From: owner-precious-things-digest To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V1 #25 Reply-To: precious-things@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-precious-things-digest Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "precious-things-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. precious-things-digest Tuesday, 12 March 1996 Volume 01 : Number 025 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Blood Roses (fwd) My Favorite Novel, Boys for Pele (fwd) "Marianne" etc. Little Amsterdam (fwd) Re: Blood Roses (fwd) A Suggestion Re: music & lyrics "Caught a Lite Sneeze" Re: "Caught a Lite Sneeze" Re: Blood Roses (fwd) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Maleen Ivy Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 22:57:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: Blood Roses (fwd) Hi Guys, Since my initial decision to refrain from posting ideas which I'd previously posted on RDT was met with disapproval, I'm going to be reposting some stuff on this list. Just remember that old saying, "Be careful what ya wish for..." Blood Roses: Someone mentioned the "Possessing the Secret of Joy" reference in this one "chickens get a taste of your meat." For those who haven't read the book, in the story, young girls meet with the fate of having their genitals excised and fed to chickens. Similar to "Cornflake Girl," I think this whole song is about female circumcision. "Blood Roses?" Think about it. The whole Georgia O'Keefe thing. Tori has used the word "roses" to mean the vulva before (in Here in My Head, "Show you the roses... open their petals again and again" ). Also, in Blood Roses, the line "cut out the flute from the throat of the loon" (removing that which makes something beautiful) seems to agree with this theme. This might explain why the song feels so dark. It is. Also, it might be referring to an intellectual circumcision of women, women being scorned for loving their own bodies, and taught to feel shame for their own sexuality. Either way it's not a pretty thing. Maleen ------------------------------ From: Maleen Ivy Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 23:01:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: My Favorite Novel, Boys for Pele (fwd) Some thoughts on the album, Please remember this was written before the censorship ruling and I don't think it would retain it's integrity were I to edit it... First, my overview of the album: If you think of the album as a book, I see Beauty Queen as the cover of the book, stark, elegant, enticing, yet simple, and not too revealing. Then comes Horses, the book's forward. The songs from Blood Roses to Putting the Damage On are the text of the book. Finally, Twinkle is the back cover. It closes the book. Twinkle is the affirmation of self that Tori has at the end of each of her albums. On Little Earthquakes it was "Give me life. Give me pain. Give me my self again." (I want control of my life.) On Under the Pink it was "We'll see how brave you are." (Okay, I know what I have to do, let's see if I can do it.) Now, it's "And she twinkles, and I sure can...so hard, so hard." (I can be stronger and shine brighter than anyone.) Tori always ends her albums with some self goal. Horses: Tori is talking about taking her life back into her own hands. She's tired of waiting for other people to make things happen. "You showed me the meadow and milkwood and silkwood. And you would if I would, but you never would..." (You showed me the promise of all these wonderful things. You said they could happen. I waited, but nothing happened.) "So I got me some horses to ride on, to ride on. They say that your demons can't go there." (Horses are a symbol of two things: grounding and movement. Tori has grounded herself and is moving towards her goals. She is no longer waiting for others.) I also see Horses as the Table of Contents of the book. She is saying, "I've got some horses, and here they are." The other songs on the album are the horses, the vehicles by which she is moving towards her goals of strength and healing. She's embarking on a journey, and she invites us to come along. Doughnut Song: (My favorite) It's quite obviously a breakup song, but more importantly it's a fuck you song. It reminds me a lot of Honey, both because of the pairing of 12 string guitar and piano, and the 'I'm over you, Jerk' aspect of it. In Doughnut Song, Tori sings "Had me a trick and a kick and your message," (We dated, you knocked me up, you dumped me.) "...never gain weight from a doughnut hole" (You can't build yourself up on something that isn't there in the first place.) "...And if I'm wasting all your time this time, maybe you never learned to take," (If I'm just an annoyance, I guess you never learned to appreciate anything worthwhile.) "And if I'm hanging onto you shade, I guess I'm way beyond the pale." (And if I'm depending on the pathetic quality of relationship and shit you give me, I'm in pretty sad shape myself.) "...Southern men can grow ... pertty, blood can be pertty like a delicate man." (similar to Putting the Damage On, how something that is hurting you can still look so attractive) "a hinge that is faltered that let's you in let's you in let's you in" (I try to close