My Life In Song: Fiona Apple - Tidal

[I couldn't sleep last night. Before I finally made it to dreamland (dream: rain had caused the ground around my house to shift around, and my dad was there, saying we should move the dirt one way, and I wanted to do it a different way, and Ali was going to take a job in Chicago, and I was hosting some sort of family reunion...), I had a thought. What if I connected every song to a memory? Like Nick Hornby's Songbook, but different. How long would that take? Even if it's possible, would that suck? I decided to give it a shot, starting with the first slot on my alphabetically arranged CD tower.]

Fiona Apple - Tidal

*Fiona Apple in general*
When I think of Fiona, I think about an article I read in Spin magazine. She was raped when she was young, and she altered her memory of it - in her mind, the rapist was Jimi Hendrix.

*The album as a whole*
In my sophomore year of college, as I was making out with Jenny in my dorm room, I became very aware of the silence. I can't recall why I was concerned about it. Either I was didn't want others on the floor to hear us, or I didn't want to hear them. Especially Ross. "Bennett! That's money, dude! Money!" he'd say. I decided to play Tidal in my Aiwa three-disc stereo system.

*Sleep to Dream*
Dad always planted potatoes. Or, more exactly, wanted potatoes planted. My brother and I helped, hoed the rows as they grew, and finally dug them up in the summer. One summer, my brother and I were again assigned the task of harvesting the potatoes.

At that time in his life, my brother's routine was:
1:00 p.m. - Wake up, walk upstairs.
1:30 p.m. - Lay towel on living room floor, a few yards from the TV. Place lunch plate on towel. Eat while lying on stomach.
2:00 p.m. - Shower.
2:30 - 5:00 p.m. - Watch TV, read, other low-impact activities.
5:15 p.m. - Leave the house before Dad got home from work.
3:00 a.m. or so - Return home, retreat to basement, sleep.

As you can clearly see, potatoes were not his thing. Even if I was able to convince him to help me bring in the crop, he wasn't available until the scorching heat of mid-afternoon. I chose to dig potatoes myself, in the morning, alone. For several consecutive mornings, I clipped my Memorex personal cassette player to my waist and listened to Tidal play through the headphones. I was careful not to push the shovel too near the plant, keeping the number of accidentally injured potatoes to a minimum. After the initial plunge into the earth, I pushed down on the shovel's handle slightly, then plunged again, then lifted it all out of the ground. Grasping the stem with one hand, I shook it to remove the large clumps of dirt still attached. The individual potatoes were then plucked from the roots, brushed briefly by hand, and tossed into a cardboard box. When I was young, separate bushel baskets were used for small, medium, and large sized potatoes. Working alone, by my own rules, every potato met the same fate, red or white, big or small.

*Sullen Girl*
Shawn and I were roommates for our first semester of college. His CD player loaded from the top, and we had to place a book over the lid to keep it shut. Sometimes, we listened to soft music as we fell asleep (I had the bottom bunk). When we'd choose Fiona, we had to program the CD player to only play the soothing songs. As a result, "Sullen Girl" would play first.

*Shadowboxer*
Shawn's high school girlfriend Lori loved this song. I think.

*Criminal*
Any connection I had to "Criminal" was immediately and forever replaced when I saw the video on MTV. I didn't have MTV at the time, so my first glimpse was at Brian's house one afternoon. I'll bet I haven't seen this video from start to finish more than three times in my life; from the way it's etched in my memory, it may as well be the Zapruder film.

*Never is a Promise*
One night in 1998, I tricked Anastasia into liking this song. She liked the song - she hated Fiona, and was devastated to find to two were linked. She studied in Prague years later, and I put "Never is a Promise" on her bon voyage CD. In a letter home, she admitted to skipping over the "Fiona Crapple" song.