Fiona Apple — The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

Th 90s bus line in Washington, DC operated when it wanted to. It was an easy way to get across town from my apartment to work and back, but it was hard to predict. Just three short miles of zigzagging and I wouldn’t have to wait on the Metro. The bus stop was closer to my office, right there on the corner, closer to my apartment, but always further away. I’d watch cars scoot around the Wendy’s that should’ve been a traffic circle and wait for the glowing 90/92 to appear, just off in the distance so I could eventually get home and be alone.

Every other weekend for three years I produced The Grand Ole Opry as part of my duties as a Music Programming Coordinator. They didn’t tell me I’d be responsible for this until my third day of work. I’d sacrifice my weekends and rearrange my eight hour work days to fit between a 2pm to 10pm schedule. And for half the year there were “double shows” meaning the same thing would air twice and I’d stay till 1am to run it.

Being awake late at night was my thing. I leaned into its quiet.

My 40 hour work week was supposed to center itself around these hours but it never did. And it was always longer than forty. So by the time I was on the corner waiting for the bus, I really wanted it, that alone, to come. Half the time there was a party happening, full of people who kept asking when I would get there. Other times I’d wait for the 90 anticipating my friends at a bar, neck deep in their evenings, knowing I’d want to leave immediately, and go home. Something in me wanted to see the people I know, just to confirm they were there. Sober and wide awake is an interesting way to take a bus across the city at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights.

I took the bus for years at all hours. But my memory of these bus rides, the 90 or the 92 both hit the stops I needed, are exclusively at night. And when it did arrive, it was easy to settle into the plastic chair and let it take me. I was listening to a lot of Fiona Apple then. When I hear The Idler Wheel…I feel the bus lurching around me, I see the crawling date, time, and upcoming stop above the driver’s seat, and I feel the wind slowly rushing at me through an inch of open window.

The 90/92 ran through the U Street corridor, a strip of neighborhood full of bars and clubs pulsing with live music. There was the U Street Music Hall, an underground throb, a jazz club with black and white keys wrapping themselves around the outside, the nearby 9:30 club around the corner from the bar that served boozy milkshakes, and DC9 up three flights of stairs with a porch out the back.

The piano is percussive and melodic, the king of instruments, the dream. Those opening chimes on “Every Single Night,” the boot stomps on “Periphery,” the hand drumming on “Daredevil,” and thick drums on “Left Alone.” All followed by piano. I watch her fingers stretch out in my mind as my hands tinkle the air. Layering her voice on herself, there was always something to drum along to even if it was my Adam’s apple bulging in and out of my throat as I sang along.

The blue divot of my seat and the heave of the bus creaked with every push and release.

My favorite lines came from “Left Alone” because I was always left alone. Left Alone at the studio watching the glow of another rerun on television while Little Jimmy Dickens told the same jokes. He was “Mighty Mouse in pajamas” on one side of the Cracker Barrel ad and had misplaced his suppository on the other. I was alone at my desk wrapping up the day’s work at 11pm, or sometimes 1:15am. On those nights with double shows, I’d be at my desk in the cube farm long after everyone was gone. I’d be in the building close to ten hours because I’d have to arrive before the Opry starts to do my actual job — dropping in voice tracks, timing out programming blocks by hand to reach an exact time code, pushing the same keys to program the same songs so they wouldn’t play during the same hours every day.

I was Left Alone to my own devices, alone for my mind to wander. I was alone when I would find my friends at a bar, rubbing up against strangers who were several more drinks into their night. My chosen uniform to stay warm in the cold studio, a flannel and jeans, always made me stick out like a sore thumb. When I’d finally get home my roommate was out with friends. And I’d be Left Alone to smoke weed into the night, a teacup of whiskey at my side.

“I’m high/too high to know/I don’t cry when I’m sad anymore/no no/tears calcify in my tummy/fears coincide with the tow…”

I wanted to be alone so badly because it was easier. But it always took me forever to get there. I was always waiting on the bus, staring into headlights, and watching the gravel under my feet, kicking them to match the recording playing in my head. The even pace of Fiona’s hands on the piano, when it finally arrived, after the drums, was a warm embrace.

“…How can I ask anyone to love me/when all I do is beg to be left alone”

I wanted to be left alone because I was so mad, mad at the bus, mad at my job from keeping me from my life, I was mad at myself for reasons I wouldn’t understand for years. Physically I was alone. Mentally I was an island so far off the coast, I’d forget about myself. When I first moved to Washington, DC, the first city I would ever live in, I marveled, how comforting, I noticed, to be left alone while people were standing nearby minding their own business.

I felt so alone all the time, perhaps because anger and loneliness have a lot in common.

And then on the bus one night there was a girl, alone. She was drunk, asleep, both, or worse — drunk and unconscious. Every stranger that paid their fare found a seat beyond where she was slouched in her own. My eyes stayed on her crushed frame. Clearly, she was alone. Should I help her? Should I make sure she got off at the right stop, and help her home? To a slice of pizza? To somewhere?

Or did she want to be alone? Was this her way?

As the bus threw people off their feet, she miraculously kept her composure.

“And I kept touching my neck to guide your eye to where/I wanted you to kiss me when we find some time alone”

What I wanted was something I could easily find: someone to be left alone with, every night. But it only ever lasted one night.

I’d guide my hands where I wanted them to touch me, just so I knew I wasn’t alone. But there was no one. Just the bus and my own hands, drumming on the handrails, waiting for my turn to take two steps down onto the pavement where I could go home and be left alone.