Concertina

"Do you ever feel like you walk in a room, and you don't know why, but you're just so uncomfortable you're crawling out of your skin, even though nobody's touched you, physically? That's in 'Concertina,' when you feel like you haven't excavated enough of your different personalities that when one pops up, you're not sure where it came from, and you try to hack it out of yourself. It shocks you that you could have this kind of fault, or that other people could bring it out in you." [Tori Amos; A.P. Magazine, Oct99]

I've always felt this song to be a companion to Lust. I think she's talking about a person who is a little controlling and unpredictable in their moods. It's here I think that we start the many future references to a glass world, and all those references to her changing/being changed. It's like since TVAB her world is fragile to her. "Here in a glass world". Also transparent. And I personally think Concertina could be alluding to a person's wild mood swings,and how that person can embody both ends of the mood spectrum in seconds, a concertina is an instrument that expands and contracts from large to small, opposites, like fierce and calm.

That persons thoughts are more important than hers/she thinks about their thoughts before her own (as she runs into "your thought from across the room") that that persons thoughts are always there first in her mind/already there before she's even had her own thoughts.

Chinese paper cuts is interesting. Going back to the fragile world.. Chinese paper cuts are thought to promote positive energy in the home if you decorate your home with them. So interesting that "Just another fix" follows this line... all the little fixes you try to make your world better in any way.

How I think this is in comparison to Lust again is how it feels the same person talking in both songs, a person who is searching to make sense of their new world and isn't sure how to live through a world they are not in control of anymore.

This song perfectly captures that feeling of being completely out of your skin, in a situation where your unsure which personality is gonna prevail. Obviously, by the 40th drink, your pretension usually subsides

this song is really pretty, its definitely one of tori's greatest ones

Concertina is such a beautiful song; words can't express how much I love it. I'm disappointed that it's only got 2 comments.

"I run into your thought from across the room."

I know this feeling. You feel like you have so many personalities you're splitting in, not two, but five, or ten, or tiny little folds...concertina.

I think the line, "i know the truth is in between the 1st and the 40th drink" is one of my favorites in all of her songs. To me it means that people tend to say things when they've been drinking that they would not tell people if they were sober. Personally, I've let things slip about myself when I've been drinking.

thanks for all your thoughts, never got much out of this song before now...

I love the song, but have to say that the lyrics are meaningless gibberish. I mean, " i got my fuzz all tipped to play " ... what?