| Tori Amos – Cloud On My Tongue Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
I have a VERY close and personal relationship with this song, perhaps more than Tori's other songs...and I think it's HER most intensely personal piece after Little Earthquakes. But it develops a remarkable intensity in an abstract, as opposed to confessional, manner. Basically, it's a song about emotional dependency. The "Borneo" is the state of passion and love. Meanwhile, the "wood outside" is her former lover's (or lover who cheats) love, which creates the steamy passion of the "Borneo". When her lover comes back, she wishes not for him (telling him to "leave the wood outside"), but simply for the feeling that he has created: of love, even though he has hurt her deeply. The second verse ("Don't stop now what you're doing...") is perhaps a response to his arrival at the "kitchen door": she is no longer sensitive to his infidelity, and in order to affirm her invulnerability, she tells him to continue with his current dalliances. The line "You're already in there" means that she no longer needs him in his actuality in order to be loved; she has internalized their past love, and so no longer needs his hurtful actual presence. However, she acknowledges that she's still in love with him, and forever marked by his love, when she says "she'll be wearing (his) tattoo." In other words, she no longer needs his lovemaking or direct affection, because he now exists inside of her. His arrival has disturbed her status quo state of being in love with him, but unhurt by him more directly, because he is not there to hurt her further by his actions ("leave me the way I was before.") This can also be read as a wish that they had never been in love, when her emotions were not imprisoned by him. Saying that she is "in circles again" repeatedly emphasizes the difficulty of breaking free from being emotionally bound to the nameless lover, as does the song's frequent repetition. Even though her lover is gone, she is still internally bound to him, and reliant on the love that he once created. The house, the physical situation in which the song takes place, doubles as a metaphor for the speaker's heart. She is "not over the bridge" from her previous dependent state, which she realizes once he arrives at her house. All in all, Tori at her best. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.