Cathy & I after riding the emotional Tori trainJune 1995: I am 14 years old and on my last family vacation with both my parents in Hilton Head, South Carolina. In just two weeks our little family will split apart but for right now, we are all cozy in a little condo at the tip of a peninsula and everything is normal. My best friend, Sarah, and I are sitting on a balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean at sunset. Bored of the song "Life is a Highway", I ask for one of the tapes Sarah has brought along. She hands me a clear cassette that I pop into my Walkman. Tori Amos.
I've heard of Tori from our friend Michelle who wears her concert t-shirts to cross country practices. The tape starts. "Little Earthquakes." I rewind and listen to it again. And then again. The throbbing beat of the song matches the waves that I watch roll up into the sand below. I am paralyzed by it. I eventually listen to other songs, rewind, and repeat. Sarah later jokes to our friends that she never saw her Tori tape again. I literally wore down the spool of tape and I don't stop listening to Tori's voice for another four years. I would be lying if I didn't say she moved me through my entire high school career.
How can one person who I never even personally knew be such a powerful influence in my life? Tori had a cult following: a watercolor kit of people who were touched by beauty, strange-ness, sexuality, inner rage, and the realization that they were never going to be one of those "pretty girls". It was through Miss Amos that I formed an incredibly close bond with Michelle- spending Friday evenings in high school studying lyrics with the same intensity you might study Witman or Joyce. It was how my friend Melissa later confessed that she "snagged" our friendship by writing down Tori lyrics on a notebook that she strategically placed in my sight during our sophomore year speech class. When I recognized the lyrics from Under the Pink, I struck up a conversation and ten years later she was in my small wedding party. My college roommate, Stefanie, still recalls waking up to a giant Tori poster that I had hung (clinging to who I knew I was) the day I moved into our dorm room freshman year of college.
It was Tori who encouraged that it was okay to be a little different- even a little weird. God bless my mother who allowed me to wear prom dresses with Adidas soccer shoes to school throughout my freshman and sophomore year. It was Tori who Megan and I cued to be the first song we listened to when we took our first drive at 16. It was Tori who hung in our lockers and was written in the margins of our notebooks. It was Tori who eased me through my first unrequited love: "Here in my head I found you running around and following me...." It was Tori who was my first concert where I learned to appreciate how a true musician can adapt their very own work so that a concert is an art form and not just a repeat of how they sound on their cd. I owe so much to a woman who I never even met. Miss Tori, you are the bomb.
December 2011: Cathy and I are sitting in the Chicago Theater dressed in our finest: dresses, tights, stylish belts, boots, and heels! It so happens that we attended the very same concerts ten plus years ago for both the Dew Drop Inn and Choir Girl Hotel tours. "We may have sat right next to each other!" we wonder aloud. We are giddy at the sight of her grand piano sitting empty on the stage. A keyboard is positioned behind it and it is well known that Tori often will play both keyboard and piano at once. "Only a woman could do that," Cathy says as she does an imitation of the dualing piano playing.
When Tori enters the stage, we almost leap out of our seats. Miss Amos, ten years later, still has fire red hair and an adorable but powerful stage presence. Her outfit does not disappoint: shiny red leggings tucked into glossy red pumps and a big black cape. The shoulder of her cape is sequined which reflects the stage lights onto the floor into a pool of light that resembles restless water for the entire evening. A quartet of violins, viola, and cello accompany her. Just when you think a song can't get more beautiful, Tori proves you wrong. I think Cathy and I were not prepared for all the emotion that flooded over us. Songs I had not thought about for years were stirred up along with the many emotions I had as an adolescent. People I had not thought about since high school passed me by as though I was scrolling through Facebook. When it was all said and done, Cathy and I were glowing and with goosebumps. I had forgotten how much I had loved. I remembered every lyric of Father Lucifer.
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