Love Like Lister
Love Like Lister is a sonic exploration of what it means to love like Anne Lister. And, with Anne as its focus, it was always going to be about unbreakable resilience, about “a heart that breaks but won’t give in”. Think of the song’s pretty fast tempo (90 to 100 beats per minute) as Anne’s famous stride and pace rendered in musical time. The song’s blend of indie singer-songwriter intimacy and introspection with the drama of film score elements produce a gorgeous, if slightly sad, emotional soundscape.
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Lyrics
For those who, like Anne, wish to examine the text with proper attention.
SongScape
Anne’s deliberate preference for romantic partners who were emphatically not like her is a recurring pattern. As a recurring pattern, it throws light on what it means to love like Lister.
Anne was strongly drawn to women she called “sweet, interesting creatures”. Such woman embodied conventional notions of femininity — women who were at ease in flouncy, frilly dresses of pastel hues. Women who were delicate of mind and behaviour and full of feminine charm. Women who were manageable, to use Anne’s own word.
These women were Anne’s opposite and enabled her to be herself. This is why, in her quest for a romantic partner, she was not looking for a mirror image of her own gender expression and intellect. As the illustration below shows, learned women, like bluestockings, who had a rigorous, if not fierce intellect, repelled her.
Anne’s taste for “sweet, interesting creatures” is but one of many fascinating patterns in the lexicon of what it means to Love Like Lister. The phrase “sweet, interesting creatures” is a phrase Anne wrote in her journal dated 28th February, 1823 (Whitbread, H. (ed.). 2010. I Know My Own Heart: The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister. London: Virago Press. p259).
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Halifax
Anatomy of a Song
