Music for Desks: "I Spread Like Strawberries" by Christina Schmitt
1. What does Zion to do with Bohemia?
That’s the question Amos Wilder, the father of Theopoetics, asks about the intersection of art and theology. Theopoetics centers on the recognition that there is not always a philosophical or logical explanation for faith, and turns to poesis to explore and celebrate spirituality. As a poet, I’ve long been fascinated by how artists draw upon scripture, how they twist religious interpretations for artistic ends. It is through poetry that I came to my own spirituality, and I use Wilder’s question to continuously examine the roots of that connection.
2. I graduated with a Master of Divinity in this area of study in May 2019 and had hoped to write a compilation of poems that could be paired with the lectionary (a guide of weekly bible passages). Following three years of studying how others’ poetry and theology cross-pollinate, I was excited to make my own contribution to the field and work with communities of faith.
Instead, I slammed up against writer’s block. After graduation, I moved back to the southeastern city that holds my spiritual and church history. It felt appropriate to return to the place where my understanding of faith and community had matured. But upon returning to this city, my fond memories of spiritual discovery collided with unearthed memories of abuse by an old church mentor; the church failed to protect me, and many others, from those who use faith as tool of manipulation.
Memories that I had buried with graduate work were now being triggered by my return. A pit grew in my stomach over the next month, prohibiting me from enjoying the most basic things: time with friends was spoiled by my fear of an unwelcome guest who might walk through the door; walking around the city with my partner was spiked by anxiety about who could be waiting around the corner; writing was impossible. I couldn’t bring myself to write about scripture and faith when those things were so deeply intertwined with my experience of abuse.
I spent months in therapy, and with the guidance of a counselor eventually built up the courage to confront my abuser. I decided to enter into a “Just Resolution” process, wherein the church governing body would consider my formal complaint and determine how to proceed.
3. In January 2020 I was sitting in my car, listening to the original cast recording of Les Misérables on repeat, preparing to enter the denominational conference center. The old brick building, once a place of welcome, now seemed weathered and uninviting. I was to talk with an old man in wire-rimmed glasses about my sexual misconduct complaint. I wouldn’t guess that Les Misérables is most people’s hype up music in this particular situation.
And yet it felt appropriate that songs which narrate a redemption story became the soundtrack to my own journey. A few months earlier, my best friend quit her job over a sexual misconduct allegation against a coworker that her boss refused to acknowledge. My friend stayed with me for a while, and during her visit we drove around the city playing Les Misérables. My friend relived her theater days, calling back to a simpler time when we were applauded for taking up space, not shamed for it. We reminisced about where we were during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings. I told her that, on that day, I was in my car, trying to decide if I could sit through class as I listened to Kavanaugh on the radio. He tearfully evoked an image of his daughter praying for Dr. Ford, and I couldn’t help wondering if that story was scripted for sympathy’s sake. Dr. Ford’s poised testimony was honest and empowering; Justice Kavanaugh’s was a poorly executed drama.
The class I finally dragged myself to was a graduate seminar called “Jesus and the Parables.” That day, we examined the parable from Luke 18:
In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, “Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!”
We never learn what justice looks like for this unnamed widow. I do know that most of us who experience sexual trauma never get justice. Dr. Ford didn’t, my best friend didn’t. As for my own, by the end of February, the church leadership, the accused, and I came to terms about moving forward. We reached a “just” resolution, and that was that.
But nothing really felt just. I didn’t feel triumphant, only empty. Cue the pandemic.
4. Like many writers, I feel pressure to use the “free time” of quarantine to create. In March, my social media pointed to how Shakespeare produced some of his best writings in the midst of the bubonic plague, implying the question: What will have you to show for all of the downtime? I had long dreamed of days on end with nothing to do but write—but not like this.
The Just Resolution process didn’t dislodge my writer’s block. Instead, I learned first-hand what I’ve heard preached so many times: healing is not linear. It does not fit into a process or a system. Rather than write, I cried. I cried because Just Resolution didn’t make the pit in my stomach go away. I cried because there is a pandemic and people are dying. I cried because I felt selfish for crying when people were wondering how they would pay rent. I cried because I had been granted justice, or, at least, recognition of my trauma, when so many people I know and love never did.
