| Tori Amos – Wednesday Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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Tori always makes references to Neil Gaiman and his work on her albums. They are close friends and their shared interests in mythology and cultures obviously dovetail. A little trivia many people are never taught: Although we think of ourselves as primarily Judeo-Christian, our daily lives are imbued with pagan artifacts, including many of our holidays and our timekeeping. January, for example, is named for Janus, the two-faced god who simultaneously looks into the past and the future. What does this have to do with anything? Sunday = "sun day," the day dedicated to the Sun Monday = "moon day" Tuesday = "Tiw's day," dedicated to the Norse god of war Thursday = "Thor's day," and you know who Thor is Friday = "Frigg's day," Frigg being the Norse goddess and wife of popular and powerul gos Odin Saturday = "Saturn day," dedicated to the god Saturn, who is also the planet Saturn So what's Wednesday? It's "Woden's day," and Woden is actually another pronunciation for Odin, one of the most revered Norse gods. Tori's Wednesday relates directly and tangentially to Neil Gaiman's character Mr. Wednesday, who is an antagonist in Gaiman's novel American Gods. (The novel is now a hit TV show as of 2017, and Wednesday is the primary god character.) The old gods (pagan/pre-Christian gods from Europe, Africa et al) in American Gods have arrived in the US and are engaged in a war of relevance with new American gods, such as Media, Technology, etc. The old gods, invluding Wednesday, Anansi, a leprechaun, have mischievous personalities--and this plus their supernatural aspects are represented in Tori's song, Wednesday. When she sings at the end of the song, "can't someone help me; I think that I'm lost here, lost in a place called America," it's a definite nod to the book, in which the old gods, including history, tradition, mystical knowledge, etc., are being lost to our consumerist/materialist/disposable culture. And of course that is only one more layer that inform's Tori's incredible Scarlet tapestry, an album that is at once told from the perspectives of Tori herself, a character called Scarlet, American Indian nations, American history and the spirit of the land as a sentient being--all distinct and at once connected. "If there is a horizontal line that runs from the map of your body straight through the land, shooting up right through my heat, will this horizontal line when asked know how to find where you end, where I begin?" <---It's about that. |
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| Tori Amos – Father Lucifer Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Lyrically, this song is among Tori's most cryptic, and after close to 20 years of listening to it, I am convinced that it's also primarily abstract--meaning that the lyrics themselves shouldn't be interpreted for meaning, but rather for the impressions and associations they convey. We know that Father Lucifer is the result of Tori's experiences with ayahuasca, a tea made of two plants that when brewed together cause physical and psychological purging. Following Tori for so long, I eventually went there myself and met 'mother ayahuasca,' who is indeed a "strong black vine." (That Tori song is more explicitly about ayahuasca.) Ayahuasca is called "the vine of the soul" or the "spirit vine," and the emotional effects of drinking it can be very, very, very dark, but as per merchantpierce's Tori quote above, it's a pure place. It's also magical, inexplicable with words, and life-changing. And so going to that place is purifying. For example, "everyday's my wedding day" in the context of ayahuasca, based on my experience, could well be the deep realization that every day, and everything is as precious and wondrous as every other part. When you take ayahuasca, you don't just feel this way, you *know* it. But at the same time, there's darkness--you can acknowledge at once that life is wonderful, and at the same time mourn the reality that "baby's in his comatose state." In your mind, you confront all the dimensions of life and alternate between feeling extraordinarily grateful for every experience to resenting that other girls seem to be able to eat pizza constantly and never gain weight--"why me?" The experience floods you with so many conflicting and yet connected experiences and thoughts all at once, for hours at a time, that it's chaotic, and at the same time meaningful and beautiful. Not by coincidence, 'Father Lucifer' as a song title might make most people think the song should be intimidating, dark, and dangerous, but it's a beautiful chaos of meaningful and meaningless thoughts and sounds that can leave a lasting effect on a person even when the person has no way of really understanding the language. I was 18 when I first heard the song, and I had no clue what it was about, but found it spellbinding and beautiful. Then I heard it was about a "drug" and was honestly a little turned off. Her explanation that she "had a cup of tea with Lucifer," and then explaining her version of Lucifer, is really a far more honest and straightforward explanation than the reductive idea of it being a "drug trip" (Ayahuasca is regarded as a sacred medicine, not a recreational drug--at all. It is not fun!), and the fact that she's never really explained any of the specific lyrics is a credit to her. |
