Tori Amos

Lyndsey Darcangelo, a fellow 451 Press blogger, posted this wonderful blog about female relationships, and it reminded me of a Tori Amos interview I read a looooong time ago. Unfortunately, it was so long ago that I have not been able to find it online. It was after the release of Under the Pink, she was responding to her B-Sides from Little Earthquakes, which included The Rolling Stones’ “Angie,” Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You,” where she’s singing these songs written about women and she *gasp* doesn’t change the pronouns!! She goes on to say that there isn’t really anything out there to define or even explore the depths of female relationships, and yet the relationships of the females have always been sort of the thing that’s held everything else together. Whether it was the knitting circle, tupperware parties, tea times, etc, etc… we women have always had an unparalleled support system, but we’re not allowed to talk about it. Or if we should talk about the love and emotion and connection we feel with another woman, we must be lesbians. That is the only category that exists to define what women can be to each other outside of the “friend” label.

So yes, she is singing about women, and Under the Pink decidedly speaks to/about many different kinds of relationships that women have: with one another, with themselves, with men, with God. The haunting notes of “Bells For Her” recounts a tragic story of two women, a relationship that inevitably ends, possibly because one of the women falls in love with a man. “Can’t stop what’s coming, can’t stop what is on it’s way…”
“The Waitress” speaks to all of us who have secretly (or not so secretly) hated another woman for no real reason. “Cornflake Girl” tells a tale and draws the line between the two types of women we can choose to be: Cornflake Girls or Raisin Girls. “Yes, Anastasia” is such a heavy song, one that contains many layers of the feminine… without getting into them all, let it be said that it is definitely about women and their many levels of relationships.

I experienced one of these powerful female relationships, myself…
She was my everything. She knew me better than I did, and vice versa. We finished each other’s thoughts and sentences, we were together all the time, we never fought, we always understood and there was no one else who felt what we did at that time… Soul sisters, soul mates, twin spirits, born less than a day apart…
We were perfect and I loved her and just as so many fragile, adolescent relationships before and since… we suddenly fell apart over the course of a year and a half. One crack lent itself to the next one and so on, until we shattered into a million pieces… and I still miss her. There was never anything sexual between us or about us. It was so much bigger than the mundane, primal level of sex, but most people naturally assumed there was something going on between us. We’d usually just laugh it off, sometimes play into it, but always wonder why people felt the need to categorize us.

This is probably definitely why Tori Amos’ music is so incredibly powerful to me. She was there with us for the duration… she spoke to every turn our relationship took and it seemed uncanny at best, down right eerie at worst, that someone else understood. Someone else had been through what we had and wrote about it and sang about it and told the world.

So here I am, all these years, tears and healed wounds later… I have never found the kind of connection I shared with her. I love my husband to pieces and I wouldn’t trade him for anything, but there’s just something about a woman in your heart …

Tori Amos, Under the Pink, Little Earthquakes, Feminine, Relationships, B-Sides, Female