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Literary windows are when you learn new information from a story. By looking out an actual window, you discover and realize new things about the world that you may not have known before. In terms of actual text, we can learn new ideas surrounding many different topics like history, ethical questions, politics,  religion, and truths about humanity. Literary mirrors are when the text reflects the author’s thoughts and ideas or when it reflects our own thoughts. When text reflects the author’s life, we can get insight into their thoughts and feelings and empathize with them or the characters in their story. When the text reflects our lives we are able to make connections with characters and understand our own feelings better.

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The poem "Quinceanera" by Judith Oritz exemplifies the concept of mirrors in literature. The poem is written from the perspective of a young girl who is growing up and becoming a woman. She now realizes how her life will change now that she is getting older she will have to put away her dolls and take on adult responsibilities. She speaks about how her body is changing and how it confuses her that the blood she bleeds is seen as shameful compared to a man's blood. She also mentions the pain she feels at night in her body and how she tries to soothe the growing pains. I believe this story is a mirror because the main character reflects on her feelings and struggles. As readers, we gain a better understanding of her journey. However, we also gain a better understanding of her perspective, in that she seems not to necessarily like the changes that are taking place in her life and struggles to understand them.  Many people may also have similar experiences to the main character in this story since we all go through similar changes when going from a child to an adult.

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In Indian education, this story is a mirror because the author reflects on their own life as a student in school. Victor, the main character, goes through struggles during his time in school and as readers, we can empathize with his struggles. Throughout his early school life, he gets bullied and is stereotyped for his native American heritage by teachers. Not only can we feel for victor during his rough time in school we may also be able to relate to his experiences. In my own experience, I can relate to the bullying victor faced when he was young and so can many others.

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The poem a Speech to the Young by Gwendolyn Brooks exemplifies the concept of windows in literature. In her poem, she gives advice to the young, basically saying that life will bring problems that you may not want to solve, but you have to and also you need to enjoy your life and stop worrying about all the negative things in life. We all can benefit from this poem and this is why it's a window because  it offers a new example of how to think about our lives. She thinks it's best if we live without always worrying  about the future or the negatives in our lives.

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This semester my favorite work of literature was story biology because I thought it was the most interesting out of all of them. The story kept me engaged and interested not only in knowing what was going to happen to Patrick but also in learning more about the teacher. Since Patrick and his teacher were both outsiders it was easy for them to form a bond with each other. Though their relationship was interesting since they could relate to each other in some ways. I enjoyed the awkward moments they had together, such as when Mr. Reynolds was hurt and when Patrick came to see him at his home. I thought they were weird since that's not something that would be considered normal, but it was interesting and made me want to read more.

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"The album was going to be called Fetch the Bolt Cutters before I had a song called “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.” When I started writing the song I was like, “Is this cheesy to write a song that’s the title?” And I think “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is probably the theme of it. I know in the New Yorker piece it says something like, “What it’s about is not being afraid to speak.” But it’s more than that. It’s about breaking out of whatever prison you’ve allowed yourself to live in, whether you built that prison for yourself or whether it was built around you and you just accepted it. The message in the whole record is just: Fetch the fucking bolt cutters and get yourself out of the situation that you’re in — whatever it is that you don’t like".

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Fetch the Bolt Cutters is like nothing Fiona Apple has done before, but the album is still recognizable as something only she could create. It's purposefully unvarnished, a raw export from the inside of her brain: Her voice stretches and loops, morphing into Vipassana chants and spooky, surreal yelps; in the middle of one song, she messes up and mutters, "Ah, fuck, shit"; in another, she laughs as her dog, Mercy, licks her face.

Lyrically, Apple reaches into her past to confront middle-school bullies and looks into her future for an imaginary lover. She directly addresses women who have been abused by the same man who abused her. She gets mad about a missing drum set.

Here, she walked us through the genesis of - and meaning behind - each song on Fetch the Bolt Cutters. (Read our full interview with Apple here

"I Want You to Love Me"

This started as a love song to somebody I hadn't met yet. Then I got back together with Jonathan [Ames] in 2015, and it became about him for a while. Then we broke up about a year later, so it wasn't about him anymore. Which is how these things go. The songs change who they're about a lot.

It came out of the time I'd spent doing a lot of meditation, thinking about the nature of things. That whole thing of, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Yes, it does. Because a vibration happens. Whether or not you're there to hear it. I exist whether or not you see me. These things about me are true whether or not you acknowledge them. That's at least the second verse.

The line about the pulse - that was the experience I'd had this one day after six days straight of meditating at Spirit Rock in Woodacre, California, in a group of about 75 women in 2010. I had this throbbing in my head. Then I remembered this advice someone had given me, which was to just surrender - allow yourself to fall through water, stop trying to do anything. And for some reason, I was able to do that, and the throbbing in my head left. But then everybody was throbbing - everything. I'd never had an experience like that, and it's hard for me to remember what it felt like now, but it's the biggest thing that's ever happened to me in my life.

