Staff pick: Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Content advisory: adult language

When I was 15, listening to Fiona Apple’s song "Criminal" made me feel like I was a bad bitch with a secret that I had no business having. Back then, I was a moody teen going through the trials and tribulations of having a profoundly shitty boyfriend and the turmoil of different loves and emotions. That melancholic and defiant ballad from 1996 related to someone that hid inside a recessed and taboo part of myself.

At 25, after another series of relationships that I gave both too little and too many fucks about, I would return to that song. “Heaven help me for the way I am. Save me from these evil deeds before I get them done.” I felt understood and like someone was showing me a version of myself I had fought against. We all have our secrets and Apple reveals hers (and possibly mine) with the rawness of her voice and lyrics. This was the beginning of an understanding of the cycles our various selves take. Damn, she is magic. 

Now at 27, Apple’s new 2020 album Fetch the Bolt Cutters plays on repeat as I sit in isolation within a pentagram of knives and rose petals. I’ve been turning to my rituals for stability as another relationship undergoes the inevitable guillotining of love and I’m forced to sit with myself. This is the space I build to open my brain and access the locked door of my own desires, fantasy, and repressed thoughts. My need to sharpen the daggers I have historically thrown at myself fights the petals that seal my wounds and scars. With my eyes closed I submit my consciousness to the soundscape and connections that bind. Opening with "I Want You To Love Me," her characteristically soulful piano playing pulls my chest with a swell of unguarded emotion that rends into entreaties of yearning, belonging to Apple and myself. Woven within the seductively playful and complex melodies, Apple excavates the soul and collaborates with the versions of herself that have existed. “I know that time is elastic and I know, when I go, all my particles disband and disperse.” The past opens the invisible wounds that are tangible and the present takes action. 

Her music is a moment of transmuted energy that facilitates growth and reckoning. “I would beg to disagree but begging disagrees with me….Kick me under the table all you want. I won’t shut up. I won’t shut up.”  She’s standing up for herself, but also standing up for me. How many times has Apple been dismissed or diminished? How many times have I let someone get away with the same thing?

The air is raw and I join her in this journey and unbinding ritual where Apple confronts the abuses and mental traps that have plagued her. Her middle school and adult selves sing together to stand up to the powers that be (bullies, men, rapists, oppressive patriarchies, and more), and she is armed.  Using her words and the ubiquitous bolt cutters, she takes honest action and begins to sever the mental and spiritual cords that have held her. “Fetch the bolt cutters, I’ve been in here too long. Fetch the bolt cutters, whatever happens happens.” She is her own liberator and faces her reality. There is no apology and I want to have strength like hers. This shit is deeply personal, but what does it say about our society that these feelings are universal?