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| Tori Amos – Virginia Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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As with the rest of 'Scarlet's Walk' (the album), I think this song has (at least) a dual subject of the "character" of the land and the (again dual) "character" of (American Indian) Scarlet/(American musician) Tori, and where Tori came from and where Virginia/Scarlet went. Kagerou sums up the song pretty well as I hear it, but there is one particular line that I just made sense of and so I figured I'd stop in and drop a comment about it. For years, I've wondered what the "turquoise serpents" represent. In my creative writing MFA program, we learned that great Modernist novelists experiment with subject and form, but in order to be effective, the work itself is imbued with instructions on how to read and understand what is being read. That's how Tori Amos's music is written: "turquoise serpents" has always been a stand-out image for me, and clearly the term turquoise can be easily related to American Indian culture. Since the song is set in the 'lush Virginia hills,' I thought the turquoise serpents may be the rivers of the Virginia mountains--and I think they are, if you are reading the song as being about the Earth itself--but as I am from the hills of Northern Virginia myself, I've never seen turquoise waters within the state--or anywhere north of Florida. So what is it? I also puzzled for quite a long time about Tori's song "Strong Black Vine." I heard the song as a sexual metaphor the first few lessons--the image of the vine and the line "submission is my mission/for a strong black vine," but that idea doesn't follow throughout the song. I believe I read on here people describing the song as being about ayahuasca, which I have since learned is a decoction made from a boiled black caapi vine and another plant that activates its hallucinogenic qualities. OK, that made sense in the context of being 'Abnormally Attracted to Sin.' I moved on. But now we have 'Night of Hunters,' in which Tori sings "from ivy leaves/there is an ale that can unveil/the hidden meanings and serpents/only revealed through visions." This is another reference to ayahuasca, plainly and clearly--and in case it seems like that can't be the case since Night of Hunters is set in Ireland and not Central or South America, she carefully followed 'Battle of Trees' with the song 'Cactus Practice,' which is also geographically out of context in the album. So what is the point of all of this? I think that Virginia, and Strong Black Vine, and Battle of Trees all are strong examples of how Tori Amos's writing is far more complex than it ever comes across on its surface; it is never nonsense, and almost without exception, her words should be understood to mean more than one thing at any given time. She's a poet who writes in layers and who is always teaching something--something of a spiritual nature most of the time. Amos has spoken frequently about having spent time with shamans in Central or South America when she was younger. Her songs Datura, Father Lucifer, and the ones being discussed here all relate back to those experiences, and she means them to be taken seriously. 'Battle of Trees' is very much about the living spirits that were imbued in the ancient Celtic tree alphabet, and likewise, 'Virginia' animates the American land with living spirit. Still, it is easy to overlook the specifics in Amos's lyrics where they may seem just generally metaphoric--'turquoise serpents' is the prime example to me. I've never taken ayahuasca or any other hallucinogen (but now I admit I have a strong desire to try the 'strong black vine'), but I have been reading a lot about it lately, and it's really a fascinating substance. People who drink it--practiced shamans and people who have zero idea what to expect--almost always relate stories of fluorescent colors, bright light, and very often report frightening snakelike creatures that somehow impart a deep wisdom of reality and are able to convey a sort of meaning of life to people. The people of the Western Amazon believe that the plants around them are alive and intelligent, and in particular they believe that the caapi vine (used to make ayahuasca) is a godlike teacher and that