i i e e e

Either you "get" Tori Amos, or you don't.

And I'm gonna stop apologizing for liking her music.  She's incredible.  Period.

Today's song is no exception.  I love this song, despite it being dark and full of difficult subject matter.  This is what's cool about Tori Amos, and perhaps what repulses people about her.

In the late 90's Tori Amos had 3 miscarriages.  Like any mother, she struggled with the loss.  She had planned to take a break from writing music to be a mother, but the loss spawned what would become her album "From the Choirgirl Hotel."  Many of the album's songs are about this particular kind of loss.

I woke up early this morning (5:00 A.M.) with a song called "i i e e e" playing in my head.  Immediately, I went to YouTube to see if I could find any sort of interview, or performance that would explain this song, and especially its bizarre title.  I found her explanation to be that after her second miscarriage she kept having a recurring dream.  I'll tell a condensed version, but in the dream a young Native American boy and her were travelling by car to a small town.  Upon arrival they would find that everybody had died.  As she struggled in the dream knowing so many people had died, the young boy (who she felt was her child) would say to her, "it will be all right.  We can travel to another town and save the people."  And then he would sing to her, just as you hear it in the introduction of the song "i i e e e"

I probably have lost many of you, but if you appreciate what I'm writing about, I hope you'll appreciate this song.  What I find particularly moving is her sadness as she questions why God could allow something like this to happen.

I know we're dying
and there's no sign of a parachute
we scream in cathedrals
why can't it be beautiful
why does there
gotta be a sacrifice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVb7xk4srkU

So.... uh.... Happy Mothers Day to those moms out there!  

The only control I have over what I blog about depends on the music to which I listen.  I didn't intend for my Mothers Day post be a sadder side of motherhood.  Really I didn't.  But does anybody, besides me, find beauty in sadness?  I suppose I'm allowed to find vicarious sadness beautiful when truly I am such a happy person, not only because of a happy childhood (thanks mom!) but because of a happy adulthood (thanks mother of my children!)  

As an added bonus, I'm putting a clip of Tori Amos performing this song live.  I can't get past her passion as she sings, it's intense and sincere.  Also, I love her inhibition, her fearlessness to express herself with such intensity.  Plus, playing the keyboard with one hand and piano with the other is particularly cool and effective to me.  Have I converted any of you to Tori Amos?  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLmi7vw1mTU