I knew then what life and death was. It's this pulse. And we all share it, and it sounds so cheesy. But it wasn't in my head; it was out of it. It was among us all. It was something we were all in together. It was like this place of home, this pulse we would all be in. I felt like I had found it and everything felt so beautiful. I felt like if I opened my eyes, maybe it would disappear. But I opened my eyes and it was still happening. I left the meditation hall, and it was still happening. I walked down the hill, and there were these horses that never paid attention to me. But I felt there was this understanding between us. I felt all of this. And after a while it went away. But I remember that that was there. It changed everything for me. Just knowing, "Okay, no matter what happens, that's where home is. That's what the reality is. I know it's there."

"Shameika"

Shameika is real. When I first wrote the song, I was not entirely convinced she existed. Because I have this one memory and it's a very big memory for me. But maybe I created this person. My third-grade teacher, Linda Kunhardt, was my favorite teacher. I've kept in touch with her over the years. She read the New Yorker article, and the next day, she sent me an email saying, "I heard you wrote about Shameika. I can see her ..." She sent me a picture of her.

I don't remember what grade she was in. I was probably 11 or so. I don't remember why she was talking to me. I just remember being in the cafeteria, a bunch of girls at one end of the table. I came over to sit with them, and they started laughing at me. So I sat one seat away but still tried to be close to them. Shameika came up, and she was like, "Why are you trying to sit with those girls? You have potential." That was all she said to me. But I had remembered that maybe she was a bully or something. Then I got sent this picture of her, and she's so cute - she doesn't look like a bully at all. She's just got this big smile on her face. But on the piece of paper that Miss Kunhardt sent me, there's this short essay Shameika had written on the top. And, man, it is amazing. It's all about how she got put up to do this thing in church, in the service. And everybody was laughing because she was so cute and she messed up words or something. And she was so pissed. She was like, "They used me to bring the people in there, to think it was cute. They used me." I was like, This little kid realized what the fuck was going on.

I'm terrified to think - what if she's not a nice person nowadays? Or maybe she hates me or something. I'd be afraid for her to hear it. But I think about that little picture of her. She's so sweet. My middle-school experience is still so important to me. Mainly because that's where my relationship to women started getting fucked up. It's awful how many memories I have with having a friend be with me and then having a more popular girl say to that friend, "Okay, you can be friends with Fiona or you can be friends with me. Choose." And I never got chosen.

On the line, "Sebastian said, 'I'm a good man in a storm'":

[My bassist] Sebastian [Steinberg] said that when we were in Marfa, Texas. We almost got arrested for weed possession. We got pulled over, and Sebastian was smoking from an apple in the back, and I kicked into control mode. I was like, "David has brown skin, so he cannot be the one holding the pot. Sebastian has long hair and a long beard; he cannot be the one holding the pot. I'm the little white girl, I need to be holding the pot." So I said, "Sebastian, eat the apple now, give me the pot." And I put it in my sock, and he ate this disgusting apple really fast. And then they got us out of the car.

There was a drug dog. They brought us out of the car, and I had the weed in my sock, and they're so busy talking to the brown man and the hippie guy that they don't notice that the drug dog is really into my sock. They're like, "Oh, she's a white girl. It doesn't matter. The dog just likes her." They just wanted to get the guys in trouble. Anyway, we got through that situation, so that's why Sebastian said that to me. I was like, "Oh, thank you."

"Fetch the Bolt Cutters"

When I wrote this one, we had enough songs for the album and I wasn't even going to be writing other songs. Then I ended up being like, "Wait, hold on. We're not done yet. I have another song coming. I have something else to get out."

The album was going to be called Fetch the Bolt Cutters before I had a song called "Fetch the Bolt Cutters." When I started writing the song I was like, "Is this cheesy to write a song that's the title?" And I think "Fetch the Bolt Cutters" is probably the theme of it. I know in the New Yorker piece it says something like, "What it's about is not being afraid to speak." But it's more than that. It's about breaking out of whatever prison you've allowed yourself to live in, whether you built that prison for yourself or whether it was built around you and you just accepted it. The message in the whole record is just: Fetch the fucking bolt cutters and get yourself out of the situation that you're in - whatever it is that you don't like.

On the dogs barking at the end:

Cara [Delevingne] and I have been text friends for years. I wanted her to sing the line ["Fetch the bolt cutters"]. She brought her dogs, Leo and Alfie. And so all of our dogs were in this room with the door closed and they're totally silent for the whole take of the song. And then at the end of the song they erupted. It was so perfect.

"Under the Table"

This was inspired by a particular dinner where there was lots of expensive wine and lots of bragging about things I wouldn't brag about. I won't say too much about it, but somebody said something I thought was offensive. It was not the kind of dinner where you're supposed to call somebody out. But I didn't want to be there in the first place. So I called the guy out. And may have messed the dinner up a little bit. But I was right. The hiking-boot line is like, "Hey kid, I know you're using me. Let me make this easier for you, little baby. Okay?" Like, "Fucker, you don't think I see what you're doing right now? You think you're fucking helping me? I know you're using me. Let me help you use me. Okay?"