you out of my head because I know you're bad for me, but somehow I keep giving in and letting you hurt me more.) "two sons too many too many able fires" (clashing of the egos). My favorite part of this song is the end where she turns it around, "And you're wasting all my time, this time. I said you never learned to take. And if I'm hanging onto your shade, I guess I'm way beyond the pale." (Fuck you, you're not going to waste my time anymore, and I'm not going to let you make me feel pathetic. I can be strong too.) Yes, Tori, we know, and that's why we love you. Maleen ------------------------------ From: "Donald G. Keller" Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 01:43:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: "Marianne" etc. Does anyone know, by the way, about a magazine called =React= that's supposed to have a piece on Tori in it? I haven't been able to track it down at all. As Meredith says, Tori =does= talk like that all the time; it's really perversely amusing to watch interviewers on TV (particularly) get befuddled when talking to her. Francesca Lia Block (a fine writer of fantasies for young adults) actually understands and responds to Tori's mode of expression, which is one of the reasons the =Spin= piece is such a good one. I can't say I'm surprised that "Marianne" is another spontaneous composition; astonished, but not surprised, if you follow me. It has that feel, being through-composed with no repeating parts; it has sections that feel like verses & choruses, etc., but they're different every time. "Bells for Her" is the other astonishing spontaneous composition, though it goes in the other direction, hardly having structure at all (it =does= have verses and choruses, but they're barely different; just struck me that that's a harbinger of most of the =BfP= songs); I once described it as a single musical image. That prepared piano sound makes it quite unique as well. ------------------------------ From: Maleen Ivy Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 23:11:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: Little Amsterdam (fwd) This actually never received that much discussion so I'm really curious what people think about it: Does anyone think that the line "Don't take me back to the Range," is referring to Tori's Cherokee heritage? Maybe the girl in Little Amsterdam is supposed to be part Native American, the daughter of "the brown man " in the song. I think the whole song might be about "cowboys and Indians." The sheriff is a classic cowboy image, as is riding off into the sunset (the end of the song). ------------------------------ From: "Lucy M Carey" Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 10:13:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Blood Roses (fwd) If you listen to the words in Talula, that actually sounds more like the topic in "Possessing the Secret of Joy". And I have heard that the author of the book changed her name to Talula, as her African name. Just a thought! > > > > Hi Guys, > Since my initial decision to refrain from posting ideas which I'd > previously posted on RDT was met with disapproval, I'm going to be > reposting some stuff on this list. Just remember that old saying, "Be > careful what ya wish for..." > > Blood Roses: > Someone mentioned the "Possessing the Secret of Joy" reference in this one > "chickens get a taste of your meat." For those who haven't read > the book, in the story, young girls meet with the fate of having their > genitals excised and fed to chickens. > Similar to "Cornflake Girl," I think this whole song is about female > circumcision. "Blood Roses?" Think about it. The whole Georgia O'Keefe > thing. Tori has used the word "roses" to mean the vulva before (in Here > in My Head, "Show you the roses... open their petals again and again" ). > Also, in Blood Roses, the line "cut out the flute from the throat of the > loon" (removing that which makes something beautiful) seems to agree > with this theme. This might explain why the song feels so dark. It is. > Also, it might be referring to an intellectual > circumcision of women, women being scorned for loving their own bodies, > and taught to feel shame for their own sexuality. Either way it's not > a pretty thing. > Maleen > > ------------------------------ From: "Mike Harris" Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 10:57:40 GMT-5 Subject: A Suggestion A suggestion. Greg Burrell has created a FAQ containing ticket information, and I consider him an extremely reliable source. Perhaps, should Greg be willing, he could either combine this with his _Boys for Pele_ FAQ mailing list, or create a separate one ... so that people who are continually inquiring about ticket information could subscribe to that list, as opposed to posting continually to this one. Please understand I'm not personally attacking those who are asking for this information -- I'm sure when Tori comes to my area I'd be doing the same. But perhaps this would be a way of reducing the 'signal/noise' ratio spoken of in the charter. Just an idea, up for discussion. Mike ------------------------------ From: Neile Graham Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 08:11:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: