Amidst This Bitterness

Fiona Apple “I Know”

Maybe there is something a bit weird about how one of the most beautiful and unbelievably painful love songs ever written is about David Blaine, but then again, it’s probably for the best that we don’t know anything about the people most songs are written about, right? I reckon the more emotionally wrought the song, the more likely it was written about someone lame, awful, or otherwise unworthy. This is where biography gets in the way of art — even with some specifics relating to stage performance, this is a song written about a very common experience. We never need to think of Blaine when listening to it.

(Edit: Okay, apparently it’s actually for Paul Thomas Anderson, but you know, same difference.)

“I Know” is a song about suffering through patience, and waiting, perhaps in vain, to have your love for someone validated and fully reciprocated. Its sentiment is gut-wrenching, but the lyrics and vocal performance are not particularly melodramatic. There is agony and sadness in nearly every moment, but the thinking is very pragmatic: I’ll help you out of your mess, I’ll support you, I’ll love you, I’ll swallow my pride and deal with my jealousy and stifle my desires, and….well, maybe there’s something good for me on the other side of all that.

It’s the hope that makes the song so devastating, and the way she clings to her faith that it will all be worth it in the end. But she can’t know what will happen, and the doubt drags her deep into melancholy. She feels a bit used, and she struggles to understand why he can’t just be straight with her.

The ending is brutal: “If it gets too late for me to wait for you to find you love me and tell me so, it’s okay, you don’t need to say it…” The title is implied but never uttered, and the song concludes on the equivalent of her casting her head down, and slowly walking off in the opposite direction, crestfallen and totally defeated.

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