On the hiking imagery in several of these songs:

Walking and hiking and marching have always been very important to me for thinking, and also for making music. Leaves fall and I tap the rhythms. Then the rhythms would continue all day. That's actually a reason why it takes me a long time to make records. If I hear the same thing or if I do the same thing too many times in a row, I won't stop hearing it. It's worse than an earworm. It's like torture. So I have to not let my own work torture me. Because then I get so sick of it; I hit a wall really fast. And once I hit a wall, I'm no good anymore. I'm not going to do any more good work.

I wrote the line, "Evil is a relay sport, when the one you burn turns to pass the torch" when I was 15. I just always liked it. [If] you get burned by somebody, when the person who burns you doesn't acknowledge it - which rarely happens to people, acknowledging when they've burned you - it turns into you not knowing what to do with it. Then you just put it on somebody else. The assault when I was 12 made me think about innocence and guilt and forgiveness. It made me think about a lot of big things. Because the first thing I did after it happenedwas pray for him. But you can't stop at praying for them. You have to hold them responsible.

The Kavanaugh hearings in 2018 brought on a lot of shit to deal with. I don't know what it is, that guy. There are so many of them out there, but that one guy - the fact that he's on the Supreme Court really is probably the thing, but his fucking attitude is just like - it was the externalized version of what you know a lot of them are feeling inside. Just this indignant, "How could you be mad at me? Don't make me suffer. But I'm married, but I have kids, so I can't be a bad guy. But I was just young, don't be so mean to me, that girl's being mean to me." Oh my God. Thank you, fucking Brett Kavanaugh, for letting my anger see the light of day: Thank you for being so horrible.

It's funny because the 15-year-old me wrote the deeper lyric, and then the 42-year-old me wrote the "Fuck you" to everybody out there acting like your lives are perfect. Basically dealing with all of the 15-year-old kinds of resentments that I would've had. "I resent you for being raised right" is funny to me. "I resent you for being tall" is totally petty, but I'd started writing it because of this really terrible thing that had happened and my feelings about guilt and innocence. [On the line "I resent you presenting your life like a fucking propaganda brochure"]: I get so pissed off at the idea of influencers because they seem to end up being exactly the people who should not be influencing anybody. I know if I were to get into social media, I would absolutely fall prey to comparing myself to everybody else. The reason I don't get into it is because I can see what's happening: Everybody's comparing themselves to everybody else. It's really a terrible way to live. People are just trying to fuck with people over the internet.

"Rack of His"

This song is about at least two relationships. I hardly ever write a song about just one person, but there was one time that I wrote a song that was not a nice song, and it was about one person, and I felt the need to tell that one person and play them that song before it came out, and it went fine. But that's the only time I ever told somebody. Once someone asked if a song was about them, but it wasn't about them, so it ended up being a worse answer: "Oh, no, I wasn't thinking about you. Sorry about that."

I started writing it years ago, and I did a couple versions. It was problematic because I just didn't like it. And so I deconstructed it and put it back together. It was very piano driven, and I had written it on the piano when I was very young. It just didn't fit how I felt anymore. It was a little too bouncy. It was probably fine, but, as my friend Bella would say, "It was not wearing the dress that I wanted it to go to the party in." So I needed to redress it.

David [Garza, a member of Apple's band] said something like, "Oh, I did terrible things to that rack of his," and we were like, "Oh, that's what the song will be called, 'I Did Terrible Things to That Rack of His.'" It just made me laugh so much. I was trying to do something with it for over a decade - certain lines would peek out from a notebook, and I'll be like, Whoa, I know what the next thing to do is, all of the sudden, that I didn't know ten years ago. I hadn't been thinking about it for ten years, but if I'm sitting at the piano and I'm like, "Oh, right, there was that thing I played. Oh, I never finished that. Oh, I know what line could come after that." Sometimes I'll start something and I just know I don't know enough to add onto it, so I have to wait until I know enough.

"Newspaper"

This is also about two specific people. I don't think they will even be aware of it. This stuff comes out of feeling myself suppressing the urge to reach out to them and be friends. A lot of times when I write songs, it's because I can't get through to the person in real life. That's how it all started, the writing. I would write letters to my parents because they wouldn't listen to me. I would write letters so they'd have to be quiet until the letter was over, so they wouldn't interrupt me. If I try to get in touch with somebody and talk through things, and they won't talk to me, then, sorry, I got to write a song.

When I say, "I don't think that they'll be aware of it," that's me not getting my hopes up. I don't expect anything to come from it. I have to express it somehow. I don't think they'll hear it, but I have to say it anyway. The tree has to fall, even if no one's around.

I don't know why I'd called it "Newspaper," but that's what it was named on the file of the percussion orchestra I made. I probably didn't know what to call the file, and so I probably had a newspaper next to me and just wrote "Newspaper."

My sister Maude's vocals are on this, and during her vocals, she was breastfeeding.

This album is a lot of not letting men pit us against each other or keep us separate from each other so they can control the message.I remember my grandmother used to talk about my grandfather and his mistress. And his mistress actually was his wife for the rest of his life. They were married for 50 years. But to her, she was always mad at this mistress. And it was always like, "Man, she didn't do it. Our grandfather did it. Your husband cheated on you. She just fell in love with some guy. Then they were together forever afterwards and had a family. Be mad at the right person, don't feel mad at the wrong person." Later on in life, I'm with a guy. I found out he's seeing some other woman. I meet that other woman - I'm nice to that other woman. She didn't do it. She didn't cheat on me.

