Singer-Songwriter Fiona Apple’s (First Saturn) Return

 

Something funny happened to Fiona Apple on the way to her first Saturn return. Almost ten years after her hit debut CD, Tidal--and its breakout song, "Shadow Boxer"--she almost did not release an extraordinary collection of songs on a new CD titled Extraordinary Machine. The title of the current CD also happens to be the title of the first song on the CD, a paean to herself—an “extraordinary machine.”

 

Saturn, a planet of personal growth and life lessons, takes about twenty-nine years to go once around the horoscope. When it makes the first return, at about age twenty-nine, we have experienced Saturn teaching lessons to all of our planets and houses. How well we have learned the lessons is often revealed in events which take place in our late twenties. Whether we like it or not, we are forced to somehow look at our lives with all the gloss, superficiality, and people-pleasing stripped away—to see ourselves as we really are. This can often be a jarring experience. It is a time when many individuals begin to take the first tentative steps towards connecting with who they really are.

 

Fiona Apple is approaching her first Saturn return (see horoscope below). It will become exact in late 2006, but she is already experiencing it. Her planets are in a bowl pattern, all fitting in half the horoscope. Individuals with a bowl pattern often lack perspective because they do not have many oppositions in the horoscope. If they’re lucky, they may have one—the planets on the rim of the bowl. This tends to deny these individuals objectivity. Their own experience is what counts, although they can become prisoners of that experience. Fiona’s outer planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are now moving out of her bowl pattern, and this is beginning to allow her to open up to forces outside of her own experience.

 

Fiona Apple did not want to release Extraordinary Machine, her first CD in six years. A perfectionist Virgo, she was never satisfied with her own songs (see article). In addition, she has a strong Virgo streak of artistic integrity and does not like her poetic license removed (this is abetted by her Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer, the exaltation sign of Jupiter but the debilitation sign of Mars--very perverse). Her 1999 CD title begins with the words When the Pawn... and then continues for another 87 words. Finally,  a groundswell of fan support pushed her to release the CD in its present form. It has received rave reviews from critics and she is set to launch a thirteen city tour. I bought the CD myself, having very much enjoyed her earlier music, and was amazed at her expanded emotional range, intelligence, and theatricality. The music reminded me of Kurt Weill, the great songwriter and composer who collaborated with playwright Bertolt Brecht, and cabaret singer Lotte Lenya.

 

Like many Virgos, Fiona Apple is more technician than performer and does not like the spotlight. She currently lives in eclectic, bohemian Venice Beach, California.

 

See also: Mariah Carey; Shakira; Kanye West