|
Seventeen magazine Tori Adore Tori Amos, patron saint of the unconventional, is back with a new CD. By Heidi Sherman Your new album is called To Venus and Back what does the name mean? Venus is the love-passion place, and once you’ve
traveled there you can never go back to where - or who - you were before. The first single “Bliss”, deals with a woman breaking away from her father.
How is your relationship with your father? Better than it’s ever been. I think you
always desire your father’s respect. But there has to be a place where you and
I extract ourselves from what our fathers want us to be. It’s taken me a long
time. How about your mom? We’re very close, but there was that period
when you’re becoming a young woman, and your parents don’t get it. During that time, did your parents disapprove of any of the guys you dated? A cat burglar, when I was 18. The craziest
thing was, if they had said “You know what, go for it”, I would have lost
interest then. Were you a serial dater? No, no, no. That’s not my thing. But for a
long time I was trying to find something in the men I was dating that I needed
to access in myself. A lot of the time you try to hang out with other people to
fill that void, when what you really want is to have an all-area-access pass to
your unconscious. That’s where your power is. You got married last year, after you turned 34, to your sound engineer, Mark
Hawley. Was it worth the wait? I really wasn’t ever going to get married
because I’d just played at too many weddings, you know. But when he asked me,
it felt right. What’s the essential ingredient in a successful relationship? Valuing the differences and being OK with not
needing to be with each other. That to me is how relationships start exploding.
Any myths about the music industry you’d like to debunk? I was backstage at the Grammys in ‘94 and I
really thought it would be, like, creativity to the tenth power - people
sharing with each other. But I’d just been on a college tour, and that was far
more exciting than what I found at the Grammys. There was this underground vibe
at the universities, and that visionary sense. Don’t get me wrong - there were
some great artists at the Grammys, but I thought it would be more about
creativity than about ego. Instead there’s this illusion that you think the
cool people are always over there. And what’s the reality? If you want wisdom, you cannot buy it at the
store. You can’t get invited to that party. You have to do the work. Tori
Amos’ required fall reading for the self-aware girl. If you’re searching for spiritual freedom and some serious wisdom, pore over
these four suggestions from the Faerie Princess herself. Owning Your Own Shadow, by Robert A. Johnson “This is about how not to put your monsters
on other people or take on other people’s monsters. It’s about power.” The Creation of Health, by Caroline Myss and C. Norman Shealy “It’s about seeing your body as a special
instrument and how to look at is as not a thing, but a gift.” Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of Women, by Jean Shinoda Bolen “It’s great to see how archtypes exist in
each of us. You’ll begin to see yourself as part of a lineage.” Addiction to Perfection, by Marion Woodman “We’re taught how to balance our checking
accounts but not how to scream at the teller. This teaches us how to handle our
emotions.” |