Maude is on "Ladies," too. She's singing harmonies, and she wrote one of the background parts. I like the word ladies, and then it just got to be really fun to say it in different ways, being like, "Ladies, ladies, ladies," and then like, "Ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies," just all these different ways of talking to girls. Like, "Ladies, we better get into it," and like, "Ladies are so nice."

On the line "I'm a fruit bat":

I like fruit bats. I was thinking of like, "Oh, that lady's bats," you know? "She's bats, she's batty." When David sent me the written out lyrics, it looked so funny to come in out of nowhere: "Fruit bat!" I had to write a line about myself that was endearing, and that was my version of that: a fruit bat.

"Heavy Balloon"

The imagery of that one came to me years ago, because a boyfriend of mine was talking to me about his father and his depression. The way he was describing his father moving around the house being weighed down by something made me think, We're just always trying to keep it up; oh my God, this is not staying off me long enough, I just can't really move around. It's this hindrance, this obligation, this constant thing to be taken care of.

On the line "I spread like strawberries, I climb like peas and beans":

I got that out of a children's gardening book. Because strawberries are rhizomes, and so they grow in this network sideways, and peas and beans, they climb up, you can put them on trellises and stuff. I'm sure they probably grow other ways too, but that was just a little fact I thought was very, very cute. And uplifting, and like, "I'm all right, it's okay, don't worry about me. I'm like strawberries, I'm going to spread myself out and take over this whole garden."

"Cosmonauts"

"Cosmonauts" I wrote for Judd Apatow's 2012movie, This Is 40. I had recorded it with Jon Brion for the movie, but then he didn't use it. Then we rerecorded it for this album, and I put a bunch of different vocals on it.

It was a challenge, because he wanted me to write a song about two people who were going to be together forever, and that's not really a song I'm equipped to write because I don't know if I want to be together with anybody forever. I guess that's why I interpreted it as like, "It's going to be you and me in this little vessel by ourselves in space, except it's going to weigh a lot more, and you're going to really get on my nerves." It's supposed to be a song about being together forever, and so of course my first line is, "Your face ignites a fuse to my patience." Like whatever you do, it's going to be wrong.

I don't think long-term monogamy is impossible, just because you see it happen. It just depends. Some people are made for it and some people aren't, and then some people think they aren't made for it, but then they meet exactly the right person. It's almost a matter of luck, if your chemistry happens to bump into the chemistry of somebody else, then it might just work, because you react to each other in different ways. I did have hope when I was writing that song, and honestly, there's absolutely hope that I could find a relationship. But I don't really want to. I really just don't want to. I like my life how it is, and I don't feel very romantic these days.

"For Her" was a very difficult one to get done because it went through so many changes and it contains so many stories that are not even mine. It's partly inspired by conversations I had with this woman I knew years ago, when she had been an intern for a film-production company, and she gave me permission to write a song about this. It's really a song for her. To, in a roundabout way, tell her story that she's not able to tell. It's relevant that she started as an intern because that's why the lyrics are, "It's a ward's season, the season of the ward." She said he always talked about her like she was his "ward," like he was there to protect her from all of Hollywood's creeps.

It's one of those situations where she didn't consider it rape because of the relationship she had with this person. On top of that, this person was so fucked up that they didn't know who she was. And so she assumed they didn't know they had done this to her. She spent years protecting him from the knowledge of that, and in so doing, really hurt herself. She was like, "Did it really happen?" And I was like, "That sounds like it really fucking happened. What you're describing. Yeah, that's rape."

That song was a very difficult one to do, because you don't want to be too literal, but you also want to put some things in there for this woman so the guy knows she knows. Even though it's an awkward thing to say in a song - "You raped me" - some people need to say it out loud in order to understand that's what happened to them. And my hope is that maybe some women and men will be able to sing along with that line and allow it to tell the truth for them. Because sometimes it's just really hard to say, especially if you don't want to hurt the person who did it to you. It's hard to say something that harsh about it. So even though I felt like, Wow, it's just a clunky thing to put in the middle of a song, I also feel it'll be important to the people it matters to.

And of course it brings up stuff of my own. It started out me wanting to write something about my own feelings, but it was just too hard. I wanted to make it about not just me but about other people. And this woman really got to me. I spent so much time recording it in different ways until I realized that I needed to have a bunch of other women singing with me on it.

Jonathan had broken up with me, and I think I was expecting everybody to break up with me. If he didn't want to work on things with me, and I know he loves me, then you guys aren't going to work on things with me either. Because [the band and I] had this little argument and then they took some of their instruments away. I misinterpreted it as that they were pissed at me and that they weren't going to come back. That was me sitting there going, "Aw, nobody loves me." Amy didn't actually take the drums from my house. She took them out, but it's because she had a gig. I took it to mean everybody was mad at me.

I picked up my phone after my band left, and I sang into it, "The drum set is gone, and the rug it was on is still here, screaming at me." It's the same thing I used to do when I was a kid. When I would walk home from school, there was a mirror when I walked in the door where we would hang our keys. I would open up the front door and just sing whatever came to my mind. I often found that would reveal what I was really thinking to myself and it would start me creating things.

