Fiona Apple: Valentine.

I’m most inspired by music. There are worlds and worlds of stories crammed into three minute songs, worlds that unfurl when you put on your headphones, close your eyes and go where the songwriter wants to take you.

One of the albums that does this explicitly is Fiona Apple’s Idler’s Wheel. Fiona Apple is an amazing woman by the way. When she was thirteen and returning from school, a stranger followed her up to her mother’s apartment wrestled her to the ground and raped her in the doorway of her house. She started writing music almost immediately after, as a way to understand what happened to her. So her music can be very dark, but it is also immersive and honest and powerful, if you let it possess you.

I return to Idler’s Wheel a lot, I got it the year it was released, and it has guided me through loneliness, depression and the worst break up of my life. Valentine, off the album is particularly special, because it explores the weirdness of still loving someone you are no longer in love with. How it is hard to reconcile the two.

But this isn’t a dissection of the song itself, it’s just an exploration of the song’s vivid metaphors, the one’s that resonate. So think of it like a Genius Entry, or Song Meanings, (I prefer songmeanings, Genius is a frigid housewife, Songmeanings the vivacious sidechick).

You didnt see my Valentine, I sent it via Pantomime.

As a person who believes very strongly in showing love instead of saying it, because ‘talk is cheap’ this hit me hard. We kind of expect people to see how we feel without ever really telling them.

When you were watching someone else, I stared at you and cut myself.

Okay I don’t cut, but if you talk to people who do, you’ll find that they often explain that the physical pain of cutting is a way to fight the emotional numbness they feel inside. The kind that a devastating break up can trigger.

That’s all I’ll do cos I’m not free, A fugitive too dull to free.

Being trapped in a toxic situation and being completely unable to look away, because the pain allows you feel alive.

I’m amorous but out of reach, A still life drawing of a peach.

The best still life drawings look delicious, tempting, amorous; like you could just reach into the canvas, pull out the peach and take a bite. But at the end of the day, they are just that, lifeless.

I’m a tulip in a cup, I stand no chance of growing up, I’ve made my peace, I’m done, I watch you live to have my fun.

Tulips can last a long as a two weeks after they’ve been cut from the mother plant, they’re beautiful and give you joy for a while but they are already dead, already doomed.

I root for you, I love you.

The exquisite agony of still wanting the person who left you to find happiness, even if it’s not with you.

I went out on a dinner date, my tear drops seasoned every plate.

This image especially I think is one of Fiona’s best, ever. It always unnerves me, how you can go through the motions of moving on, and still be completely miserable.

I tried to dance but lost my nerve, I cramped up in the learning curve

Dance is a visceral physical thing, that somehow frees you of your body if you can commit to it. It is the perfect metaphor for moving on, growing from a devastating event. But we can’t let go, can’t stop dwelling on what has already happened.

I’m a tulip in a cup, I stand no chance of growing up, I’m resigned to sail on through, in the wake of tales of you.

You make peace that the emptiness might never go away, that even when you build your life, it will be in his wake, he’ll always be one step ahead, happier, better adjusted, the one who left. Which in it’s own way is an exquisite kind of torture.

So, have you seen my Valentine?

P.S: This might become a thing I do when I’m super moved by a song I like, so bear with me.