its mother is an anaconda or a boa constrictor. Shamans move back and forth from this reality to the 'hallucinated' one, which they believe is as real as our lives here on sober Earth. These brightly colored snakes have to be the turquoise serpents--the teachers from the other realm/dimension/whatever--who Virginia has forgotten once she gave herself over wholly "from sun wise to clockwise to soul trading" to the Europeans. "Virginia" tells the story of the loss of that sacred knowledge and wisdom and understanding of what we are doing here on this planet, "Strong Black Vine" is a sort of instruction manual for getting spiritual seekers back there, and "Battle of Trees" is Tori and the "Tori" of 'Night of Hunters' going back to a pivotal time when mankind (or at least the Celts) lived in harmony and cooperation with the natural world, and then that was taken away from them by the church. Nobody wants to read all this I know, but the more I think about what I've learned because of Tori Amos's enigmatic but ingeniously written lyrics, I just get hungrier and hungrier for more. www.twitter.com/Artistlike |
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| Tori Amos – Virginia Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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As with the rest of 'Scarlet's Walk' (the album), I think this song has (at least) a dual subject of the "character" of the land and the (again dual) "character" of (American Indian) Scarlet/(American musician) Tori, and where Tori came from and where Virginia/Scarlet went. Kagerou sums up the song pretty well as I hear it, but there is one particular line that I just made sense of and so I figured I'd stop in and drop a comment about it. For years, I've wondered what the "turquoise serpents" represent. In my creative writing MFA program, we learned that great Modernist novelists experiment with subject and form, but in order to be effective, the work itself is imbued with instructions on how to read and understand what is being read. That's how Tori Amos's music is written: "turquoise serpents" has always been a stand-out image for me, and clearly the term turquoise can be easily related to American Indian culture. Since the song is set in the 'lush Virginia hills,' I thought the turquoise serpents may be the rivers of the Virginia mountains--and I think they are, if you are reading the song as being about the Earth itself--but as I am from the hills of Northern Virginia myself, I've never seen turquoise waters within the state--or anywhere north of Florida. So what is it? I also puzzled for quite a long time about Tori's song "Strong Black Vine." I heard the song as a sexual metaphor the first few lessons--the image of the vine and the line "submission is my mission/for a strong black vine," but that idea doesn't follow throughout the song. I believe I read on here people describing the song as being about ayahuasca, which I have since learned is a decoction made from a boiled black caapi vine and another plant that activates its hallucinogenic qualities. OK, that made sense in the context of being 'Abnormally Attracted to Sin.' I moved on. But now we have 'Night of Hunters,' in which Tori sings "from ivy leaves/there is an ale that can unveil/the hidden meanings and serpents/only revealed through visions." This is another reference to ayahuasca, plainly and clearly--and in case it seems like that can't be the case since Night of Hunters is set in Ireland and not Central or South America, she carefully followed 'Battle of Trees' with the song 'Cactus Practice,' which is also geographically out of context in the album. So what is the point of all of this? I think that Virginia, and Strong Black Vine, and Battle of Trees all are strong examples of how Tori Amos's writing is far more complex than it ever comes across on its surface; it is never nonsense, and almost without exception, her words should be understood to mean more than one thing at any given time. She's a poet who writes in layers and who is always teaching something--something of a spiritual nature most of the time. Amos has spoken frequently about having spent time with shamans in Central or South America when she was younger. Her songs Datura, Father Lucifer, and the ones being discussed here all relate back to those experiences, and she means them to be taken seriously. 