“I’m letting myself down”: Fiona Apple struggling to write in face of global “horrors”
Fiona Apple has posted a rare video detailing the current “struggle” she is facing while trying to write about the “barrage of horrors” the world is facing.
In a video posted via her friend and housemate Zelda Hallman’s Instagram, Apple can be seen addressing fans in an earnest update taken at “the middle of the night”.
Apple noted that she usually doesn’t post videos like this, as connecting on a digital forum makes her “really, really uncomfortable”; however, she had found herself “wanting to reach out” from the middle of her creative paralysis.
She went on, “I wonder if you’re wondering if I’m even trying to write about what’s going on in the world right now, and I just wanted to tell you that I am, I am trying, but I’m really struggling with it.”
Apple juxtaposed her attempt to write about global atrocities with the usual tendency of lyricists to write about themselves; in this personal space, she explained, “You’re the authority,” and “Nobody can get let down”.
However, “When it’s happening to other people, it just becomes so important. And maybe I’m letting perfect get in the way of good”, she mused.
Things only get worse as the “endless barrage of horrors means that it’s hard to focus, and even if you do focus, I just keep on second and third and tenth and millionth guessing myself if I’m the one to say it or if I’m saying it right”.
She stressed to viewers that her time away from the limelight doesn’t mean that she is apathetic toward the current global sociopolitical climate: “I just didn’t want you to think that I was turning a blind eye or that I didn’t care,” she said.
She added, “I just don’t want to let anybody down. I’m letting myself down right now, I know that, as an artist”.
Of course, Apple knows that writing lyrics isn’t the only thing she could be doing: “I know that there’s other things to do other than writing songs, and I’m doing what I can elsewhere, but this is my job to show what’s going on. That’s what I want to try to do. I’m going to keep trying.”
The caption to the video provides some context to the things she has been grappling with, such as “the horror in Gaza and Sudan, to the cruelty being aimed at trans kids, to the assault on women’s bodily autonomy, to the abuse and terror being inflicted on immigrants and their families”.
Last year, Apple released her first song in five years, titled ‘Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)’, which highlighted her first-hand experience of watching low-income mothers detained in jail before conviction simply because they cannot afford bail, leading to the unfair fragmentation of their family unit.
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