"And if I'm dead to you why are you at the wake?" (Taylor Swift, "my tears ricochet", from "folklore", 2020). When I noticed that line, I first chuckled at one of Swift's characteristic witty spins on a conventional phrase ("dead to you"). Then I added my own personal spin as if it were a reference to James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1939). My pleasure at this willful connection was doubled when I then made the line refer to two of my favorite things by spinning "dead" as The Grateful Dead – whose 1973 album was "Wake of the Flood". Then I rediscovered this lovely phrase in Joyce: "a houseful of deadheads" (FW.406. 35-36). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 January 2024)
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