music & lyrics On Sat, 9 Mar 1996, Sister Ray wrote: quoting me: > >I guess as a writer the music and words are inseparable, then: > ::: I don't think you're correct. I have a book called 'Stranger > Music' of the great singer songrwriter Leonard Cohen. This book > features many many lyrics (and poems) of the Man. If you don't know > the songs, you won't know whether the texts were lyrics to songs or > poems. Every single text could have been a lyrick, but also it 'just' > could have been a poem. I disagree. Cohen is a great singer songwriter, but he's a far better lyricist than he is a poet. The major and most neglected part of poetry is the music in the sounds of the words--rhythm and sound patterns. Cohen's music provides it for him. Without the music the words don't have much impact or power. For me at least, as a writer who is critical of other's writing as a piece of writing. I know other people's opinions and tastes vary. I don't want this to stray from our topic. Let's just say that reading Tori's lyrics on the page doesn't do that much for me, either. There are some evocative lines--many, perhaps--but without the music they don't have all that much impact as words. But put together with her music--that's power. - --Neile neile@u.washington.edu http://weber.u.washington.edu/~neile/ ------------------------------ From: "Donald G. Keller" Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 12:08:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: "Caught a Lite Sneeze" (Someone on another bulletin board asked rather plaintively if anyone could tell him what "Caught a Lite Sneeze" meant. This was my reply, which may be more than he bargained for. I thought this forum would find it interesting as well; regard it as the first installment of reviews--not to be this extensive, generally--of each song of =BfP=.) "Caught a Lite Sneeze" Let's talk about the music first. What "Caught A Lite Sneeze" Means To Me is first of all that blood- stirring electronic drumbeat and those heart-clutching harpsichord arpeggios (note that the vocal comes in =45 seconds= after the opening of the song, a very daring move for a "pop single"), the way the verse flows directly into the chorus without transition, the nicely-done stop and start ("right on time") for the bridge (which introduces piano temporarily), which again flows back into the verse almost imperceptibly, the keening Kate Bushlike backing vocals in the chorus, the (again) nicely-done dead stop at the end. I'll stand on all of this as plenty of "meaning" for me. But let's go on. "Caught a Lite Sneeze" belongs to a surprisingly large number of Tori Amos songs based around the chord-pair A minor and F: other members of this family include "Girl" and "Precious Things" (and in part "Tear in Your Hand") from =Little Earthquakes=, "Baker Baker" and "Cornflake Girl" from =Under the Pink=, plus the b-side "Honey." (This is a rather common chord sequence, to be clear: for just a few examples, Stevie Nicks' "Rhiannon"--to which "Girl" may owe a small debt--the long coda of Supertramp's "Crime of the Century," and the main theme of R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion," which Tori of course has covered. "Girl" ("she's been everybody else's girl/maybe one day she'll be her own") and "Precious Things" (with its theme of her being judged for her piano playing, not her person) seem relevant here. "Sneeze" is also a twin with "Cornflake Girl" (and =its= =UtP= twin "God") inhaving that big danceable rhythm track. An even more intriguing twin is =UtP='s "Past the Mission." In both songs we have short-of-breath staccato verses a little higher in her register, and flowing choruses a little lower in her register. And note the interesting difference that in "Past the Mission" the chorus has a =male= backing vocal (Trent Reznor) an octave =below= the main vocal, whereas "Caught a Lite Sneeze" has =female= backing vocals an octave =above= the main vocal. Did Tori Amos have any of these correspondences in mind when she wrote the song? Almost certainly not; she works by intuition. Did I have them in mind when I was first listening to the song? No; but they occurred to me very quickly when I started thinking seriously about the song. Are these correspondences meaningful? Since I subscribe to Deryck Cooke's theory that musicians tend to use the same bits of musical vocabulary to express the same ideas, that's exactly what I'm arguing. I got the subliminal sense that the song was "about" the same things that "Girl" or "Precious Things" or "Past the Mission" are "about" because the resonances of the harmony and the rhythms gave me the same kinds of feelings. Now we'll discuss the lyrics. =caught a lite sneeze= [When asked about the song in a radio interview, Tori said, "The guy was malaria." So I interpret this line as saying, I could have caught a "disease"--a really bad relationship--with him, but I got off easy.] =caught a lite breeze/caught a lightweight lightningseed= [Frankly, I've no idea what this means. I'm chalking it up to glossolalia and word association.] =boys on my left side/boys on my right side/boys in the middle= [Into the valley of death (love? =Liebestod=?) rode Tori Amos...] =and you're not here= [This couldn't be