I tried to write through these depressive states. I forced myself to move to my desk and open my laptop, putting on a playlist of songs that had served me through writing my Master’s thesis, poetry compilations, and essays. I find that songs on repeat serve as conversation partners when I write; I return to the same songs over and over again, as they help me pick up where I left off. I hoped returning to this playlist now would serve as inspiration, but the songs seemed tired. So rather than writing, I found myself watching my cat watch birds outside the window. Or I would meticulously clean my laptop—then my phone—then the entire apartment.
5. In April, Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters was released six months early. I had known of Apple for decades, but her music never made it into my small rotation of songs. I wasn’t particularly interested in introducing new music into my life just then, but several friends recommended her album to me, and my writer’s block was so monstrous I was willing to try anything.
I found Fetch the Bolt Cutters uniquely unbearable. Apple wrote and recorded the whole thing in her home in California, and it shows. Her dogs provide background vocals. Pots and pans double as percussion. Chants reverberate off bedroom walls. The way she incorporates her home into her music made me feel uncomfortable in the apartment I myself was trapped in. Her heavy breathing was awkward to listen to as I went on daytime walks around my neighborhood. The album felt like something I was supposed to listen to in the dark, and I was desperately trying to claw my way out of that state of mind. So I blew off Fetch the Bolt Cutters and continued listening to my normal songs on repeat.
6. In the middle of the summer, I was avoiding writing by tidying up a stack of loose papers and magazines when I came across a March issue of The New Yorker. As I flipped to the table of contents, an article title caught my eye: Fiona Apple’s Art of Radical Sensitivity. I distinctly remember skipping over that article in March.
Now, months into lockdown, still struggling with my trauma and its aftereffects, I read it. The article’s author Emily Nussbaum elucidates a few of the album’s key sources: how the song “For Her” was written after the Kavanaugh hearings; how the album’s title “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is tied up with Apple’s own experience of sexual assault. Nussbaum’s consideration of Apple posed questions I am grappling with: What does it mean to revisit trauma in art? What does non-linear healing look like? How do we create and heal while being trapped in our homes?
Apple has been dubbed the “patron saint of not leaving the house”; even in non-pandemic times, she rarely leaves home. She refers to her Venice house as a “co-creator,” as well as the lover who has held her through some of her most difficult moments. It’s in her home that Apple found ways to speak about her own experiences of trauma.
I was inspired to listen to the album again. Now, I heard the sounds of Apple’s home as more welcoming than off-putting. Instead of leaving me in the darkness, she was willing to sit with me in it.
7. The eponymous song is the first one I began playing on repeat. Apple sings, “Fetch the bolt cutters/ I’ve been in here too long.” When I first heard the line, I reflected on my own self-isolation. On my second listen (and third, and fourth, and fifth), I identified it with the cycle of numbness and tears I found myself in during the onset of the pandemic. Having failed to find a way out of that state for so long, here comes Apple with the bolt cutters and some unsettling (yet oddly comforting) melodies, which demonstrate an acute understanding of what it is to be trapped. It sounds like someone who also knows what it is like to curl up on the living room floor.
“Heavy Balloon” is the second song on the album I found myself listening to nonstop. She sings “People like us get so heavy and so lost sometimes […] So heavy the bottom is the only place we can find.” This line lovingly addressed the pit in my stomach and tells that pit that it wasn’t alone. In the very next line Apple’s voice rises and she scream-chants: “I spread like strawberries/I climb like peas and beans/I’ve been sucking it in so long/I’m busting at the seams.” The jarring, seemingly incongruous pairing of balloons and gardens helped to clarify my own ostensibly contradictory feelings, speaking to both a feeling of wretched heaviness and a refusal to succumb to it. I often wake up with this line in my head, and am inspired to “spread like strawberries” in my life and art.
8. Knowing Apple wrote and recorded this album in her home challenges me to look around my own home for inspiration. She demonstrates how a home has the potential to be a writing partner, not a distraction from writing. More, the home is a safe space to process the non-linear experience of healing.
As the days get colder and the pandemic continues to rage, the year anniversary of my Just Resolution grows near. In response, I settle deeper into this album for warmth and comfort. Apple continues to give me permission to be honest, reminds me I never needed permission for that in the first place. This album leaves me here, finally writing something in my pandemic apartment—this essay.
Christina Schmitt is a poet, theologian, storyteller, and teaching artist based out of Atlanta, GA. She seeks to work with communities of faith to reimagine traditional theological worship through creative practice. You can learn more about her work at christinaschmittpoetry.com.
