As someone from the Great Plains, the drive from north-western South Carolina to central Kentucky is mesmerizing. From the Blue Ridge to the Bluegrass. You begin in the foothills of the Appalachian mountain range, find yourself in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, and then make your descent back home to the rolling hills of Kentucky.
As I traversed this route at the end of spring break, I decided to spend a few hours exploring Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The Smokies were beautiful. Standing there on the top of a mountain, it was easy to imagine what these mountains must have looked like millions of years ago when they were the size of the Rocky Mountains. Though now that they’ve been worn down by wind and weather, they almost look more like waves.
After driving through the park, impulsively stopping along the way to hike part of the Appalachian Trail, I made my 3,600 foot descent back down to earth. I think I might’ve gone a little too far, however, landing me not on earth but instead into the fourth level of hell according to Dante: that of greed. Colloquially known as Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
There’s a stark difference between the mountain top and the valley below that is both visible and invisible. The mountains were proof of the miraculous masterpiece of the Maker. The town, on the other hand, was a man-made monstrosity.
Driving down the main road in town, I was appalled by the garishness of the place. On both sides, I was surrounded by amusement sites, mirror mazes, guns and alcohol. I felt like I was driving through a circus of all of America’s greatest vices. That is, America’s ability to distort beauty. I was unable to understand how Gatlinburg became what it is. What about a mountain range makes someone decide to build the tackiest buildings possible right in the middle of it? Following my neurotic mind train as it spiraled downward, I rapidly jumped to the conclusion that humans are capable only of twisting creation into some malformed mangled mess.
And then my mind tuned in to the music playing in my car. Taylor Swift, who takes inspiration from the earth, and from her poetic predecessors, to produce prose which proves that humanity is capable of creating beautiful things.
Swift demonstrates her understanding of the beauty and depth of meaning found in nature in her song “The Great War.” In this song, Swift uses flowers to memorialize a fallen relationship in the same way a war may be remembered. Throughout the song, four flowers are mentioned: the violet, crimson clover, the poppy and the morning glory. Each flower holds a different meaning to illustrate the many nuances and intricacies of her relationship. What she is remembering is a relationship in shambles, one that is reminiscent of war. Yet, within that, she finds beauty and points to it as she “plant[s] a memory garden.”
Swift also manages to borrow from other artists in her lyrical endeavors to illustrate the significance of nature. On her eighth studio album “folklore,” she alludes multiple times to a trip she took to the Lake District in England. This experience obviously had a profound impact on Swift, but this wasn’t simply because of the beauty of the place. What really seemed to draw her in was its history. The Lake District is where poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey would escape to write. Swift’s song “the lakes” indicates that her muse was both the poets and the poet’s muse.
However, even Taylor Swift’s art is not without distortion. Have you seen her merchandise? Or the way that she seems to market each new album she writes with eight versions that are minorly different? She by all means has every right to market her art however she wants. What is alarming, though, is that people continue to buy into these money grabs simply because Swift’s name is tied to it, as if they are not satisfied by her music alone. They want more and it seems they are convinced that some sort of material evidence of her work will satisfy that greed for more of her talent.
It was in analyzing Taylor Swift’s art and commercial success that I began to understand Gatlinburg. It is not humanity in itself which defaces beauty, but instead the dissatisfaction with the beauty in front of us which pushes us off of the precipice of appreciation into a pit of greed. When we try to artificially manufacture beauty, we are really just creating a poorly gilded mock of that which we are trying to enhance.
Featured image by Lena Overman.