Oh, Where Oh Where Can My Baby Be: Transforming Presence to Absence in Last Kiss

The Basics: 

Taylor Swift recalls moments from a relationship that has ended. She remembers whispered “I love yous”, a reunion after travel, and dancing and kissing at a party. Those moments are juxtaposed with the present moment, in which Swift sits alone on the floor wearing her ex’s clothing and moaning “I never thought we’d have a last kiss.” 

Literary Device: Synecdoche

Synecdoche is a literary device in which a part of something is substituted for a whole. In this case, a kiss, one part of a relationship, stands in for the entire relationship. Swift’s “last kiss” is a devastatingly simple synecdoche for the end of a romantic relationship. 

Analysis

Swift’s memories of this relationship are visceral. She recalls moments from the relationship that appeal to the five senses: 

• Sight: “I still remember the look on your face / Lit through the darkness at 1:58”

• Sound: “The words that you whispered for just us to know / You told me you loved me” 

• Smell: “I do recall now the smell of the rain / Fresh off the pavement”

• Touch: “The beat of your heart / It jumps through your shirt / I can still feel your arms” 

In place of taste, Swift remembers “How you’d miss me when I was in the middle of saying something.” 

Swift’s relationship was a physical experience. Since breaking up, the full-bodied physical experience of another person has been replaced by a flattened, empty version. For example, Swift sings: “I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep.” When they were together, Swift saw a three-dimensional, moving, human being. After the break-up, she will now see him only through static, pixelated representations on an instagram feed. She continues: “And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe.” An actual physical interaction with another human being has once again been replaced with a mere idea. In the chorus, Swift sings: “I never thought we’d have a last kiss / Never imagined we’d end like this / Your name, forever the name on my lips.” Swift’s lips once kissed this man – now they merely form his name. Finally, in perhaps the most vivid statement of this theme, Swift sings the following in each pre-chorus: “So I’ll go / Sit on the floor wearing your clothes / All that I know is I don’t know / How to be something you miss.” Swift is left with the hollow outer shell of her partner – his clothes – in place of his former, physical presence. Breaking up converted a romantic partner from a presence in Taylor Swift’s life to an absence. 

In her remembering, Swift insists on the physicality of her memories: “I still remember the look”, “I do recall now the smell” and “I can still feel your arms.” Wearing his clothes and saying his name, however hollow, are an attempt for Swift to insist on the reality of her memories by physically embodying them. Swift honors the relationship by intentionally and actively remembering it not only with her brain but with her body.