This is the post where I alienate Tori Amos fans and drama people
I just looked up Tori Amos online to see how badly beaten I'm going to get for writing the following, and I'm going to get beaten pretty badly. So let me start out by saying how awesome Tori Amos is. According to the internet she is the co-founder of RAINN, a sexual abuse support network, as well as expresses true survivorship in her songs, inspiring many women.
Point is, I know that song "Silent All These Years," is about surviving sexual abuse (at least I thought so, but I just stumbled upon a guy with a Tori Amos webpage - that's right, he's got a Tori Amos webpage - that suggests the song is: "...basically wistful, a lament of a probably single mother with a self-indulgent and non-committal boyfriend and a generally unfulfilling life." Whatever, guy. Hey, by the way, can I get arrested for that? Copying and pasting someone's analysis of Tori Amos's "Silent All These Years" into my blog?) but even though I know that, I really hate that song. The subject matter has nothing to do with why I hate it. I'm just not a fan of overdone dramatic music, the kind where you feel like you've got to be weeping a little when you hear it, maybe slowly petting a cat, wrapped in a blanket sitting by a window (except for Van Morrison and U2, who can do whatever the hell they want and it's awesome). I mean, have you ever been driving, windows down, beautiful day, it's the weekend and you are PUMPED, and then something like "Silent All These Years" comes on the radio? That, my friends, is an awful feeling.
But besides all that, there's another reason I hate that song. I'll tell you.
When I was in high school there were kids who did drama, all the plays and whatnot and many of them were good at it, and before you go yelling at me for making fun of them I was in the plays a couple of times too and those kids were awesome. Besides, they're not really my target. The people I'm really talking about were the kids who didn't really do drama - not seriously anyway - but who hung out with all the drama kids and wore flowy clothes and hung out in the student lounge all the time. The student lounge at our high school featured really dirty couches and floors and a couple vending machines. Well, the crux of this meandering story, in which you will discover that it's actually OK that I'm making fun of some people and Tori Amos, at least a little, is that one day I walked into the student lounge to check my mailbox - see if I'd gotten any hot gossip from my buds in the form of carefully folded notes - and that song, "Silent All These Years," was absolutely blasting from the stereo and the drama kids, wearing formless skirts and pants in black, and chains, naturally, were all draped out on the dirty couches and chairs, looking like someone had just died - like, I'm thinking maybe Robert Smith of The Cure or something - and I just stared, and I swear to you, to this day I have not seen such a flagrant display of unnecessary melodrama. I was no Queen of Cool or anything but come on. Don't lie on the dirty couches and act all tortured when "Silent All These Years" is playing. I mean, Jesus, it was private school.
Point is, I know that song "Silent All These Years," is about surviving sexual abuse (at least I thought so, but I just stumbled upon a guy with a Tori Amos webpage - that's right, he's got a Tori Amos webpage - that suggests the song is: "...basically wistful, a lament of a probably single mother with a self-indulgent and non-committal boyfriend and a generally unfulfilling life." Whatever, guy. Hey, by the way, can I get arrested for that? Copying and pasting someone's analysis of Tori Amos's "Silent All These Years" into my blog?) but even though I know that, I really hate that song. The subject matter has nothing to do with why I hate it. I'm just not a fan of overdone dramatic music, the kind where you feel like you've got to be weeping a little when you hear it, maybe slowly petting a cat, wrapped in a blanket sitting by a window (except for Van Morrison and U2, who can do whatever the hell they want and it's awesome). I mean, have you ever been driving, windows down, beautiful day, it's the weekend and you are PUMPED, and then something like "Silent All These Years" comes on the radio? That, my friends, is an awful feeling.
But besides all that, there's another reason I hate that song. I'll tell you.
When I was in high school there were kids who did drama, all the plays and whatnot and many of them were good at it, and before you go yelling at me for making fun of them I was in the plays a couple of times too and those kids were awesome. Besides, they're not really my target. The people I'm really talking about were the kids who didn't really do drama - not seriously anyway - but who hung out with all the drama kids and wore flowy clothes and hung out in the student lounge all the time. The student lounge at our high school featured really dirty couches and floors and a couple vending machines. Well, the crux of this meandering story, in which you will discover that it's actually OK that I'm making fun of some people and Tori Amos, at least a little, is that one day I walked into the student lounge to check my mailbox - see if I'd gotten any hot gossip from my buds in the form of carefully folded notes - and that song, "Silent All These Years," was absolutely blasting from the stereo and the drama kids, wearing formless skirts and pants in black, and chains, naturally, were all draped out on the dirty couches and chairs, looking like someone had just died - like, I'm thinking maybe Robert Smith of The Cure or something - and I just stared, and I swear to you, to this day I have not seen such a flagrant display of unnecessary melodrama. I was no Queen of Cool or anything but come on. Don't lie on the dirty couches and act all tortured when "Silent All These Years" is playing. I mean, Jesus, it was private school.
posted by Cara Maria McDonough at 2:57 PM
3 Comments:
Cara, the scary thing is that I don't think that was one specific time---I think at any given moment you could have walked into the student lounge (the old one, from when we were there, not the new clean one...who knows what goes on THERE) and found those kids draped in displays of intense melodrama. It was a constant, like Ms. Walters wacky hats. Those kids personafied melodrama. And I DID do the plays, but I did not drape myself on dirty couches. Nor do I like Tori Amos. So there.
FOR SOME REASON, WHENEVER I THINK OF TORI AMOS I THINK OF FIONA APPLE. I HAVE TO REMIND MYSELF THAT TORI IS THE ONE WHO LOOKS UNCOMFORTABLE SITTING SIDEWAYS WHILE SINGING ON THE PIANO BENCH. FIONA APPLE DID THAT HOT "CRIMINAL VIDEO. I'D DRAPE MYSELF OVER A DIRTY COUCH FOR FIONA.
agreed cara.
i don't have that much against tori amos, but man there was too much angst in that student lounge for a rich, suburban private school.
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