dark goddess

not from toronto tonight - but a gorgeous picture from http://rosenauer.dk

i have just returned from a tori amos concert down at the molson amphitheatre. it's almost like a summer tradition - summers when tori is touring, she always makes her way to the lake ontario venue. it really is a gorgeous venue - especially when you have seats about 25 feet away from the stage. stage-left side. the side that she faces for the majority of the show. heaven.

i have seen tori every time she's come to toronto - well, to be honest, all except one - the convocation hall show during the 1994 'under the pink' tour, and was that ever a mistake... at the time i decided i was too broke to go and it has ended up being the impetus for me to go to every other tori show since then no matter what the money situation is or isn't. as tori once told me herself (i had the honour of doing a phone interview with her in 1992), "what's money between friends?". and her music is absolutely one of my best friends in the world. her music brings me such solace, strength, sadness, pain, anger, fear, joy and love. i've found nothing to quite compare to it - and i've looked in many, many, many places. probably the closest to it is moist/david usher or david bowie (but the regret with bowie is that i was just a wee gurl growing up through most of his career. i mean, ziggy stardust was released the year after i was born. while his music remains incredibly meaningful to me - it's not a soundscape that was painted during important moments of my own life).

each and every time i see a tori show - one of her girls (her songs) brings me to tears. and it's always unexpected and always different. usually its because i suddenly have click moment where i feel that i completely understand a song on a very different level that listening to it over a hundred times on cd will never bring. tori has this way of communicating the songs live in a way that is almost completely via sonic energy. it's impossible to explain and i'm beginning to feel like a gushing fangurl - but it's just how much her music makes me feel.

tonight's song was 'icicle'. a song about tori as a young girl masturbating while her preacher father hosted easter dinner in the room below her bedroom. it's a song about robert plant and the way she felt when she played that 'devil's music' after hearing church hymns all evening. the song isn't a tear-jerker (not like 'playboy mommy' the one that got me last time about a miscarriage and the concept that the little soul just didn't want to be born to a girl like tori) but somehow at the beginning i caught a flash of her conflict and strife over her upbringing and how she just knew that she was going to break with everything that her family wanted and expected from her.

the other song that hit in an unexpected level was 'the beekeeper' from her latest album. it is a story about the fear of losing one's mother to old age after she recently lost her brother in an automobile accident. the lyric is very staightforward and fairly linear (a rarity in tori's lyric writing, to be certain!) but the emotion behind the song was nothing other than utter and complete respect to the dark goddess who comes to take us all back to her one day or the next. tori's performance of this song was so remarkable and so visceral live (when on record i like the song, but it's certainly not one of my picks on her album) that i have left with a new understanding of one of the many onion layers that makes up this talented artist's music.

Flaxen hair blowing in the breeze
It is time for the geese to head south
I have come with my mustard seed
I cannot accept that she will be taken from me

"Do you know who I am" she said
"I'm the one who taps you on the shoulder when it's your time
Don't be afraid I promise that she will awake
Tomorrow somewhere
Tomorrow somewhere"

Wrap yourself around
The tree of life and the dance of the infinity
Of the hive
Take this message to Michael

I will comb myself into chains
In between the tap dance clan
And your ballerina gang
I have come for the beekeeper
I know you want my
You want my queen
Anything but this
Can you use me instead?

In your gown with your breathing mask
Plugged into a heart machine
As if you ever needed one
I must see the beekeeper I must see if she'll keep her alive
Call Engine 49 I have come with my mustard seed

Maybe I'm passing you by
Just passing you by girl
I'm passing you by
On my way
On my way
I'm just passing you by
But don't be confused
One day I'll be coming for you...
I must see the beekeeper
I must see the beekeeper

[tonight's setlist | original sinsuality, icicle,blood roses, here. in my head, general joy (o-my-fucking-gods!), mother, crazy, if you could read my mind (gordon lightfoot cover), both sides now (joni mitchell cover), cars and guitars, northern lad, spark, taxi ride, the beekeeper, jamaica inn, cloud on my tongue, putting the damage on, baker baker]