Little Amsterdam

“Little Amsterdam, which is all metaphorical, is about wanting to kill people, being angry at people that you feel have done something... the whole domination thing, the whole hierarchy, patriarchy... and her way to fight back and they are blaming her but ‘it wasn’t her bullet’ but she still believes it would have been fine if... [Tori makes a soft gunshot noise]. They lost him.” [B-Side – May/June 1996]

“And we travel further into Little Amsterdam, we go down South, which is really symbolic for the primal, the primitive, and the lies and the... really the domination.” [World Café (radio) – March 1, 1996]

“I’ve set it [Little Amsterdam] between two release points, an intro and outro. It helps the smell of this song, so you really get the honeysuckle with the sweet potatoes and the black-eyed peas. And just like you weave down those roads in the South, you know, you’re in swampland, and then you hit water, and then country, and sugar cane. And then you hit a gas station somewhere and you’re in a town, and you’ve gotten into the Christian sound. It’s like those writers I read as a little girl, Faulkner and Williams. This is how I write. It’s not about sitting down and putting 18 bars here or there.” [NY Times – Jan 14, 1996]

“I’m a big Faulkner fan, Tennessee Williams fan. How I would get taken into the story, there are so many levels of a story. There are so many levels of a dinner table conversation that’s happening, with the smells against what’s being said, the rhythm of the shuffled feet. Because you’re dealing with the unconsciousness as well as consciousness at every moment. The big thing that started to come to me in Amsterdam was... I mean, I'll tell you this, just visitations of Sylvia Plath, as I would be singing ‘don’t take me back to the range.’ ... The struggle of knowing I could kill him, knowing he should be killed, knowing I’m totally fine about it but Mom, that wasn’t my bullet. And I’m paying for it. I get fascinated by boundaries.” [Really Deep Thoughts - #10, Summer 1996]