July 2010
37 posts
“This is very simple in the world of chicks: some are hoochies, some are not, and some should never try to be. It’s no different from the idea of sports. Now, I can go on my little rowing machine for four times a week, twenty-two minutes a time, and I can feel as if I flirt with the sporting world. Similar to the idea that a woman can put on something cuter for her man, for those moments, and flirt with garments that a hoochie woman might be pushing. But never for one moment should you get confused. My little rowing machine and I cannot consider ourselves athletes. Wearing the same garment does not a hoochie woman make. So if you are a true hoochie woman, may garments below the navel always be in your future. If you are not, then please don’t throw away your cotton zippy jacket.”
—From Piece by Piece by Tori Amos
“For thousands of years women were not the creative forces, not the Da Vincis, not the Mozarts, just the muses. You really didn’t get a lot of lightning rods that were the women. You don’t hear about the great sonatas written by the great female composers. And of course, they were out there somewhere, but there wasn’t a place for acknowledgment. Now the dam is broken. It was pent up for so long and now there’s a deluge. Suddenly women are the creative forces that we wanted to be for thousands of years.”
—Tori Amos (via allabouttoriamos)
Black-Dove (January)
Tori Amos
Tori Amos- Black Dove (January)
This song is another one of the overlooked gems in Ms. Amos’ catalog. She’s rarely talked about it, but when she did (in the German paper Die Zeit) Tori said that it’s based off of one of her nightmares and the fact that she was sexually abused by a family friend as a child, both of which I think come through to a degree. The song has always felt in some ways like a very disturbing fairy tale, where the villain stays off camera the entire time and you’re just left in the narrator’s head, dealing with the after-effects. Despite that feel, it’s also always felt very grounded in reality too once you peel back some of the imagery and metaphors.
She was a January girl
She never let on how insane it was
in that tiny kinda scary house
by the woods, by the woods, by the woods, by the woodsThe song starts off delicately, with just Tori playing the mallet piano, which gives the song an intimate feeling, like she’s about to reveal something secret to you, matching the lyrics perfectly. What does it mean to be a January girl? Looking at the month, it’s the start of the new year so it can represent youth and newness, referencing the age of the character in the song, but it’s also cold and harsh, also like this character, who’s shut herself off. It’s also named for Janus, the god with two faces, much like the girl in the song who is both a lion and a mouse in different situations. She’s got a secret she’s keeping, about something terrible that happened in this house by the woods. The repetitions of “by the woods” represent the girl declining to go any further with details, almost like she’s blocked out the rest of it and has to psych herself up to escape from thinking about that house or repress everything further just to keep going.
black-dove, black-dove
you’re not a helicopter
you’re not a cop-out either,The repetitions of Black Dove here make me think the narrator is trying to soothe the girl as she’s talking to her. She’s the black dove, the one who’s an outcast and different but still beautiful and possessing something sacred. Most people get hung up on the next two lines as being nonsense, but to me, it says that the girl can’t just take off and fly away easily (like a helicopter), but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to, and not being able to leave, for whatever reason, doesn’t diminish that desire or make the narrator think she’s full of shit.
honey, black-dove, black-dove
you don’t need a space ship
they don’t know you’ve already lived
on the other side of the galaxy
the other side of the galaxyThe girl can escape into her own head, she’s so far above and beyond all the people around her that just don’t get it and can’t understand her. In her head, she’s already gotten away, but that’s not reality, it’s just a dream of outer space. This is when the band kicks in, giving some grandeur to the music to match with the lyrics expanding to “the other side of the galaxy”. Kudos to Steve Caton for making excellent use of the mandolin here instead of going for a more stereotypical electric guitar sound, and how beautiful are those high vocals Tori delivers? Just stunning. These lines are reminiscent of another Tori Amos song, “Flying Dutchman” where she tells a lost boy to “take a trip on a rocket ship”, and I’ve always viewed the two songs as tied together in some way.
she had a January world
so many storms not right somehow
how a lion becomes a mouse
by the woods, by the woods, by the woods, by the woodsThese lines are somewhat self-explanatory. The girl’s got so much rage, but she can’t properly express it so she’s just lashing out at anything. But for all her anger, she’s still terrified of the woods and what happened to her so she can’t get through her pain and becomes weak again every time she thinks about it.
but I have to get to TEXAS
said I have to get to TEXAS
and I’ll give away my blue dress
because cowboy, the snakes they are my kinBefore I get to these lyrics, how incredible is that bridge? The piano work is intricate and exquisite, and the rest of the band gets out of the way long enough for it to shine to its fullest extent. Texas could be anywhere, the girl just wants to escape and she doesn’t care what she has to do to make it happen. It’s interesting to note that Tori wore a blue dress in the Silent All These Years video, her first big hit and an image that defined her. So the girl’s willing to give up something that defined her in order to get away, and will redefine and remake herself when she gets there. One could also look at “blue dress” as a metaphor for sadness, and this is the girl saying that once she gets to Texas she can finally let go of what’s happened. The cowboy reference in the next line raises the idea that the girl is talking to someone, which could also make “give away my blue dress” a sexual reference as well, that she’s using sex as a way to get away from where she is, trading on sex to get away from the (possible) sexual abuse she’s suffered, which is sad and terrible but happens more than we’d like to think. “The snakes, they are my kin” is one of my favorite lines ever because there’s so much to draw from it. She’s denying her family, possibly because they let all this happen to her/did it themselves and so she can start over, and recognizes that this makes her into something cold and heartless, but she’s owning that and embracing it, at least on the surface. After all the other animal references (dove, lion, mouse) we get to hear the girl describe herself: a snake. She can’t see the beauty that the narrator sees, just the ugliness. If you don’t relate to this verse, being desperate to get away from your life and feeling like an awful terrible person, I guess you were never a depressed or lonely teenager.
she had a January girl
she never let on how insane it was
in that tiny kinda scary house
by the woods, by the woods, by the woods, by the woods
black-doveIn the end, it seems like the girl got away but she still carries all that pain with her because she couldn’t break the chains, be honest about what happened to her, and see herself as beautiful again. She got away physically but not mentally. That final “Black Doooove” is an expression of both sympathy and disappointment, but you can feel the empathy the narrator has for the girl throughout the entire song, so there’s no judgment there, just sadness.
“Never. It’s funny for women because journalists pit women against each other. If you think about Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton they were all much more similar to each other than [Bjork, Polly, and I] are. We have tits. We have three holes. That’s what we have in common. We don’t even play the same instruments. It really disappoints me when some sort of competition has to be manufactured for their little minds and fantasies. That’s not growing, that’s not support. There is room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you’re trying to be like somebody else, then there isn’t. We see things from different points of view and that affects people in different ways and I think that should be encouraged. It shouldn’t be like, two tits too many. Like with radio in America, they tell you, well, we’re already playing one female this week. They wouldn’t think about that with guys.”
—Tori Amos, on ‘competition’ between female artists (via aeferg) (via allabouttoriamos) (via sowideasea)
“An ounce of breast milk is even more potent than the finest tequila.”
—Tori Amos
