Fiona Apple is the only artist I can really say that I grew up with. I discovered her when I was 18. And there are so many important memories that I can accredit her with. To begin with I didn't really have a period of time when I was a teenager - no I tried to go straight from child to adult - and I got this really high political position with tons of responsibility when I was just 18. I was certainly smart enough and competent enough, but certainly was not reflective and evolved enough - however Parliamentary Politics is one of the least reflective spaces I've ever been in - the less reflective you are, the easier it is for you to become successful - steamroll and say the right things and you will make it big, especially if you add a just a little pinch of intelligence (NOT TOO MUCH) and loads of rhetorical skill. I tried to be a grown up, cuz I had never really had any friends before, hadn't been out partying and doing all the stuff that teenagers were supposed to do and I had never been cool, so I guess that was what I was going for. And in Fiona Apple's interviews about releasing her debut album Tidal when she was 18-19, her remarks mirror my feelings...
And... I rebelled. I wrote an article in Sweden's largest newspaper that basically said FUCK YOU and that basically got ridiculed for being immature and well, it was a shortened article of like 500 words and I didn't get to say everything that I wanted to say and it wasn't the best article I've ever written - but I don't regret it at all.
And Fiona rebelled. And was ridiculed and called immature and sulky and all these things and I was like. Wow, this is awesome and real:
But well. Ok. My late teens and early 20's weren't my most reflective years. I was kinda one-sided about my anger and kinda celebrated my anger a bit too much, blamed everyone else for my problems, was totally self-righteous and believed that I never was the one who had done wrong and I fell in love with this guy who was a complete straight cis-male asshole and this kind of sums up what I felt - but instead of screaming that once and than leaving I did it over and over again - I felt somehow that it was my feminist duty and that feminism equaled anger, when really it doesn't, what is important for feminism however is not being afraid of anger or denying it - that doesn't necessarily mean perpetuating it or giving it higher value than for example sadness or other emotions:
Once again - As I said, I didn't really have a teenage period, so I didn't really realize that I could be considered sexy at all until I was 18-19... And at first I let myself be seduced... Oh sure. When I was 18 I tried to seduce a guy with my own awkwardness I did put on Madonna's Erotica in the middle of having sex with a guy and tried to be sexy, but the guy shut the song off after one minute... It wasn't until right before I turned 20 that I actively seduced a guy. I put on the song Criminal we drank some wine, his friend called and I could hear his friend say "Are you on a date with that crazy hot mess who bit you last friday? Do you think somethings gonna happen" - And I walked up to him and looked him in the eye and started sucking on his fingers and than went down on him and starting giving him a blow job while he finished the conversation and than we continued on fucking.
And as I said... I didn't really have a teenage-period, so the first concert I think I ever went to was Fiona Apple's in London when I was 19 and it was the WOW - the intensity of her stage presence impressed me so much and I knew that I wanted to be like that:
Now it was this very song that would bring me even closer to Fiona Apple a year and a half later, the first time I was sexually assaulted... "I let the beast in and than I even tried forgiving him, but it's too soon so I fight again, again, again, again, again". Fiona is talking about the person who raped her. And I screamed along. Many, many times. I still do sometimes. Cuz I realize that the sexual assaults that I've been through still affect me sometimes, no matter how much I've processed them - they have changed my sexuality, both for the good and the bad. Sometimes I celebrate the good and sometimes I self-loath about the bad - but all in all - Nothing is ruined and as Fiona ends the song "I'm blooming within".
And along came Extraordinary Machine. The album that had it all and than some, the happiest album ever for those of us who reflect, are sensitive, too smart for our own good, over-think, over-analyze.
