Under the Pink

"Under the Pink is a place. It's an internal place. It's the inner world, the inner life. You have to listen from your stomach. To me, it's all there But you've got to be willing to put your moccasins on and walk down the road."

"This album is a self-healing experience to me" [Hitkrant - March 12, 1994]

"I had no choice, really. The songs just came. They seized me when I was going to a store. They said: 'Hey babe, it's time to talk about this or that subject'. Then I would go home and sit behind the piano and the idea began to take shape." [Haagsche Courant - January 29, 1994]

"Around Christmas 1992 my tour ended and I went to New Mexico to rest. We were there in a 150 year old hacienda, a sacred place for the pueblo, and that had its effect on all of us. Silent all these years took possession of me. Literally. All my songs are existing creatures. Her energy took possession and my reaction to that was: No way! Silent is the gatekeeper, the Styx, the twilight zone. She told me of the babies that wanted to cross. She said: 'It's gonna be a painful labour, or I'll help you so that it'll be easy.' She LIED! It didn't run smoothly at all. It came in waves, one song after another, like a religious experience. I was at a feast of American Indians [Tori has some Cherokee blood in herself], on which they were pounding drums continually. That touched me in quite a primitive way, right in the kundalini [Tori grips herself in the crotch], but I also felt personally frustrated, like I had to deal with the feelings with regard to the patriarchate, for one last time. 'God' came very fast, but I had to be cautious, because you can easily make a mistake." [Oor (Dutch, "Ear") - January 29, 1994]

"I was gonna take a year off, but the songs just demanded that I tell their story, and their story was about life under the pink. That's why the album is called Under the Pink. These are just some of the different lives that happen in that world. If you ripped everybody's skin off, we're all pink, the way I see it. And this is about what's going on inside of that. That's what I'm really interested in, not the outer world but the inner world. There are many other songs that live under the pink. These are just a few of them, these are just the girls who decided to come to the party." [Performing Songwriter (UK) - March/April 1994]

"Pink is a color with healing properties, representing the energy of love. Pink is, however, also the color that appears when we skin ["unmask"] ourselves... Everyone is pink under the skin and that is what I wanted to express. The world within is what is important to me..." [John Bolton Newsletter - Summer 1994]

"I refused to watch TV or listen to radio during the whole making of that record [Under the Pink] because I couldn't afford to be influenced. I usually have an inpouring [of creative stimuli] while I'm on the road. But when I start to write and create, then I close the door because I don't want to start going, 'Oh, let's change the whole structure of this because this is kind of cool.'" [Virginian Pilot - July 27, 1994]

"There is a triangle on this record: the songs Bells for Her, Cornflake Girl, and The Waitress - a triad about women betraying women, that's a kind of theme here. We women have to deal with the patriarchy first, but then, what's the alternative? Do you need a woman to look after you? I'm here to apply for the job. But when you say patriarchy, you don't have to be a man to be part of the patriarchy. After I read Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker, about how mothers sold their daughters to the butchers; that kind of floored me. One always feels safer when there are good guys and bad ones. But there are no good guys out there. And it's not as if one sex can make it okay." [The New Review of Records - December 1994]

"If there's a theme on Under the Pink, it's one of self-empowerment - whether it's women acknowledging the violence in themselves or people coming to terms with the loss of hope. It's about the refusal to see yourself as a victim, and how to have passion in your life without equating it with violence. It's just as personal and just as involved as before. There might be other characters in these songs that we haven't met before, but it's still me." [Upside Down flyer - February 1994]

"This album is a self-healing experience to me. I have met a lot of people who were working on themselves, as it's called. You have two types of people. The first walks into the room and radiates like an angel, she's so loving and unselfish, that you would want to be her. Wow! Then you make friends with that person and find out she's got a second face and that is: locking herself in her room and crying all day long. She doesn't want anyone to see her differently than as an angel, but with that she's too strict for herself, and destroys herself that way. Enlightenment doesn't mean the denial of demons in yourself, but the confrontation of them: Okay who's in there today? It's not about people saying 'Oh, Tori is a nice girl.' I want to be someone with responsibility, someone who's conscious of what she does. If I hurt you, I get vulnerable myself. That's the way it works. The second type I mean, has learned the full works of Jung. She's very intelligent, but also the most bitter person I know. She has so much information and can talk about it so brilliantly, that you think: what an enlightened soul. Both types have a certain intelligence and a certain gift, but they're both destructing themselves. We mustn't make too much demands of them, and stop shooting ourselves." [Oor (Dutch, "Ear") - January 29, 1994]

"On Under The Pink I was more influenced by painters than other musical artists." [Upside Down #4]

"Sometimes it [Under the Pink] is a little more lyrically detached. They [the listeners] can really crawl into the painting. I wanted Under the Pink to be more abstract, for many reasons. I was really into certain poets at the time, like e.e. cummings, and painters like Dali. I had this whole thing going where I liked codes and going with your senses. It was a bit of a maze, and you as a listener had to work to find out where we were going. Little Earthquakes was a bit more voyeuristic. You could sit back and watch this girl go through this stuff. You can't on Under the Pink; you have to go through it to understand it" [Keyboards - November 1994]

"I felt so deceived. People that I fully trusted have lied to me. Three songs on Under the Pink tell about it: Cornflake Girl, in which I describe the shock, The Waitress, in which the violent side is shown, and Bells for Her in which the loss is described." [Haagsche Courant - January 28, 1994]

"I recorded this record in New Mexico, some of you know this. And the spirits are very, very funny there because you think that they hate your guts. And this one Indian told me, he goes um, 'The mountain doesn't like you very much, Tori.' And I'm going, 'Too bad.'" [Sacramento, CA concert - September 9, 1994]