'Battle of Trees' is very much about the living spirits that were imbued in the ancient Celtic tree alphabet, and likewise, 'Virginia' animates the American land with living spirit. Still, it is easy to overlook the specifics in Amos's lyrics where they may seem just generally metaphoric--'turquoise serpents' is the prime example to me. I've never taken ayahuasca or any other hallucinogen (but now I admit I have a strong desire to try the 'strong black vine'), but I have been reading a lot about it lately, and it's really a fascinating substance. People who drink it--practiced shamans and people who have zero idea what to expect--almost always relate stories of fluorescent colors, bright light, and very often report frightening snakelike creatures that somehow impart a deep wisdom of reality and are able to convey a sort of meaning of life to people. The people of the Western Amazon believe that the plants around them are alive and intelligent, and in particular they believe that the caapi vine (used to make ayahuasca) is a godlike teacher and that its mother is an anaconda or a boa constrictor. Shamans move back and forth from this reality to the 'hallucinated' one, which they believe is as real as our lives here on sober Earth. These brightly colored snakes have to be the turquoise serpents--the teachers from the other realm/dimension/whatever--who Virginia has forgotten once she gave herself over wholly "from sun wise to clockwise to soul trading" to the Europeans. "Virginia" tells the story of the loss of that sacred knowledge and wisdom and understanding of what we are doing here on this planet, "Strong Black Vine" is a sort of instruction manual for getting spiritual seekers back there, and "Battle of Trees" is Tori and the "Tori" of 'Night of Hunters' going back to a pivotal time when mankind (or at least the Celts) lived in harmony and cooperation with the natural world, and then that was taken away from them by the church. Nobody wants to read all this I know, but the more I think about what I've learned because of Tori Amos's enigmatic but ingeniously written lyrics, I just get hungrier and hungrier for more. |
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| Tori Amos – Battle of Trees Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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"Battle of Trees" is part of the narrative (story) of the "Night of Hunters" album, and it also contributes to Amos's spiritual themes that are referred to throughout her catalog. The song's basic place in "Night of Hunters," as I interpret it so far (after hundreds of listens--but I always make new discoveries in Amos's music as the years pass) is: 1. Shattering Sea = the narrator (Tori calls her Tori) and her mate/partner/significant other have a devastating conflict as they cross the Atlantic ocean from the U.S. to Ireland. It's a life-changing experience. 2. Snow Blind = Night comes--either as part of an internal rationalizing process or literally, depending on your interpretation (both are probably intended)--and Tori realizes that she has been blinded (emotionally/psychologically) by daylight...in other words, she had chosen to believe everything was great in her relationship because things were generally light/OK, but with the night she "sees clearly." She appeals to the shape-shifting fox/goose character, Anabelle, and Anabelle tells Tori that she has to follow her in order to make sense of it all. A note in my opinion: while a shape-shifting fox/goose sounds absolutely ridiculous and totally random, when I realized that this album is built on a scaffolding of both astronomy and astrology, I discovered that there is a constellation called Vulpecula that is drawn out to be a fox holding a goose in its jaws--so that solves the seemingly random pairing of the two animals. In antiquity, the constellation was imagined as a fox with a goose in its mouth. Later on, the two animals were imagined as two separate constellations--a fox and a goose, separately. And now, Vulpecula is once again a fox/goose. So over time, mankind has imagined this area of the sky as a pair of animals that has essentially shifted its nature from predator-plus-prey to predator-and-prey-in-coexistance, and now back to predator-plus-prey. In this sense, Anabelle makes absolute sense. So Tori meets her and follows her back (or forward?) in time 3,000 years to witness her relationship with her soul mate at that time... 3. Battle of Trees = Tori and her significant other were mated in another time, as well, and they worked together in battle: his consonants were sharp and cutting/penetrating (i.e., male force), and her vowels were trusted (i.e., softer qualities associated with the feminine aspect). The power they had was language, and that language was powerful in large part because it was imbued with nature: every single letter had a counterpart in the plant world, and each of these plants (and therefore each letter) had special qualities and powers unto itself--we should think of these plants as human- or animal-like in nature. Tori is singing in this song about a time when human beings are living in harmony with nature--a theme common and consistent in most of her albums, and especially the most recent--and so words were a part of nature, which made them far more dynamic and organic, and the skies referenced throughout the album also represent