13 Dec 2015

#liveweek Blood roses (live in New York) - Tori Amos

Bloos roses (live in New York) - Tori Amos
When I started the #liveweek, the first performance that came to my mind was, obviously, my favourite live concert ever (I just wish I could go back in time and be there...), i.e. Tori's concert for RAINN in early 1997, right after the release of her third album 'Boys for Pele' and after one of her abortions. This is the only concert whose videos have given me feelings (let's say chills) comparable to those that one can get at live events. I can only imagine what would've been like to be there for real! Anyway, this is one of the most powerful songs composed by Tori, one I cherish and tend to listen to only during particularly black moments of my life, as it helps me gather all the negativity and channel it away. This live performance in particular is incredible in my opinion, the drama of it increased by the suffering Tori herself is feeling due to her inability to give birth, a strong feeling that she is channeling towards the audience, and that is amplified by the fact that the concert is in support of RAINN, an organization supporting victims of rape. abuse and incest, an organization that Tori is part of because she went through an episode of abuse herself when she was young. I don't think I can describe with words the feelings that this song generated and still generates in me, but I tried! I think you had better just go and listen to it and, while you are at it, listen to the whole concert, I promise it's a great, great use of your time!
With this I put an end to this first #liveweek, I'm happy about how it went through, so I might consider doing it again sometime in the future! I'm sorry to leave you on such a sad note, but music is feeling and feelings are not always good in themselves, yet I think it's good to let them emerge and to live them fully, whatever they are. Because it means we are alive.



4 comments:

  1. I always heard this song as being in the context of the Rose Family (those of the Blood). Not exactly calling to them for help, but reminding them that she's aware of how her situation eventually resolves. Years later, she joined Lennon, McCartney, Jimi Hendrix and others in writing a tribute to "Rose Dover." As an aside, I think of the Family in terms of the Mystical Rose in the PARADISO. And I don't figure Tori herself as a Magdalene so much as a Beatrice, a private Gnosis. The best portrait of Tori Amos, in my opinion is William Blake's BEATRICE ON THE CAR, which is set in the Earthly Paradise and features Tori riding on what is analogous to the Markabah (God's Chariot-throne/Sophia's vehicle of Inspiration that Ezekiel witnessed abandoning the first Temple after King Josiah and the Deuteronomists purged the Ashtereh aspect of the Royal Cult), drawn by the four beasts/living creatures (Zoas, in Greek). This is how Blake threaded together EZEKIEL, the four Gospels, the PURGATORIO, and his own modernisation of Revelation in THE FOUR ZOAS. In my own experientially-based understandings, Blake also includes in his sewing-together of Spiritual History Ms. Tori Amos.

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  2. Thanks for the meaningful contribution and interesting interpretation!

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  3. You're very welcome. btw, that's a nice font.

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