinking of a cowboy, an image that forms in my mind is one of a young man in a brown wide-brimmed hat and rugged denim outfit. Determined and hardworking; a master strategist in roping cattle and taming wild horses. It is the encounter of two cunningly tactful “cowboys” that unravels a series of romantic entanglements the song explores. In the end, the two sides see the truth of the hoax it all was and leave the affair covered in scars.
Forever is the sweetest con
— Taylor Swift, cowboy like me
This song brought to my mind a difficult question: is it better to be left in the dark but happy or to see the truth of it all and let it dig a deep scar in the heart? To live in the sweetest con of the cowboy, or to see the sly man behind the mask? I would argue that the second champions. We are all deserving of truthful forevers. To learn the lesson this time is to pave the path to a better next time.