An Open Letter To Fiona Apple
Dear FiFi,
My name is Nick and sometimes exhaling can be a b-tch until I listen to “Limp” or “Window” or “Sleep to Dream” or “A Mistake” or “Paper Bag” or or or or. I could list every track from every album.
All these self-revelations. How do you know my brain and my shaken hands and my bones and muscles and my loose skin and I don’t even know my conscious, but you do. I’ve heard you growling about it in loops. I’ve heard you on vinyl and disc and in cyberspace particles exhaling out the exhaust of me. You creep, you spy, you piano bully prophet.
Okay, I know you don’t know me. And sometimes I’m on the carpet drinking wine, because sometimes carpet buds are too there, so I get out that liquid burgundy and you’re in the speakers. When I’m on my soft floor, not soft to touch but soft to see, I could get violent with the carpet or my hair or a cell phone because you’re out there somewhere and I know you don’t know me. Was that stalker-esque? Give me your clipped toe nails and a used tissue.
Kidding. My apologies, mea creep-a. I just need that carpet soft, because you’ve got me breathing with this relativity and I’ve never helped you breathe before. Me creep, me greedy. So I thought I’d just write to say “thanks” or something.
Is this gross? Writing to someone you’ve never met. But haven’t I? Don’t I know you? I must. I know the harassing of the piano into salvation and the biting lyrics and the voice sometimes undertow, sometimes floating. Or do I just know your catharsis? Your exorcising of the self from the self so you might breathe too? I hope you breathe, Fiona. I hope you have meaty lungs ready to pump the exhale.
And aren’t they? Aren’t they pumping? I can’t get away from your new single, “Every Single Night.” So much pumping, that insomniac lullaby. You just want to feel everything, but don’t you already? I’m up with and past the streetlights, Fiona. Me and the brain boil in bed sheets, froth and bubble. Me and my skeleton are suddenly struggling against second sets of rib cage and skull and teeth coming in dusk till dawn. And growing new bones hurts, doesn’t it? You know. But we’ve never met, so how do you know the toil? After all these years you’re still spitting out my toil. We have similar saliva, you and I. We got acid tongue, but we’re on our backs choking instead of frying the skin of him and him and him and him. Oh, I know you know him. You know him like you know me. Yes, catharsis in me on the floor belligerent and belting “Red Red Red” or “Oh Well” or “Shadowboxer” or “On the Bound” or or or or.
They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but Fiona, I eat a second with my ears every single night to keep away everything else. So, I guess I’m writing to say thanks.
I’ll be seeing you at Cain Park in July and I hope you lift your head to see me seeing you as you’ve seen me so clear somehow. Row N on the right.
To Your Love,
Nick