fetch the boltcutters - fiona apple

It is a rare gift when you engage with a piece of art that has such a precise emotional depth contained within that it so deeply resonates with your own personal experience. The last time I can remember this happening was on the song 'Nobody' sung by Mitski on her album, Be The Cowboy, which I first listened to on my friend Fen's bed, maybe around midnight, coming off a high. I listened to it on repeat all of the next few weeks, replaying it for most of my 5 hour flight from Vancouver to Montreal days later, letting the disco beat seep into my blood stream and feeling the warmth of connection to her loneliness conveyed over an almost flippantly groove. It was not until returning back to school a month later, walking up the wooden stairs to the Max Bell, singing the song into the cold air where I finally heard the line 'I've been big and small/and big and small/and still nobody wants me'. Whatever Mitski's intent behind these lyrics (which I later found out was a reference to her relationship with her body & her weight), I found in those lyrics affirmation and catharsis. I related it not to weight but to the amplitudes of my personality: outgoing, flamboyant or guarded, shut-off. and the personal balance I felt I needed to strike when it came to the two sides, in order to get people to like me. It has been a year and a half since this connection occurred, and listening to Fiona Apple's newest album - Fetch the Bolt Cutters, I feel it again.

This album is alive, in ways unlike anything else I've really heard. The percussive beats that run through it, that command your attention and ear from the minute the opening notes sound, they breathe and signal that this album is like a beast that will not stop until it is finished saying what it needs to say, and this beast - it rattles and stamps, crazed. Listening to this album makes me feel connected to the physical space around me. While Apple bangs on the surfaces of her house, so do I. When she wails, so do I. She has managed to compose these bizarre, sonically disparate, but completely digestible tracks. They're so complex and complicated that they require listen after listen just to grasp the basics, and each listen bears new gifts - whether in a previously misunderstood lyric which are so precisely written that once grasped can be mined for meaning and interpretation. I am in awe of her.

The album has songs and themes that I can't immediately relate to - there are songs about the power of women told to hate each other not doing that exactly. There are songs about the singer's rape, about her abusive ex-partners. The strength of these songs, and why I like them, are not so personal, but just simply that when I listen to them I feel like I'm listening to something completely new, and my ear loves it. She's crafted these rhythms and melodies and hooks and choruses and verses that are so mind boggling that they actually get stuck inside your head.

The album just has unreal and unbelievable moment after moment. I love the introduction to "I Want You To Love Me' - the segue from percussive line into piano is sublime. Her avant-garde tilt of experimentalism at the end, the lyrics which punch one at a time, taking swings. "Next year/it'll be clear/this was only leading me to that" - perfectly expressing the pained irritation of hindsight. Of knowing you'll be okay but not feeling okay in the moment. It's just, completely spectacular.

I've been listening to this album on repeat. I hope to be able to write about it more sensitively and with more clarity soon. I'm no music reviewer so as I write this I need to remind myself not to go overboard with the pressure on myself. I can write however I like. It doesn't matter.

In fact I should take my cue from Fiona Apple. She clearly doesn't give a fuck, and she marches to the beat of her own drum (or metal butterfly that she picked up while wandering). She does whatever she wants, without any second thought for what anyone else might care about. And I think that's amazing.

Finally - the bolt cutters. She's explained that the album is sort of a call to arms - for all of us to take the bolt cutters and set them onto the gnarled barbs and wires that surround us, and for me I picture them surrounding my heart. She says fuck what society tells you to do, fuck what you've internalised from other people, fuck whatever isn't making you happy, fuck that all. She says take the bolt cutters to that shit, really just completely get rid of them, and just be happy. And honestly, how can you not do exactly as she says?

so guys - fetch the fucking bolt cutters. That's what I'll be doing.

the cold. (night blog 1)

I am very cold.

I can't ascertain the current air temperature of the bomb shelter I work in. It doubles as the security control center, and houses lots of servers and computer things, hence the cold. I've been awake since 4:30 am, after barely managing to fall asleep on a camp bed, maybe just past 1. I am swathed, or maybe swaddled, in two sweaters (a hoodie & a wool turtleneck), my uniform, and two blankets covering the lower and upper halves of my body. My military issued Nalgene-esque bottle doubles as a hot water bottle.

It's grimly painted only because I abhor waking up in the middle of the night, much less with less than 8 hours sleep, and even less so when I need to be attentive.

As I fell asleep last night, I thought about starting to make blog posts while on night shifts, which I have every other day. It's awful but for the fact that it's practically the only alone time I get anytime I'm in base. I've a fool proof method for drifting off to sleep, which involved focusing your mind on only two things: visually imagine a screen of white, angelic blank white if you will, and aurally focus on one repetitive white noise. Sometimes I will be able to hear the very stillness of a room, that little buzz that you pick up on when no other sound can be identified? Magical. I've always had an overactive mind, but when I started having trouble sleeping, it was because my mind jumped and raced from thought to thought without pause. So I developed this way, because it works for me. I am still awful at practicing proper mindfulness, in any other context "bring yourself back" would make me cringe with bad memories.

My best ideas seem to come to me in between the moment I tuck myself under my blanket and when I finally drift off, so I think I'll make it a bigger priority to lay down and think before making myself sleep.

I think writing these posts will be two-pronged in their benefit (if not more). Firstly, I'll be able to practice writing anything which I sorely need. I've always read the adage that the only way to write is to do it with regularity. So far I have struggled to even fulfill this basic tenet. Secondly. it will actually warm up my body since I'm forced to move my fingers. Here's hoping this works out.

And what will I be writing about? Well absolutely anything. Hopefully just one thing a day. Minimally, just one thing a day. I want this to be distinct from a diary, in style, tone and content, since I already keep a diary, which I've taken to writing in daily since isolation measures began.

Tomorrow, I think I will write about running, or perhaps the of migrant workers in Singapore, their systemic disenfranchisement which has lead to their current appalling treatment in COVID-19 times.

I don't think I will share this link with anyone until I am satisfied that I'll stick to it. Already it took me an hour and a half to even think about something to write, though perhaps that's the whole point of this... to think...