Blood Roses

“The songs started coming. Blood Roses was the first, and it was that feeling of ripping open your vein and going, ‘This blood has sold millions of records. This blood can do many things.’ And the men are like, ‘Yes, Tori, and this blood isn’t enough for us.”

Tori: “Another movie that touched me deeply was ‘The cook, the thief, his wife, her lover’.”
HUMO: Why? That’s a very negative, violent movie full of people humiliating each other psychologically...
Tori:[sighs] “Exactly. That’s the victim in me... don’t forget I... Well, you know what happened... Hey, you don’t write a song like ‘Blood Roses’ if you didn’t have yourself shit on... literally. At any rate, I felt very related to the thief’s wife, the woman who was humiliated most... It’s connected to the drama, the trauma in my life... If you have witnessed abuse of power nearby, and men’s blind lust, and psychological mind games, you see that movie from a different angle... For year’s I’ve been a willing victim myself, I had something in me... I conciously wanted to surrender myself to the mercy of the men in my life; I wanted... to be dominated. Why?... I’m still asking myself that question.”

“Baroque gone askew.” [Making Music – Jan 1996]

“Let go and love,’ Fuck that shit! My heart is scarred. I have a tear running down the middle of it and I’m not ready to say, ‘Let go and love.’” [Spin – March 1996]

“Blood Roses is really about me finally being aware that I’m choosing to be defecated on.”

“She’s very aware of a thing that I haven’t dealt with: faithful anger. Anger expressed faithfully.”

“We couldn’t go to Blood Roses, who we needed to go to first, because she’s the one that is crawling on her knees, and has given it all away just to be accepted. And has gotten defecated on to the point where she’s in the middle of the stench going, ‘How could I have let myself be so degraded, how could I have degraded myself by letting certain events happen. But we had to go to her, we had to travel. And it was very important that Beauty Queen/Horses took us there.” [World Café (radio) – March 1, 1996]

“You know, when she says, ‘I think you’re a queer, well, I think you’re a queer and I’ve shaved every place where you’ve been, boy, God knows I know I’ve thrown away those graces’... it’s very clear that the war has begun. You’ve just walked into the record and the war has begun. The blades are out. And she’s become a piece of meat in her mind, she’s willing to cut out her voice, she’s willing to ‘cut out the flute from the throat of the loon, at least when you cry now he can’t even hear you.’ It doesn’t matter who the people are, you know, and if you resonate with letting yourself go that far to be needed or to keep something going, well, do you need another pound of flesh? What do you need, what more do you want? And that’s the point when I say, ‘he likes killing you after you’re dead.’ So from the beginning of the record on it’s really obvious that you’re walking into not what is going on on top of the table, the conversation with the rose at the dinner of the couple, but what’s really going on in the couple. Sometimes the man changes, but it’s her story. It’s her, who she pulls in to work this out with, and the men that defecate, the men who can’t be enough, the men who aren’t ready to embrace themselves so no matter how much you like them you can’t go there because ...[they’re not yet whole]” [B-Side – May/June 1996]

“So many girls will come to me with tears in their eyes and scratches all over their wrists from self-mutilation, and I'll say, 'I actually do understand the obsession to be difficult.' I mean, I was in absolute horror that I allowed myself to be raped. Blood Roses is the on-the-knees version of that, the ripped-open veins and the blood dripping, going 'Why is it my fault now?'” [Musician – May 1996]