Fiona Apple’s letter about her dog will break your heart

Fiona Apple has postponed plans to tour South America, telling fans in an impassioned note posted on Facebook that she has opted to stay home with her ailing dog. “I just can’t leave her now,” she wrote. “Please understand.”

The four-page handwritten note tells the story of Janet, a pit bull Apple rescued when the dog was just 4 months old and Apple was 21. Janet, writes Apple, was an Echo Park resident and was believed to have been used by dogfighters to “to puff up the confidence of the contenders.”

Apple in the letter makes no mention of which dates are off and whether they will be rescheduled, instead focusing on remiscing about her canine companion. The artist is still listed as performing at the Personal Fest in Buenos Aires on Dec. 2.

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Writes Apple, “I can’t come to South America. Not now. When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference. She doesn’t even want to go for walks anymore.”

Janet, says Apple, is suffering from Addison’s Disease and has had a tumor idling in her chest for about two years. Pet lovers everywhere should read Apple’s note. Or maybe not. Pop & Hiss is posting this news hours later than most other music sites or blogs, largely because after reading Apple’s post this writer spent a significant portion of the day looking up photos and videos of a recently lost cat.

Apple’s songs, especially on new album “The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than,” document a tug-of-war with one’s own anxieties. It’s a claustrophobic, paranoid album built around naked rhythms, and Apple is rarely easy on her own thoughts.

Her note today captures an unique guilt that all pet owners eventually confront, especially in the face of others who may be dealing with the loss of a human. “I know that she’s not sad about aging or dying,” Apple writes. “Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people.

“But I know that she is coming close to the point where she will stop being a dog, and instead, be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go. I just can’t leave her now, please understand.”

Apple’s South American tour was to include stops in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

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