Nothing changed in the lyrics from what I sang into the phone, which is why the lyrics are not very poetic. Then we recorded it in one take. I was playing a chair, and we were all sitting in this one corner of my house. There's a certain part where you can sort of hear me laughing because I'm playing the chair and Mercy comes up to me and starts kissing me while we're recording. No one else would be able to hear it, but whenever I hear that song, I'll be able to remember that moment.

I really like how that song feels. If I didn't hear the recording of the song and I just looked at those lyrics, I'd be like, "Oh, I'm not going to put this on my record, this is stupid," because it was basically belched out. It really was. If I found the voice-mail I sang it into, there would be absolutely no changes in the lyrics. I may have sent a voice-mail to the band right away. I don't even know if they addressed it because they know me, they kind of were like, "Yeah."

This was my version of the Vipassana chant that I sang in jail. I sang it during the night just to calm myself down. When we were all in the waiting room, there was a camera and I was stupidly, defiantly, singing towards the camera. It's not a good idea to have any sarcasm or personality at all when you're dealing with cops. Just politeness and, "Okay, sir." As much as it fucking hurts to do it, that's the lesson.

I don't remember exactly the meaning of the chant, but it's fun to sing, and it means that feelings arise and fall away again, and it's all impermanent. To be at peace with this concept is to be happy. That's what that song means, but I would start to just sing it while I was hiking. When I walk, I walk on rhythm, and I have to keep that rhythm going for the whole time that I'm walking. It usually means that I end up singing along, at least in my head. Then when I was walking, I started doing that chant, but then ... it just stopped meaning so much to me, and I started to make up my own little chant to tell myself what I believed about my life going forward.

What I really wanted it to be about was, there doesn't have to be any specific meaning or reward or consequence of the things I'm doing. I do them because I enjoy doing them. I do them for the doing of them, not for the results. I'm going to make music for myself, to get myself through things, and not think about what other people think about it. I don't want to prove anything anymore. That can happen in the long run, but for now I do things because I want to do them, because I like to do them. I don't do them for any other reason.

There's no past, there's no present. It's not like, "Oh, stay in the present" - it's just basically, "I'm going to do what I'm going to do, and I'm going to have fun, and I'm going to decide when I'm going to stop doing it, and I'm going to decide when I start doing it." I'm just going to move to move, it doesn't matter what it looks like, it doesn't matter what you think it looks like, it doesn't matter what you think it means or what I think it means. It's just happening; it just is. And that's all right.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
"But I know a sound is still a sound/around no one." "And I know when I go all my particles disband and disperse / and I'll be back in the pulse." "I'd like to buy you a pair of pillow-soled hiking boots/To help you with your climb/Or rather, to help the bodies that you step over along your route/So they won't hurt like mine." Fiona was raped by a stranger in her apartment building when she was 12 years old. Fiona was arrested for hash possession in 2012 in Texas, and allegedly gave a great vocal performance while spending the night there.

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The Story Behind Every Track on Fetch the Bolt Cutters

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Fetch the Bolt Cutters is like nothing Fiona Apple has done before, but the album is still recognizable as something only she could create. It's purposefully unvarnished, a raw export from the inside of her brain: Her voice stretches and loops, morphing into Vipassana chants and spooky, surreal yelps; in the middle of one song, she messes up and mutters, "Ah, fuck, shit"; in another, she laughs as her dog, Mercy, licks her face.

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A song that I explored that exemplified mirrors or windows was Fetch the Bolt Cutter by Fiona Apple. This song is about breaking out of a prison you have allowed yourself to be in, regardless of whether you created it or not. For this song it thinks it could really be a mirror or a window. I think it's a mirror because the experience she speaks about in the song allows us to empathize with her experience but also connect to her. She seems like she is maybe trying to talk to someone but she is not allowing herself to for whatever reason.

Many people have gone through what she has or at least have had  a similar experience. I think in a way It could also be a window because it's giving advice or a new idea which is to fetch the bolt cutter and let yourself out, but I think overall it's a mirror.

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Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters (Official Audio)

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One quote not from the song but about the song from an NPR interview is:

So who is fetching the bolt cutters, in your situation?

I am, you are, the listener is. Everybody is. It's sort of "Fetch your tool of liberation. Set yourself free."

ME: This is why its a mirror because many people can connect to the idea of needing too fetch the bolt cutters.

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Inspiration can strike at unexpected times. That was the case for Fiona Apple, the celebrated singer and songwriter who released her first album in eight years this month. It's called Fetch the Bolt Cutters and the title comes from a piece of dialogue that struck her while watching a crime drama on Netflix.

In one episode of The Fall, a British show starring Gillian Anderson as a police detective, Anderson and her crew track down and free a girl who had been kidnapped and locked away.

"It's just a throwaway little line," Apple remembers. "She just says, 'Fetch the bolt cutters.' I shot up from the couch and I wrote it on the blackboard immediately, and I said 'That's what my album's called.' "

The line captures much of what Apple articulates on the record. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is an album full of demands to be let loose, to be let out of a cage.

