Fan Letter to Fiona Apple for her (Pitchfork-10/10-worthy) new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters, which I have listened to at least 75 times in Quarantine
Dear Fiona,
I’ve listened to your new album so many times. It sounds even better on headphones than on the loudest volume on my living room speakers. It sounds even better while cooking my 47th anonymous stew than while waiting for my missing unemployment to finally appear. It sounds just as good crying and yelling and laughing. I’ve tested these statements and know them to be true.
Your album is truer than most of the news.
When I was 12,13,14 years old lying on the floor crying along to Tidal, I knew I loved you, but I also knew I couldn’t be your friend. Your pure intensity and ability to channel suffering was beyond the comprehension of my awkward pubescent existence (it still is) so I kept you in your CD’s little jewel case, poring over your lyrics, your silver slivered treasure spiraling in my Discman. When I loved you as a kid, I didn’t yet know I could write, and my writing could have power.
Now I do.
I think it’s possible that you actually taught me how to write, and I just now realized it, 15 years later. I am not a woman to whom you won’t get through. Maybe my art is just water thoroughly steeped in you: tea. Or maybe coffee beans, ground up. You seem like you’d prefer coffee. I prefer coffee, so I’d like to think you’d drink a coffee with me. But you probably take yours black; I need milk. I fall short yet again.
I am ashamed to even write this to you, because your talent embarrasses me. The whole world should be embarrassed that it didn’t figure out how to make more of you, and less Louis CK’s. The ratio is completely off.
I wanted to thank you for sharing this album, but I didn’t know what to do to show my appreciation. I am a poet, and haiku is sort of my specialty, and I’ve been working on this volunteer project since the pandemic hit the states… anyway what I’m saying is all I know how to do is write poems at this point so I wrote down my favorite lyrics from the whole album and rearranged them into a bunch of haiku. I’m like your annoying kid, going into your garden, picking all your flowers, then bringing them back to you as a clumsy bouquet, dirt all over me.
Some are absurd: I hope they make you laugh. Others feel more like your actual lyrics, refracted. I wish everyone would listen to this album. I wish one day I’ll have the courage to tell the truth like you.
Love,
Lisa Ann (LA)
P.S. Shameika was right.
THE HAIKU
being blacklisted
evil is a relay sport
time is elastic
spread like strawberries
wearing time like flowery crown;
fruit bat maniac
you’ve got them convinced
you are the means and the end
when they don’t know shit
i resent you for
you raped me in the same bed
your daughter was born
only move to move
so nobody can replace
anybody else
she got through to me —
I hadn’t found my own voice
Now I won’t shut up
sucking in so long
that I’m busting at the seams —
exelcis deo
the one who’s burned turns
ladies, ladies, good women:
fetch the bolt cutters
If anyone other than Fiona Apple happens across this letter, here are some things to click on:
My volunteer project, Poems for a World on Pause. We’ve written almost 300 poems for people struggling with the pandemic so far
The little emergency fund for the Ars Poetica Volunteer Poet Corps
Heaven help us… our Instagram
Much love and health.
photo by jonica moore