And now this: "The Idler Wheel is Wiser Than The Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords will Serve You Better Than Ropes Will Ever Do" - her first album in 7 years. And I listened to it for the first time just now in the bath tub, you too can do it at NPR. It is Fiona coming to terms with the very things I'm coming to terms with. Cuz here I am finally understanding how I want to live and how I don't want to live - and instead of sitting there and listening to people small talk about bullshit issues, Hi how are you Fine, the weather, the soccer game, the food (Oh, but a food fight!), the television (Oh, but throwing it out the window!), some film or book that makes you feel nothing, some dumb superfluous party that everybody went to mostly out of fear of missing out, and how hot the person they fucked last night was, without a thought about what beauty standards they are reproducing in their non-reflective usage of the term "hot", I retreat into my shell. Emotionally, I can't stand wearing a mask anymore. I can't stand doing anything half way or half-assed, I'll be dancing on the tables in my underwear and stilettos to riot grrrl or I'll be at home, drinking tea and reading Arundhati Roy or talking to one of my best friends - that's where you'll find me. Emotionally I can't stand having acquaintances anymore, because I feel empty when I'm not digging deep and speaking about the really important issues of the depths of the soul and the wounds in the world - the revolution and the emotional evolution.
"Seek me out
I want it all and than some at it's most deep and intense - conversations, sex, politics, analysis, art, performance. If you don't want to run with this than it's fine. I'm not gonna victimize myself - like Fiona sings in the song "Left Alone" - I can't victimize myself for being alone so much and not having "luck" in romance, when all I ask almost all of my suitors is to be left alone, cuz I'm not getting the intense connection I crave to feel attraction.
But to some I just want to say:
"I will try to hold on to you with open arms."
And last but not least, just like Fiona expresses on the album, I am no longer afraid of sadness. Nor of anger. Nor of happiness. I just want to feel everything. I am not afraid of placing as much blame on myself as I do on others - it's called reflection, it's called compassion.
Your mistakes, traumas and negative experiences are supposed to make you more compassionate, not less. And one of the most important ways to show your compassion is to be open and honest and tell your story with your whole heart-both the tragedies and the triumphs. This is a radical political act that I must say that both Fiona and I master completely, but I wish we were not so alone in it, because I am certain - the world would be a better place, a more compassionate, a more open, a less lonely place if we had that honesty and that heart on our sleeve.
"The woman who sighs and yells and moans and twists her voice into unattractive shapes on The Idler Wheel is one who, by conventional standards, thinks and feels too much. She's the kind whom others want to shut up, but she keeps resurfacing — in the poems of Sylvia Plath, the stories of Lorrie Moore, the films of Lynn Shelton " May I add the paintings of Frida Kahlo!
Our emotions are all important parts of us and shouldn't be evaluated differently, and now, when sometimes, even when I feel so, so bad there's this bowling ball residing in my chest - I tell myself, that I'm filling my quota, "Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key", as an emotionally intense person, that this just means that when the moments of joy come to me I will be appreciating them more and feeling them ever the more intensely. And I calm down. And this.
This is what it means to be alive.
And... I rebelled. I wrote an article in Sweden's largest newspaper that basically said FUCK YOU and that basically got ridiculed for being immature and well, it was a shortened article of like 500 words and I didn't get to say everything that I wanted to say and it wasn't the best article I've ever written - but I don't regret it at all.
And Fiona rebelled. And was ridiculed and called immature and sulky and all these things and I was like. Wow, this is awesome and real:
But well. Ok. My late teens and early 20's weren't my most reflective years. I was kinda one-sided about my anger and kinda celebrated my anger a bit too much, blamed everyone else for my problems, was totally self-righteous and believed that I never was the one who had done wrong and I fell in love with this guy who was a complete straight cis-male asshole and this kind of sums up what I felt - but instead of screaming that once and than leaving I did it over and over again - I felt somehow that it was my feminist duty and that feminism equaled anger, when really it doesn't, what is important for feminism however is not being afraid of anger or denying it - that doesn't necessarily mean perpetuating it or giving it higher value than for example sadness or other emotions:
Once again - As I said, I didn't really have a teenage period, so I didn't really realize that I could be considered sexy at all until I was 18-19... And at first I let myself be seduced... Oh sure. When I was 18 I tried to seduce a guy with my own awkwardness I did put on Madonna's Erotica in the middle of having sex with a guy and tried to be sexy, but the guy shut the song off after one minute... It wasn't until right before I turned 20 that I actively seduced a guy. I put on the song Criminal we drank some wine, his friend called and I could hear his friend say "Are you on a date with that crazy hot mess who bit you last friday? Do you think somethings gonna happen" - And I walked up to him and looked him in the eye and started sucking on his fingers and than went down on him and starting giving him a blow job while he finished the conversation and than we continued on fucking.
