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Magical Blend A miscarriage is such a difficult thing to go through, yet it sounds like
it was healing for you and your music. Tori Amos: Some people say
motherhood changes you and for me, non-motherhood really changed me. When you
lose a baby there’s a line that’s been crossed by the deities. I started to question
the universe. And since I live on the river, I started to watch the rhythm of
the water. After I miscarried I was trying to find something to identify with
as a woman, because I didn’t feel very confident at that point-it’s a pretty
helpless thing to lose a baby. I had to find some primal feminine place inside
myself to really understand that the Earth has both birth and loss every day.
As I felt all the different rhythms that the Earth produces, I started to see
rhythm in way I really hadn’t before. As I went to the piano, I knew now that
it had to be written and built into the structure. It wasn’t something to be
put on top of the songs later. A lot of critics are very dismissive about how you feel about the
invisible world. How did your Cherokee grandfather influence your belief
system? Tori Amos: I think he instilled
in me that spirit is in all things. I’ve always believed that. I was sort of
brought up by my grandfather until he died when I was nine-and-a-half. It was a
real natural way of looking at life, though I’ve come to realize that some
people don’t see it that way. So all of a sudden, I become the odd one. Tori Amos: I don’t really
remember everything that I dream about. I used to get into writing it down, but
I’ve lived in England too long-I’ve become cynical and stopped recording my
dreams (laughs). With intuition, you’re either a tracker or you’re not. And
I’ve always tried to improve those skills where you have to think like a
Yorkshire terrier and kind of smell where that little lamb is. You use your
toolbox, because you’ve got to know where that two-bar phrase is leading you.
You have millions of choices, and you’ve got to know when you’ve got it right. In the press release for choirgirl hotel, you mention that the songs came
to you in droves. Do you see them as spirit guides that lead you forward as an
artist and a person? Tori Amos: Well, I’ve always said
that the songs exist independently of me, and I just run into them because of
something that has happened. And when I weave the tale, I use language that’s
on my plate at the time. I think that certain events open windows to other
worlds and feelings. Sometimes those are thrilling and joyous events, and
sometimes they’re not. Certain events really test your mettle and show you a
feeling, such as a depth of anger, that you didn’t know you had. That’s when,
as a writer, you are working with textures that you might not have had when you
were just riding around in your truck eating an ice cream cone. As the daughter of a minister, do you ever feel misinterpreted or
inappropriately judged by the public in expressing your unorthodox views and
philosophies? Tori Amos: Some Christians come up
to me on the street and say, “How could you?” Well, I was really quite
interested in Jesus’ teachings, but as I studied them, I saw how his teachings
got twisted. I felt like Christianity had hijacked some really great
principles. The Germans are being held accountable for what happened in the
Holocaust, but nobody here wants to be held accountable for what happened to
the Native Americans under Christianity’s watch. Christianity has a huge dark
side, and the dark side is not something people want to think is inside them.
They think it’s some little guy in a red suit with horns, you know? Can the current Christian era, which has left women out for thousands of
years, adapt to the future? Tori Amos: Absolutely, but it has
to acknowledge dark side. I think the greatest thing that the Christians could
do is say, “You know, we cut out sexuality and made it a bad thing, and we
divided the Mary.” We have to honor both Mary Magdalene and the mother Mary.
The mother Mary was a sexual being who had children through sex. Mary Magdalene
had great wisdom; she wasn’t just the whore of Babylon. People have a really
hard time seeing that the sword was used, in my opinion, as a penetration
weapon. They kept conquering with the sword, in the name of the Lord. So the past 2,000 years could largely be chalked up to sexual
frustration? Tori Amos: It’s also the division
of your emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual beings. Many religions
want to keep us divided from all keep us divided from all our beings, because
that’s how they control us. One of my music teachers once said to me, “The
student must surpass the teacher or the teacher really hasn’t understood the
role.” The religions have to want the people to not need them anymore. How has your musical vocabulary, as far as listening to other singers and
songwriters, made a transition over the past few years? Tori Amos: I think I am reliant
on the people around me to bring me stuff that I wouldn’t know about. I have
really good friends in my life who have no problem coming to me and saying,
“Sit down and listen to this.” I’ve been exposed to a lot over the past couple
of years. You catalog it in your mind and think, “Wow, I didn’t really think
about an instrument being used like that before.” You get people who are really
into ambient music and people who are into drumming. Even the over-forty,
ecstasy, female crowd that comes in with Middle Eastern chanting—you get a lot
coming through this room. How do you get other musicians to deliver what you want? Tori Amos: When you’re in a
studio, for example, and you’ve got a bunch of musicians and nobody’s inspired
and nobody’s getting it right, you have to give them anchors that give them
another point of view as to who they are at that minute and what their
instrument is in the song at that minute. That’s when you have to read other
people’s hidden personalities. A lot of times, you’re sitting there talking to
a very passive musician who’s not connecting with the piece, because he won’t
allow himself to bring out the personality capable of connecting with it.
Sometimes you’ve got to use your brain and figure out how to get him to see
this without offending him. Beyond music and your new life—marriage, new album, new tour—what else in
life excites and impassions you? Tori Amos: I’ve been racing my
boat lately. It’s really small—fourteen feet. I’m trying to learn the skill of
taking waves and weaving in and out of the water. I just love being out on the
water and having all of these massive boats pass by and get me all wet. I did
something a couple of days ago that was totally humbling. I went out into the
big ocean in my tiny little boat because it was very calm. And it was such a
good feeling. I’m a bit cynical about religious deities right now, but
sometimes you go out to the ocean and it’s really simple, “Ocean ... big.” In a
sense, your faith gets restored because if a storm kicks up, then a storm kicks
up. It’s not personal. With religions, I was taught if you do x, y, and z and
you confess and you pray and you ask to be absolved and you do all these
things, then God will respond. And that’s a lie. There’s no guarantee that God
will do anything. I’m really learning it’s a free will planet and certain
things are going to happen to certain people. No matter how loving you are or
giving you are, you might face loss-tragically. And there’s no “get out of loss
free” card, just because you go to church. Beyond expressing personal struggle and releasing feelings, what message
do you want your music to communicate to the world? Tori Amos: Society gets set up in
a way that there are the creative people and the noncreative people, but
everybody has access to the creative force. You might express it in a way
that’s very different from how people think you should do it, but I really
encourage people to find that voice. To me, everybody is like a fragment of the
Divine. That’s what I try to put out there, even though certain fragments of
the Divine that I want to fucking shoot ... (laughs). Would it make someone more whole to share their music, as opposed to just
experiencing the beauty for themselves? Tori Amos: If you’re going to
share it, then people can have an opinion and you have to be open to those
opinions. It can be quite cruel out there. When people cut me up, it never feels
good, but you can’t control anybody else and you have to make peace with that.
I feel if I’m doing my job correctly, it’s going to make you feel certain
things, but I’ve found that some people don’t really want that out of music,
and I’ve had to respect that they really just want to be entertained. |