that nature. Throughout the song, Amos names various trees, and all those trees represented a letter with its own qualities and powers--and she even included a legend to the letter/plant correspondence in the album's liner notes. "Battle of Trees" is not just about a man and a woman's relationship. It's about humanity's relationship with the planet itself, where the planet is described in nuanced detail in the form of both plants and people. A significant key to understanding where this all fits in Amos's mind are the lines: "From Ivy leaves/is an ale that can unveil/The hidden meanings and serpents/Only revealed in visions." As with "cactus practice," these lines refer to an organic and spiritual hallucinogenic experience that is geographically inconsistent with the song--cacti don't grow in Ireland, and while Ivy does, I believe Amos is referring to another vine: Banisteriopsis caapi, the primary ingredient in ayahuasca, which Amos has said she has taken with shamans in South America. Most commonly, an ayahuasca experience involves seeing vibrant, often fluorescent, colors and very often (something that puzzles scientists) people who have drunk ayahuasca describe having seen and interacted with huge and frightening-but-wise serpent creatures. People native to the Amazon region who take ayahuasca for spiritual reasons state simply that the serpent-beings met during the experience are the actual spirit of the caapi vine, whose mother they believe is an actual snake, and people often claim to be enlightened by the intangible and mostly inexplicable knowledge of life/enlightenment that these serpents impart. I'm fairly certain that Amos is referring to the caapi vine here because of certain other songs, including "Strong Black Vine," which is a straightforward recounting of her interactions with ayahuasca, and "Virginia," in which Amos sings about the eponymous character--who we should note is both an American Indian woman and the land itself: so hundreds of years go by (the red road carved up by sharp knife) she's a girl out working her trade and she loses a little each day to ghetto pimps and presidents who try and arouse her turquoise serpents she can't recall what they represent and when you ask, she won't know I puzzled for years over what the "turquoise serpents" represent, but now I am fairly certain that they are the fluorescent snake deities that come from the "ale that can unveil/the hidden meanings and secrets/only revealed in visions" from "Battle of Trees." At the end of the song are a number of homophone-puns that underscore what happened to the relationship: After "the church began to twist the old myths," all this happened: The Reed gave way then [Can be heard as the r-e-a-d--as in the language itself, and its common use, which was undermined by the church, as it only allowed clerics to be literate] to the Elder [this probably refers to church elders--language and the native language's correspondence with the essences of nature were simply taken over by the church that invaded Ireland] The Earth turns her wheel so that Night follows Day [so after a long period of knowledge of the land and its inherent language, a long night came] From Dawn to Dawn From Winter to Winter The day the Ash had power [This, I believe, is a pun: because of the context of the song, it's obvious that "ash" refers to a specific tree species; however, in this use it can be understood as the ash of the Catholic church==as in Ash Wednesday] over the Alder [in the tree alphabet, letters may have had various powers over one another, but here I think this is another pun, where just as "ash" [tree] can be understood as ash of a religious significance, "alder" can also be heard as "altar." So here the ash--which can be seen as the result of a death--has power over the religious altar; i.e., death has power over the new invasive religion, as opposed to the previous spirit-imbued language, which worked in harmony with life] So that's my understanding of "Battle of Trees" as I hear it so far. It's part of the album's story and it explains how the couple were when they lived in harmony in another life, but I believe its larger 'story' is about how a native Celtic belief system, which involved the lives in the heavens and the living planet, was corrupted and essentially killed by the invading Christian church. So here she goes back to the source and describes when this sudden imbalance happened, and she begins to understand that her world is in disharmony, where it used to be fully harmonized with her lover and with the universe. She's identified the rupture in herself and her relationship, and having learned that, she forges ahead, back into the future and into the "mighty stars" to try to balance her world back out again. Just my thoughts. Tweet me at @ArtistLike to share yours! |
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