And as I said... I didn't really have a teenage-period, so the first concert I think I ever went to was Fiona Apple's in London when I was 19 and it was the WOW - the intensity of her stage presence impressed me so much and I knew that I wanted to be like that:
Now it was this very song that would bring me even closer to Fiona Apple a year and a half later, the first time I was sexually assaulted... "I let the beast in and than I even tried forgiving him, but it's too soon so I fight again, again, again, again, again". Fiona is talking about the person who raped her. And I screamed along. Many, many times. I still do sometimes. Cuz I realize that the sexual assaults that I've been through still affect me sometimes, no matter how much I've processed them - they have changed my sexuality, both for the good and the bad. Sometimes I celebrate the good and sometimes I self-loath about the bad - but all in all - Nothing is ruined and as Fiona ends the song "I'm blooming within".
And along came Extraordinary Machine. The album that had it all and than some, the happiest album ever for those of us who reflect, are sensitive, too smart for our own good, over-think, over-analyze.
And now this: "The Idler Wheel is Wiser Than The Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords will Serve You Better Than Ropes Will Ever Do" - her first album in 7 years. And I listened to it for the first time just now in the bath tub, you too can do it at NPR. It is Fiona coming to terms with the very things I'm coming to terms with. Cuz here I am finally understanding how I want to live and how I don't want to live - and instead of sitting there and listening to people small talk about bullshit issues, Hi how are you Fine, the weather, the soccer game, the food (Oh, but a food fight!), the television (Oh, but throwing it out the window!), some film or book that makes you feel nothing, some dumb superfluous party that everybody went to mostly out of fear of missing out, and how hot the person they fucked last night was, without a thought about what beauty standards they are reproducing in their non-reflective usage of the term "hot", I retreat into my shell. Emotionally, I can't stand wearing a mask anymore. I can't stand doing anything half way or half-assed, I'll be dancing on the tables in my underwear and stilettos to riot grrrl or I'll be at home, drinking tea and reading Arundhati Roy or talking to one of my best friends - that's where you'll find me. Emotionally I can't stand having acquaintances anymore, because I feel empty when I'm not digging deep and speaking about the really important issues of the depths of the soul and the wounds in the world - the revolution and the emotional evolution.
"Seek me out
Look at Look at Look at Look at me
I'm all the fishes in the sea
Wake me up
Gimme Gimme Gimme what you got
In your mind
In the middle of the night"I want it all and than some at it's most deep and intense - conversations, sex, politics, analysis, art, performance. If you don't want to run with this than it's fine. I'm not gonna victimize myself - like Fiona sings in the song "Left Alone" - I can't victimize myself for being alone so much and not having "luck" in romance, when all I ask almost all of my suitors is to be left alone, cuz I'm not getting the intense connection I crave to feel attraction.
But to some I just want to say:
"I will try to hold on to you with open arms."
And last but not least, just like Fiona expresses on the album, I am no longer afraid of sadness. Nor of anger. Nor of happiness. I just want to feel everything. I am not afraid of placing as much blame on myself as I do on others - it's called reflection, it's called compassion.
Your mistakes, traumas and negative experiences are supposed to make you more compassionate, not less. And one of the most important ways to show your compassion is to be open and honest and tell your story with your whole heart-both the tragedies and the triumphs. This is a radical political act that I must say that both Fiona and I master completely, but I wish we were not so alone in it, because I am certain - the world would be a better place, a more compassionate, a more open, a less lonely place if we had that honesty and that heart on our sleeve.
"The woman who sighs and yells and moans and twists her voice into unattractive shapes on The Idler Wheel is one who, by conventional standards, thinks and feels too much. She's the kind whom others want to shut up, but she keeps resurfacing — in the poems of Sylvia Plath, the stories of Lorrie Moore, the films of Lynn Shelton " May I add the paintings of Frida Kahlo!
Our emotions are all important parts of us and shouldn't be evaluated differently, and now, when sometimes, even when I feel so, so bad there's this bowling ball residing in my chest - I tell myself, that I'm filling my quota, "Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key", as an emotionally intense person, that this just means that when the moments of joy come to me I will be appreciating them more and feeling them ever the more intensely. And I calm down. And this.
This is what it means to be alive.
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PS I got so carried away and happy from listening to the album so I started biting myself ♥
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