NPR's Ailsa Chang spoke to Fiona Apple about getting a push from King Princess to release her album early, the dinner party gone wrong that inspired "Under The Table" and how the reception of Tidal shaped the woman she is today. Listen to the radio version in the audio link above and read on for an extended transcript of the interview.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ailsa Chang: I want to talk about the title of your album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Tell me what that means? So who is fetching the bolt cutters, in your situation?
Fiona Apple: It came from a TV show, The Fall, that me and Zelda, my housemate, were watching three years ago, I guess. And during this scene, Gillian Anderson is unlocking this door. They're supposed to wait for back-up to come and she wants to save this girl from behind this door, and it's like a throwaway little line that she says. She just says "Fetch the bolt cutters." I shot up from the couch, and I wrote it on the blackboard immediately and I said "That's what my album's called."
What do you see as the thing you need to be liberated from?

How much of me staying home all the time is about how much I like it, and how much of it is about me being afraid of what happens if I go out into the world?

I am, you are, the listener is. Everybody is. It's sort of "Fetch your tool of liberation. Set yourself free."

The ideas that I had about myself - that on some level I'll always have. Just everything from when you're growing up, everything that everybody says to you about you that you believe, and of course for me that branches out into adulthood, with my career. But I really wasn't thinking about my career and how I've been portrayed in the media or anything about that, I was just thinking about things that have been said to me personally in my life that I took to heart that I shouldn't have; the way that I think that I have internalized a lot of the things that were said to me, believed them and then as a result, hidden myself away or shut myself up. As much as I don't think that I'm known for being someone who keeps quiet about things, I have really kept quiet about a lot of things. There's a lot to say, and I've kept quiet about some of it.

Some of it is about like, how much of me staying home all the time is about how much I like it, and how much of it is about me being afraid of what happens if I go out into the world? I've always had that kind of thing, from when I was a kid. But at a certain point, you start to feel like, well maybe this isn't really who I am. Maybe I'm not really a recluse. Maybe I'm not a hermit. Maybe I just decided that this is the most comfortable place for me to be because I'm too afraid to go out anywhere else, to be something else. Maybe I'm ashamed of who I am, and why am I like that? And when you do lock yourself away at home for years and years and years, you think about things a lot. And so I've really been examining why I've been here so long and why I've been so hesitant to go back out into public life.
And we're all feeling the pulse!
For me, personally, it's about that, but it's funny: The first song on the album came from this moment that I was at a meditation retreat. It was after six days of meditation and I had this huge headache inside of my head - and I say it was inside of my head because it ended up not being inside of my head. It sounds crazy, but I had this throbbing in my head, and then at a certain point, it left my head and it became this pulse that everybody shared. And it made me feel connected to everyone - and this is after six days of morning-to-night meditation, so it takes a lot to get into that state.
I think the title, you know Fetch the Bolt Cutters, resonates especially right now in this strange horrible time that we're all in. What does it feel like to release an album right now particularly, during this extraordinary time?
And the cool thing is this whole album, for me, has turned into the headache that I had inside of my head and now that it's released, it's like this pulse that now we can all share. And I didn't think of that before I did it, but I did think of that when I saw the faces on the YouTube thing [Fiona Apple's housemate watched NPR Music's Fetch the Bolt Cutters live listening party], because I was like "Oh my goodness! It's out of me now, and it's actually making people feel good!"
Well I can tell you, that you have helped me. There is a lot on this album that hit me hard. What I hear on a lot of these songs is this insistence to be heard. One example is the song "Under The Table." The lyrics here: "Kick me under the table all you wan't / I won't shut up" and "Don't you, don't you, don't you shush me." Who are you talking to in this song?
It's the best! It's all I ever wanted. It's just amazing.
And was someone actually kicking you under the table, or you felt it emotionally?
When I decided to release it - I would like to say it's because I thought everyone was really going to love it and that it was going to make people happy, but I got a rollout schedule that had my first song appearing in like June, and then October the album would be released and I felt like, well why wait that long? Because the reasons that we're going to wait all that time would be so we can have a proper rollout, aka have like TV appearances lined up and all this different press lined up, everything ready to go. And I just felt like I'm not going to be aiming for that, anyway. I'm not going to be on the charts, I'm not going to be on the radio, so why should I wait all these months? And also wait all these months and put out this thing that I've been working on all these years, knowing that everyone else is going to be releasing stuff then, and I know I'll just get lost in the mix?
I feel like the songs on this album, they're not just about seizing the chance to speak, they're also about wanting people to really hear you. For the past couple years, there's been this more honest conversation in this country about believing women when they do speak up, and I'm wondering if that's also what you're getting at in this album?
So it really just felt logical to me to be like "Look. My record is ready. I have no qualms about putting it out and not having a rollout and not being on the charts, or whatever. I'm not worried about that, so let's just push the button and let it go." Also my friend Mikaela [Strauss], aka King Princess, she had texted me one day and she just was like "You have to release your album now. People need new music to listen to. We need new music to listen to." And so that made me go "You know what? I actually could do that, because my record's done." I really decided because I thought it would give me the best chance to be heard.
43 exactly.
Now, I'm hesitant to say that I'm helping because it sounds like I'm giving myself too much credit, but I really do hope that I'm helping people and I really do hope that the experiences that I had and lived through that you can hear on the album, that somehow it's cathartic. If I can be like a surrogate of the catharsis, if maybe you can get that feeling from listening to it happen, that's just the highest goal of any art that I can think of.
Well, you know on this thread of speaking up, your album is a form of speaking up. I know that you have had a kind of uncomfortable relationship with fame, with being the focus of public attention, and I'm curious: As you're doing interviews for this new album, putting yourself out there again, does it feel any easier these days?
This is actually about a real dinner that I went to - and I can't say who was at the dinner, but I will say that there was a prominent figure of a streaming service at that dinner. And I attended the dinner with a few people, but I didn't want to go.
Well can I ask you, how are you feeling about this interview right now? How am I making you feel?
No it wasn't actually kicking me under the table. They were kicking me under the table with their eyes. And then afterwards it's like "Why did you accost two people at a nice dinner?" I didn't accost anybody. Everybody was saying things, and a couple people said some things that I had some things to say back to.
It's interesting hearing you talk about this, because the woman that I hear in these songs is an unapologetic woman. These songs are about "Look I have something to say, so listen to me." So it's interesting to hear you almost have to psych yourself up to speak up. What's that about?
Well, I mean, it's hopefully what I'm getting at with everything that I do. The fact is - and it's a fact - if a woman, or a man, goes public with some kind of abuse, they're not doing it for attention. There's no reason that people will lie about that. They know what they're getting into. We know, as much as we've given women more of a space to speak and be believed, there's still all the trolls and all the little bros that come back and beat them down as much as they can. As much as we know that when we speak, more people will be afraid to say "Screw you, you're a liar," people aren't so keen to do that right now; there still is a huge backlash and there's a lot of risk in speaking up. And anybody who would think that a woman would get up and put herself in that position for attention is just insane and I would like to punch them in their head 43 times.

