Rooting for Anti-Heroes (Taylor's Version) AND WW=Walter White?

Anti-Heroes

The notion or seed for the Walter White / Anti-Hero thought shared yesterday actually came a couple weeks ago.  At that time, Walter White was only a tangential thought or example of an anti-hero, in that I hadn't yet made the connection directly between him and Saruman through fun name games... that only happened yesterday.

But the thought of anti-heroes, and associating Saruman as one of them, came while on a run.  I had Spotify on DJ setting, which is kind of entertaining because who knows what will come up and Taylor Swift's song "Anti-Hero" came on.  

Now, I haven't been living under a rock, and at least here in the US, Taylor Swift's songs are inescapable.   I have heard and listened to Anti-Hero many times, both the original version as well as several remixes that have been on the air.  I actually find the song pretty catchy, and I like it, though I think I used to like it better before it became a bit overplayed.

In any case, I decided it would be a good one to keep running to (in DJ mode I find myself flipping through a lot of songs before landing on something).

So, again, I've listened to this song many times, but in this instance, I began hearing it almost for the first time as a fairly pervasive thought came into my head that if Saruman had a theme song, perhaps this would be it.  The thought started from the very title itself "Anti-Hero" as a good description for this Being.

The thought kind of caught me off guard, but I began listening to the lyrics and decided that there just might be something to it.

There are a bunch of references that you can listen to for yourself if you are so inclined.  At the time, it seemed interesting that you have the speaker basically introducing themselves and admitting that they are the problem, which sounded a bit like recent events with Saruman ("It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me...").  I even felt that the chorus line "it must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero" must have a different meaning, and I made a note to look up 'rooting' to see what else I could find when I got home.  I served an LDS mission in Australia, and was aware that rooting could be a slang word that means something very different, indeed (I had some good laughs with friends there at the American baseball song that includes the lyrics "It's root, root, root for the Home Team!") but wanted to see if there was anything else.  It turns out that there is, but more on that in a second.

I was lost in my thoughts along these lines as I was listening to the song, and then I heard the sound that literally made me jump and stop running for a second.  Toward the end of the song as Swift keeps repeating that she is the problem, she repeats that everyone agrees twice, and at the end of the second time she ends up holding the 's' on agrees for a good 2-3 seconds and it sounds exactly like a snake hissing.  I mean, it is clearly intentional, at least as I hear it now, where the word 'agrees' transitions into a snake hissing.  Again, I had listened to this song many times before, and had never noticed this, and as I just mentioned, it shocked me so much that I stopped running and immediately replayed that part to make sure I had heard that right (vs. just imagining it since my thoughts had been on Saruman so much as I listened to this song).

Now that I have heard it, I can't unhear it.  It is a snake.

This was interesting to me because recently some references to Moses 4 (in the LDS Pearl of Great Price) came up.  In that chapter, we get one version of the tale of Adam and Eve's fall, which includes the snake.  The snake actually becomes the voice of Satan.

As I will bring up again shortly, the phrase that is the basis for my blog can be found in this chapter (the Coats of Skins that were made from Adam and Eve following their Fall).

So, equating a snake with Saruman was already top of mind, and it was a bit surreal to have thoughts about Saruman going through me head while listening to Anti-Hero, and having Taylor Swift's voice transform into that of a snake.

Later that day, I did look up 'rooting' to see what I could find.   On Etymonline.com, I found additional meanings include:

"dig with the snout," 1530s, wroot, of swine, from Middle English wroten "dig with the snout," from Old English wrotan "to root up," from Proto-Germanic *wrot- (source also of Old Norse rota, Swedish rota "to dig out, root," Middle Low German wroten, Middle Dutch wroeten, Old High German ruozian "to plow up"), from PIE root *wrod- "to root, gnaw."

Altered by association with root (v.3), as if "to dig up by the roots." Extended sense of "poke about, pry" is recorded by 1831. The picturesque phrase root hog or die "work or fail" first attested 1834, American English (in works of Davy Crockett, who noted it as an "old saying").

OK, so we have this notion of digging, plowing, rooting up, and working, which I should have thought of before looking up, but didn't.  We actually raise a couple pigs every year, so I had a pretty good image in my mind about what a pig digging and plowing entails.  In fact, people who raise their pigs on pasture, as we do, are familiar with the fact that where you put your pigs will result in a pretty torn up pasture.  People actually, in theory, put their pigs on pasture to till it up.  I have tried this (kind of) but its an uneven job, and you have to go through with a rototiller, anyway.  

But, the point is that rooting, as meant here, results in soil that has been dug and plowed, specifically by an animal (a pig).