clearer, I think. Longing for a lover not present. The phrase seems to me the real emotional center of the song. In combination with the previous line, it could be paraphrased "There are men all around me, but not the one I want."] =I need a big loan from the girl zone= [Tori has been talking in interviews about how she has spent her whole life getting approval from men, and how she is trying now to reclaim her feminine aspects and gain confidence internally. This seems to be a metaphorical expression of this idea.] =buildings tumbling down/didn't know our love was so small/couldn't stand at all= [She thought there was more to the relationship than there was, and it collapsed. I kept hearing "buildings tumbling down" as "beauty can't believe" which seemed to make sense too: it looked so good, I couldn't believe it was so fragile.] =Mr. St. John just bring your son= [In a British interview she speaks about how after she and Eric broke up she degraded herself casting about for a replacement, on the rebound, concluding with the phrase "bring your son." So that's what this must mean--no idea who Mr. St. John is.] =the spire is hot and my cells can't feed= [perhaps a very odd sexual metaphor? He was ardent and she wasn't?] =and you still got that Belle dragging your foots= [again a guess: whoever this guy was had a wife or another lover] =I'm hiding it well Sister Ernestine= [trying to suppress her sexual urges as she was taught by her religious upbringing? I'm not sure she's using "Sister" in that sense here, though.] =but I still got that Belle dragging my foots= [could be either her own past, or his other lover, is making her reluctant] =right on time/you get closer and closer/called my name but there's no way in= [Again it sounds like he was pursuing the relationship more strongly than she was.] =use that fame= [She has talked frankly about playing groupie--even after she was herself famous. This seems to refer to that.] =rent your wife and kids today/maybe she will/maybe she will= [Did this guy dissemble about being married? Was the state of his marriage doubtful?] =caught a lite sneeze/dreamed a little dream= [She had fantasies about the guy but came to her senses--"Dream a Little Dream of Me"] =made my own pretty hate machine= [This seems real clear to me: in one phrase it says "I degraded myself and filled myself with the same degree of self-loathing as is expressed on that album."] =boys in their dresses= [She has talked in a few interviews about friendships with gay men, and there's the lyric in "Hey Jupiter"--=are you gay, are you blue=- - -and the one in "Blood Roses"--=I think you're a queer=--so I'm assuming that some of the songs are about those friends, and this is a reference to them as well.] So what do the lyrics mean? She was tempted to have an affair with a famous man, who may or may not have had a viable marriage; though she had given in to her sexual impulses in other situations, she stopped short of it in this one. Is the song about Trent Reznor (remembering the correspondence to "Past the Mission")? That's a very plausible interpretation; but that gets into a kind of celebrity-mongering biographical criticism that I'm not very interested in (and it isn't my business). It doesn't much matter who it was for the song to be effective. All this is provisional, of course; I'm guessing at a lot of it and could easily be wrong. But with a few odd spots the song is actually fairly coherent. Still, I'd argue that none of this matters all that much; the song is "meaningful" to me purely on the basis of the music. ------------------------------ From: Neile Graham Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 09:46:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: "Caught a Lite Sneeze" Just a couple of suggestions to add to Donald Keller's interpretation of the lyrics: > =caught a lite breeze/caught a lightweight lightningseed= To me this is an image of the transitoriness of the relationship--how quick and light it was, and unexpected > =buildings tumbling down/didn't know our love was so small/couldn't > stand at all= To me this confirms this idea > =the spire is hot and my cells can't feed= all height, no depths, nothing sustaining? > =and you still got that Belle dragging your foots= > =I'm hiding it well Sister Ernestine= > =but I still got that Belle dragging my foots= I read this as being the Southern Belle, which is a clear example of a parastic woman who uses men for their fire to keep herself going--part of the whole Pele imagery and the whole theme about appropriation of men's fire. Having grown up in the South, I'm sure the whole Southern Belle imagery is something Tori is very familiar with and another pattern she's fought against. - --Neile neile@u.washington.edu http://weber.u.washington.edu/~neile/ ------------------------------ From: HppyPhntom@aol.com Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 21:30:38 -0500 Subject: Re: Blood Roses (fwd) well. interesting....female curcumsision (sp.).... but to add another point....i heard somehwere (maybe i read it...don't remember..) that *Blood Roses* is about prostitution...... oh, well. whatever. -yas ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V1 #25 ************************************