Yes. It's for my next year's birthday, I guess.
There's this percussive pulse throughout this album. In the song "Newspaper," you hear layers and layers of percussion on all kind of drums, even a barking dog. What made you want percussion to play such a prominent role in the album?
Well, after this interview, I'm not going to be doing any more interviews about me and the album for a while, for two reasons that are equally important. First, because I just don't want to do a lot of interviews anymore and I don't think I have to, and so I'm not going to. And then the second reason, which is equally important, is that I don't think that I really should go out and talk too much anymore. I think I've said a bunch in the interviews that I've done. And at this point, I just would like people to be able to live with it and everybody who has the record, it can be their own record, and they can interpret it and apply it to their own lives.

I feel fine right now. I mean, right before an interview, before this thing, I'm sitting there going "I don't wanna do this!" And Zelda's saying "It's okay. You just listen to the questions and you answer the questions." And then I sat here by myself for a minute and I did a little meditation, just like "Let me please try to be honest and answer questions and not be too worried."

Because I'm sure that I'll ruin everything with something that I say. People are texting me saying "Wow this is amazing" and "Oh goodness, everything's great!" So of course, I've been sleepless for the past few nights. I stay awake just combing through everything, going "Where did I make a really bad mistake? Where did I say something awful?" It relates to the thing in " Heavy Balloon," about the bottom being the only safe place. It's like I'm looking for something to be embarrassed about, because that's almost my comfort zone.
I read this album was almost entirely recorded in your house, and this is a house, as you've mentioned, that you barely left over the past several years. So I was just wondering: Does quarantine life feel all that different from life before?
This is a learning experience right now for me, to try not to knock it down in some way, because that makes me comfortable. To try to just be like "Nope, something is going good, take it. Accept it, Fiona. Don't be looking for the fault in it."

It goes back to the song " Shameika." At the beginning of that song, I'm referencing something that started when I was a little kid. I have OCD and it became an obsession with me, where I would go on these long walks and I would have to walk on beat. I still do that, like if I go on a hike, I have to not break tempo. But I would go on these walks to school and leaves would be falling from trees and I would be leaping so that I could step on it on the beat. And I'd literally be grinding my teeth to a little beat and it would go on all day long.
It brought you in and embraced you.
But then what happened is I turned to piano, which is also percussion: You hit it, it's got hammers. But on this album, I had everything set up for GarageBand and the band had been coming over to play. There were all these percussion instruments around, just left in my house. With "Newspaper" and "Fetch the Bolt Cutters," those were two of the first things I did on GarageBand. And I didn't even know how to edit it and make a take shorter, so each track is just this one long take, and if I made a mistake in it, well, I better just play over it and let that mistake work itself into it.
That's amazing. What a beautiful way to feel about a home. That's the ultimate thing anybody would want to feel inside their house or their home. This feeling of "I'm in my womb." You're lucky.
"Fetch the Bolt Cutters" and "Newspaper" were these two long percussion orchestras that were just really for fun. But then I listened back to them and I was like "I really like how these sound. These sound like me!" It is me banging around and like really finding myself. So I was like "I really have to write words for this."