I will bring back in Moses 4 here quickly to remind readers that part of the mythology of the Fall is that Adam and Even were cast out of the Garden of Eden and made to work and to till the Earth by the sweat of their brow - just like my pigs do.  In fact, in my story, Men had, after their Fall and Death, been reborn into bodies that were more animal-like than not, this being the very basis for my blog title around Coats of Skins.

We are Heavenly Beings wrapped and clad in the bodies of Men-Animals, this being the case because of Satan himself.

Which brings me to what Taylor Swift is really singing about in that specific phrase.  I will show her original lyrics, and I will then show the 'translated' or modified version using alternative definitions for the same words she uses.  Meaning, I am not changing any words here, nor applying any meanings that aren't already accepted for each of those words.

Taylor's Version:

"It must be exhausting always rooting for the Anti-Hero"

My Version:

"It must be exhausting always tilling/plowing because of the Anti-Hero"

You'll notice that I changed "for" to "because", which is one of the ways that for used to be used, though less common in these days (from Etymonline:  "because, since, for the reason that...").  You don't have to change it though, and in fact 'for' could be a double meaning.  We till and plow both because of the Anti-Hero, and for him, as in, on his behalf, perhaps.

And thus we see the real reason why it must be so exhausting... because we are working and tilling, not cheering, and it is all for and because of the Anti-Hero.

Anyway, here is the song.  Snake hiss happens at around the 2:50 mark:

WW=Walter White?

What struck me after making the connection between Saruman and Walter White, is that Walter White shares my same initials:  WW.

This was a bit disconcerting to someone like myself who has recently taken some stock in names.  I actually watched the Breaking Bad series several years ago, and even distinctly remembered a part where Walt's brother-in-law had a brief flash of inspiration in looking through evidence with Walter and finding the initials W.W. and wondering who they referred to.  It is an interesting clip:

For reasons that seemed clear to me (but maybe not?), I retained the WW initials next to my name in parentheses for my Blogger profile name.  They are the the duplicative/ unnecessary carryover of when I just called myself WW online.

In my first iteration of a blog back in 2018-2019, I used my regular name - Bill Wright.  Even though I was writing about some strange stuff, I felt no issue with owning it and putting my real name next to it.  I really believed what I was writing about.

Fast forward to 2023, and I began posting comments on a few blogs as I kind of 're-entered' this space after some fairly significant trauma.  Part of that trauma involved how my family responded to my words, dreams, and everything around it.  I used WW because I still wanted to put my identity on it, but I was also worried if someone did an online search or something and saw things that included my name, it wouldn't go very well.

So, I used WW, even when invited to do a guest post for Bruce Charlton's Notion Club Papers blog, I kept that name (a post on Orcs, no less, which are strongly tied or associated with Saruman - that post is here).  In my correspondence with Bruce in sending over the post for him to publish, I used my real name and told him I didn't mind if he knew it, but just didn't want it known publicly.  What I left unsaid, but am saying now, is that I just didn't want certain people to know and be hurt by it.  Maybe that was a sign I shouldn't have gotten back into writing, and in fact I hesitated for quite awhile getting that post back to Bruce because I didn't know if it was the right thing to do.

In any case, after then starting this blog, I ended up feeling like I should just use my real name on this regardless, but since I had already used WW, I decided I would use my full, real nam to coincide with those initials.  Whereas blog 1.0 was Bill's blog, version 2.0 would be William's.  I left the WW in parentheses, I think as a callout or reminder that I commented and wrote a post under that name.

And there it still sits, completely unnecessary, I think, except that it just now, since yesterday, reminds me of Walter White.

Back in 2020 and 2021, having this thought about Saruman and Walter White, and the fact that my name is also a WW would have put me into existential terror mode.  It would have shattered me.  I would have immediately jumped the narrative ladder of inference and concluded that this all meant that I was, in fact, Saruman, or at least allied with him.  Everything would have made sense, and the more I would have thought about it, the more anxiety and terror this thought produced, then the more evidence I would have found to support this supposedly undeniable link and conclusion.

So, it is interesting for me to write about this now and to take a moment to recognize just how far I have come.  I am stronger now than I give myself credit for, and I can hold a thought like this and even ask myself the question ("Could this mean I am Saruman?"), and have a bit of a laugh at it.

And I laugh at it not because I absolutely know it is wrong (I don't - I actually don't give it a 0% chance), but more about just how absurd this whole thing is, and as I think about it more, how ridiculous the thought also likely is.  There are plenty of other things that make more sense - other narratives that include this whole thing (all of this, Stone and all) just being concocted in my head.  In the end, I just don't know, and that has turned out to be OK for me for now.  

So, I don't know.  The WW, I think, I will leave as a reminder that I might have a co-author here who could subtly influence my thoughts in ways I would rather not if I was aware of them, and so not to take myself or anything I write too seriously.  That being said, it doesn't mean I have to remain in perfect silence, either.