In season 2, episode 5 of irreverent Hulu comedy series Difficult People (2015-2017), main characters Billy (Billy Eichner) and Julie (show creator Julie Klausner) have the following exchange while contemplating a career in listicles:

Billy: I’m gonna make a list of eight shows I’m never gonna watch and all eight are The Affair.
Julie: I love how that show is so well written and yet it manages to be so boring.

As with most of the snark on Difficult People, this exchange is an exaggerated indictment of Showtime’s award-winning series. The Affair (2014-2019) had a lot going for it: an excellent cast (Maura Tierney AND Ruth Wilson!), a sexy/tragic premise, moody beach shots. On paper, it’s a winner. In real life, it was very literally a winner (three Golden Globes, two Satellite Awards, and fifteen more major nominations). But it’s a slow burn, for the most part, protracted rather than thrilling. Except, that is, for its theme song.

Written and performed by Fiona Apple and produced by Blake Mills, “Container” is a haunting tale. It lasts just over a minute, and so every second counts. What follows is an accounting of each one.

0:01-0:02: The appearance of the Showtime logo reminds me that Yellowjackets comes back this week.

0:03-0:08: In the first five seconds, we see and hear empty space. Assuring us of its intentional nature are subtle aural and visual movements: a quiet, resonant sound rings out, perhaps the ghost of a gong made electric; the words “Showtime Presents” ripple onto and off of the screen, sharp and visible but not bright; dark, vague shapes float past quickly in the background.

0:09: The first sound we hear from Fiona is a sharp intake of breath. This is crucial. Mladen Dolar writes that “in many languages there is an etymological link between spirit and breath” (2006, 71), that the breath is an expression of voice, itself the materiality of the soul and thus a reminder of the inextricability of interior being from exterior body in the human (and perhaps beyond). Many sound artists have played with the significance of breath. Robin Lydenberg has analyzed the work of the breath in Beat performer William S. Burroughs’ recorded tape collages. “Where one becomes most aware of the body in Burroughs’ voice,” he writes, “is in the absence of voice–in the preliminary intake of breath that often precedes his speech” (1992, 424). Further, “the breathing circuit, the passage between inside and outside, is where the individual is most vulnerable” (425). Breath is a sign of mortal life, a reminder of corporeal fragility, an intangible barrier between self and death. It is something all living aerobic creatures share. To hear Fiona’s gasp before she begins to sing is to experience an existential connection with her. We know that she is, physically, and we are there with her, in the room, side by side, if only for a moment. To leave the breath in such a carefully and professionally produced song can only be a conscious choice, and the sense of intimacy it creates instantly draws in the listener on the visceral level of affect.

0:09-0:12: I was screaming / Into the canyon. The first lines of the song are fully a cappella. We hear every contour, every vibration of Fiona’s voice, moving so quickly it is almost frantic. 

0:12-0:15: At the moment / Of my death. After another breath, her voice returns, this time enhanced by apparently post-production reverberations that foreshadow the next line. The background imagery starts to lighten and quicken, making it clearer that we are looking at agitated water.

0:15-0:21: The echo I created / Outlasted my last breath. Her voice grows in power, filling unseen space. We look up from the to face a wave beneath a twilight sky, and the current is strong: we are barely keeping our heads above water. There is a slight deviance from the expected pitch of Fiona’s last note, on “breath,” as though she is nearly out of it herself.

0:21-0:34: My voice, it made an avalanche / And buried a man I never knew / And when he died, his widowed bride / Met your daddy and they made you. Fiona’s breath is still present before each section, and as her story unfolds, the worth, the finite nature of it becomes even clearer. Synthetic sound swells behind her, an inhuman chorus that lends ethereal harmony to her restless melody. The images on screen move more quickly: the pages of a book, an underwater eye, one person’s hand holding on to another’s back.

0:34-0:47: I have only one thing to do and that’s / Be the wave that I am and then / Sink back into the ocean / I have only one thing to do and that’s / Be the wave that I am and then / Sink back into the ocean. The cadence steadies; it has found its purpose. Fiona harmonizes with Fiona, one line monotone and the other curling above it.

0:47-1:05: I have only one thing to do and that’s / Be the wave that I am and then / Sink back into the ocean / (Sink back into the ocean) / Sink back into the ocean / (Sink back into the ocean) / Sink back into the ocean / (Sink back into the ocean) / Sink back into the ocean. More echoes, flowing, spreading, as though Fiona’s dying protagonist is dematerializing in such a way that she is becoming something greater, something everywhere.

1:05-1:18: The final wordless seconds are amorphous; a sharp stop in the final second makes them all the more ominous.

In terms of lyrical content, “Container” is a masterpiece, not only as far as TV themes go, but songs in general. Whether taken literally or metaphorically (doing the latter makes it a perfect fit for the show’s plotline, if numerous internet commenters are to be believed, and when aren’t they?), it is riveting, open enough to leave scope for imagination while specific enough to structure it. It must, though, be heard to be fully appreciated. Few successful contemporary singer-songwriters are more skilled in the art of musical storytelling than Fiona Apple, and the subtleties of Blake Mills’ production accent her work to perfection. Through breath, voice, and even electronics, she doesn’t so much give a performance as inhabit one, and as much as I (along with numerous internet commenters) wish this song could go on for much longer, it’s for the best that it is exactly as it is, “Container” contained such that it is light enough for us to hold and just full enough to be worth gazing upon it–and playing the video over and over again.

References
Dolar, Mladen. 2006. A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lydenberg, Robin. 1992. “Sound Identity Fading Out: William Burroughs’ Tape Experiments.” In Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-Garde, eds. Douglas Kahn and Gregory Whitehead, 409–438. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

About the Author’s Biases
Adriane once had a dream that she decided to bear and raise a child on her own and name that child Fiona Apple. She never finished watching The Affair.