Torimania

My mom's birthday is in three days. That is also the start of Tori Amos's new tour, and she is starting in Seattle.

We got tickets to go the day that they were on sale :D

Dad brought mom a copy of Little Earthquakes in 1993. I was three years old and unintentionally acting as a trigger for lots of bad things, so mom was in a really bad spot mentally at the time. Dad brought her this tape and said "You need to listen to this." So she did, and the music of this woman helped pull mom through this dark period.

Mom has also said that listening to Tori with Nicole (older sis, RIP), helped mend their relationship because they weren't as close for a long time. Thus, Nicole was also a Tori fan.

The first song I can remember hearing is "Crucify" (which is unfortunate that I have a really difficult time listening to it now, but that is a different story for a different day)

Now, 16 years after first hearing Tori as a child, I am finally going with mom and dad to see her live. Holy shit!

Her music has also pulled me through some tough times. "1000 Oceans", for example, was played at Nicole's memorial.

In some sense, I can relate to almost everything on the album "Little Earthquakes". "Me and a Gun" is a bit hard to chew through purely because it is completely haunting. I have never been raped, but this song can still effect me.
Lately, "China" has been on my mind because of odd feelings about a friend buuut I really don't want to get into that right now...

I remember constantly listening to "Under The Pink" throughout 8th grade, especially the song "Bells for Her". The line "You have her face and her eyes but you are not her" reminds me A LOT of Nicole because I look (and apparently sound) a lot like her. What is really creepy is that a few years after focusing on that one line in the song, I read Nicole's rants and found that she wrote a poem about me, to me, and opened it by using that same exact quote. Fucking creepy.

I dove into "Boys for Pele" after the breakup of my last relationship (way back in 2007, oh jeez). Don't get me wrong--the breakup was really easy. I had wanted to break up with him but he ended up beating me to the punch. There was a time after where I felt fine, but then I began to realize the depths of how I felt about him in regards to how he felt about me, and suddenly I was in a very bad place. For some reason, I felt used and really whorish. That is when "Blood Roses" was played constantly on WMP. At the same time, I also listened to "Caught A Lite Sneeze"and "Doughnut Song" because of how I felt about someone else, and "Putting The Damage On" because of a friendship heading in a destructive pathway.

Beyond that, I mish-mashed everything from all the other albums and drew inspiration from many songs for character development in stories and for getting a different perspective on situations.

I can admit that after Halloween 2007, there was a time when I hardly listened to Tori because I was completely infatuated with Nightwish due to the Seattle concert that year. Dark Passion Play was played over and over, and I found it hard to listen to the past albums for a little while. Tori got a long break.

Now, I look back on how I felt about her music in the past and I can see how much I've changed. I'm only 19, but so many events and changes have already happened in my life that it feels like "What more could really happen after this?"... I do hope to still keep listening to Tori as more happens in the future.