No, it doesn't. Well actually, it does feel a little bit different because everything is always different when you're told that you can't leave. I was always able to leave before, and I chose not to. And funny enough, right when I'm like "I'm fetching the bolt cutters! I'm gonna leave this house!" It's like "Nope! No you're not!"
Your first album, Tidal, came out in 1996 when you were still a teenager. Everyone knows that, everyone talks about that. What do you wish you could tell your teenage self now, as a woman in her 40s?
Which goes back to another reason why I did the album in this house - and this is another point where I'm going to sound a little bit nuts. This house is alive to me. The fact is, this house was here when I needed a place to go. When I moved here, I needed a place to go and I needed a place to go so that I could bring my dog, Janet, where she would have some place to run around and I needed a place fast. And this place just opened up like right when I needed it.

Yeah. It was like "Look, I've got a home for you and Janet, and you're going to be good here, and I'm going to take care of you, and you're going to have friends here and all these great things are going to happen here." And it was true. And so there's this way that I feel like I want to repay this house by making it the music. Because it has been my mother, really; it's been the home of all the music. It's been the womb of everything, for all these years. It's been the womb of where I've developed into an adult. And so I really felt like it's an instrument in itself, it's the microphone: The house is the microphone, the house is the ambiance, the house is a member of the band. There was this part of me - I wanted to move out of this house and sell this house, and I felt like I'm not going to be able to do that, because it's not going to let me leave. I tried to move out of this house a couple of times before, and for some reason it keeps pulling me back in.
NPR's Jonaki Mehta, Lauren Hodges and Jolie Myers produced and edited the audio of this interview. Cyrena Touros and editorial intern Jon Lewis adapted it for the Web.

I've always wanted to live facing the truth, taking the truth and turning it into something beautiful.

I am lucky. I'm really lucky, thank you for saying that. It's true.

Well that teenager that started, I would tell her: "You are on the right track, and there's going to be a lot of people who are going to tell you that what you're doing is stupid. And they're going to be people of authority, and they're going to be the people that you love and they're going to be the people that you trust. Please do not believe them. As genius, or as wonderful, or as loving, or as smart, as worldly, as experienced as they may be, they don't know you. You know you. You're doing great. Don't let them stop you."

I would tell her that. But I'm glad that I don't have the chance to tell her that, because I think the experience that I did have is worth it. It's not a totally happy thing, it's just like I wouldn't have it any other way because I like what I did with my life. That's how I've always wanted to live. I've always wanted to live facing the truth, taking the truth and turning it into something beautiful. That's a wonderful way for anybody to live. And so I like that the truth of all my life isn't all happy and perfect and no obstacles anywhere, because it's what I did with all of that that makes something that now can maybe help other people.

That brings me to something else too, which is that I have all this happiness. This happiness that I haven't had access to in so long, because of that feeling of "Oh my goodness, maybe I'm not just something that represents depression and sadness and dwelling and bad feelings." I feel understood finally and I feel so happy. And immediately I get this guarded feeling about all of the sadness that I've felt. Like I don't want to forget how that felt. This goes to something, too, about how my years of not being sober, of drinking so much - you go through these times where you feel like "I am at the bottom, I want to die." And then you drink a bunch and then somehow you make it through and further along the line you get sad again and you're like "Yeah, I made it through before though, right?" But you don't really remember making it through before, because you were drunk, so you didn't really feel the sadness, you didn't really make it through.

So I want to keep all of the bad feelings that I've ever had close to me, just so that I can recognize them and so that I can not lose touch with empathy, for one thing. Being empathetic I think is the most important thing in being a human. And I think you need to know your own pain and remember it in order to do that. So I don't want to get lost in all of the happiness. That's another reason why I don't want to do too many interviews, because I don't want to talk myself into thinking "I'm a queen now, and everything is great because everyone understands me! So everything is perfect now!" I want to be able to stay true to who I am and I want to take in the joy, but I just think it's really important to not forget how bad it felt before. Because it also, in contrast, makes the joy so much more beautiful.

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'Fetch Your Tool Of Liberation': Fiona Apple On Setting Herself Free

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Inspiration can strike at unexpected times. That was the case for Fiona Apple, the celebrated singer and songwriter who released her first album in eight years this month. It's called Fetch the Bolt Cutters and the title comes from a piece of dialogue that struck her while watching a crime drama on Netflix.

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The poem high school trading ground by Malcolm London exemplifies a mirror in literature because it shows the problems experienced by many at school. He mentions the issues he personally saw at his school which many students can relate to. He brings awareness to the fact that school has failed a lot of us and has broken us down instead of building us up to who we could be. This perspective on school is something most can empathize with London on, but can relate to it ourselves.

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The poem "Harlem" and "I, Too" by Langston Hughes can be both a window and a mirror depending on the reader. His pem is short, but he gets his message across which is that although he is not seen as equal to white people he is an important part of society. He is hopeful at the end that one day he will be seen as equal. This poem is a mirror because it allows the reader to understand and empathize with the difficulties he is facing due to segregation at the time. For us readers we feel for the author and hope that his dreams of being equal become true. Readers can also make connections to their own life even if the situation is different. An example could be not being exempted by someone because you are different from them, although you think you're important they may not regionze that, but one day you hope they do.