Reality Bites

The tortured artist, unlike this world, is not bullshit. Sleepless nights, internal chaos—these aren’t merely vagaries of the human mind or fanciful notions dreamt up by fanciful people. Just ask Elliott Smith or Kurt Cobain. Or even that one friend of yours in junior high who devoured his Nietzsche and Chekhov like you did your Roald Dahl. For these poor, unfortunate souls, the world is a daily reminder that there’s nowhere left to run. Step into the light and you’re galled by the darkness that envelops you. Step into the void and you forget instantly about ice cream sundaes and walks in the park.

Life’s a bitch. And then you… live. Soldiering on, no matter how lethargically.

With one hand on the panic button and the other on full throttle. It’s that sink-or-swim, mad-dog-and-glory navel-gazing that keeps the great ones forever poised on the brink of failure, of madness, absolutely positively yes, but also of genius totally unfuckwitable. Question is, on whose terms will it be? The record industry? The fans? The know-it-all music scribes? Or their own? And if there’s actually such a thing as doing it your way—truth, lies and mistakes included—what the hell is someone like Fiona Apple expected to do about it?

When I ask her this (minus the profanity and with the badass existentialism dialed waaay down) in some drab, dreary studio on a typically drab, dreary New York (in the fall) afternoon, she winces ever-so-slightly, those extraterrestrial eyes boring into no one in particular. Then she speaks in a tone suggesting weary resignation: “At the end of our conversation, the guy from The New Yorker asked me if I had anything to say to people who were my age back when I did the ‘Criminal’ video. I had no idea what I would say,” she offers bluntly. “But then later, I was thinking about it—the reason I wouldn’t say anything was because I didn’t want to give anyone advice.” She pauses, allowing herself a moment of pensive afterthought. “I allowed myself to continue on in a situation that was uncomfortable to me, that I knew wasn’t right because of the wrong reasons—because of vanity. And that’s the part that stings afterwards, that sticks with you.”

“Criminal” was, of course, the centerpiece of Apple’s maiden effort Tidal, the one that planted the husky-voiced, touchy-as-a-toothache chanteuse on everyone’s star maps. The song itself is a ballad of frightening intensity; Apple growls her way through some bludgeoning piano chords, spitting her lyrics with equal parts precision and peroxide: “What I need is a good defense / ’Cause’ I’m feeling like a criminal.” But it’s Mark Romanek’s video that kills the radio star: the image of Apple imploring you with that bad-yet-vulnerable half-sneer singes any illusions you might have about her being the girl next door. Still, one can’t shake the feeling that there was something deeply exploitative about the whole scene—Apple was only 20 at the time and reeling from the reverberations of an industry especially unforgiving toward prodigal sons and daughters. Then again, she’s still reeling.

“I was talking with my dad today and I was saying to him, ‘I feel like a basket case,’” she says, her voice all of a sudden dropping to a whisper. “I had to do this in-store in California just a few weeks ago, and I was hitting a wall. And I was doing TV interviews and I could feel myself being rude and not really answering questions and I could feel myself bursting into tears. I can only take so much of it. I was like, ‘oh god, please don’t do that again.’ Because I always used to be like that. And I was saying to my dad, ‘I don’t know what to do. This isn’t my job, this isn’t what I’m good at. I feel like I’m a baby, I feel like I’m not cut out for this, I feel like I’m gonna start crying in the middle of interviews.’”

For the record, she never cried once during our interview. But the overwhelming anxiety that used to pervade her existence continues to tap her on the shoulder every now and then, as if to remind her that what’s passed can’t always be the past.

“My dad was like, ‘well, you know, if you start crying, then that’s the truth. Why don’t you just say, ‘well, that’s what’s going on,’” she says, exasperation just creeping through her mocking daddy-waddy voice. “And I’m just like, ‘Dad, do you know how much experience I have with crying? Because that’s all they write about me, and that’s all they say, and that’s all they see.”

Well, it’s not all we see—“we” meaning the dastardly press, of course. Flip through your Rolling Stone, your Entertainment Weekly; people can’t stop spilling ink about Ms. Apple’s newfound Zen-ness, how her latest album, Extraordinary Machine, is not only her best, but her least angst-ridden. So we might as well stick to the script on this one: She is. Fitter. Happier.

“It’s so much less difficult this time around,” she says, and the sense of relief is palpable. “I think it’s probably a gradual maturation process. But also, a couple of other things. In the past, in the state that I was in, I would have anxiety attacks all day. So it wouldn’t have really mattered to me if I started crying in the middle [of an interview], because part of me really wanted people to see that I was in pain over stuff, to see how sad I was. Now… well first of all, I’m not that sad anymore. And when I am sad, I don’t want to open up to people as much. Just because I want to be calmer, for it to be different this time, and the wanting it makes it happen a little bit.” A series of profuse nods followed by a nervous chuckle. “I thought it was totally for real until the last couple days, but I’m letting it slip a little bit.”