September 25, 2023

I need to calm down: Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift

Sunday was one of the craziest days of my life.

I’ll back up, because context is necessary. I am a Swiftie. It goes back a long ways, and there are many receipts. I made bootleg t-shirts to sell at the Arrowhead “Eras Tour” shows1. It’s a whole thing. I’m deciding to leave it at that.

I am also a Kansas City Chiefs fan. That the social web exploded yesterday about the actually-quite-real dating life of one Travis Kelce and our generation’s most gifted lyricist became an overwhelming typhoon of content, alerts, general goss. My phone died, a battery pack charged it back up, and it died again. Text threads sparkled to life, each one presenting new, almost exclusively unverifiable content. Swift wore red-and-white New Balance 550s; I zoomed in to check. I don’t know the exact SKU for that New Era Chiefs jacket but I’m working on it. My camera roll is psychotic—I think I caught every frame of the now life-affirming LFG:

It’s always funny to say “I have no words” and then type out maybe 2000 more of them, but I’m not sure I’ve felt so excited and alarmed at the intensity of my attention all at once.

It’s a surreal feeling!

Do we live in a simulation? Do I believe in manifesting now? Is this all part of intricate plan from the mind of Taylor Swift consigliere Tree Paine, a correction to the unpopular Matty Healy (blech) relationship? Had they actually met before last night? (My theory: No). Is Kelce the first American Swift has “dated” since the Kennedy kid? What the hell is Prime Social? The chicken finger/dips situation… what is going on there?2 Does this signal a deeper return to Swift’s Americana roots… and maybe a harbinger of a return to the twang-tinged singer-songwriter fare of her earliest output?

There are many questions, and few answers that I will ever have access to. I don’t think I care about the mechanics behind all of it, not even a little. The level of detail is immense and post-processing. The rumors are flying like Patrick Mahomes dimes. Brittany Mahomes is conspicuously quiet. Bill Belichick is getting jokes off. Jake Gyllenhaal still has her old scarf, from that very first week. This is an unprecedented moment, and if any of you that have my number could hit me up with sanity checks, I’d be grateful for it. I am available for speaking engagements, please reach out to my manager Michael Vernon.

Long live Swiftce.