Shattering Seas: The Creative Spirit of Tori Amos

Every now and then, a musician comes along whose creations cut to the very core of your soul from the moment you first hear them.
For me, Tori Amos was that musician.

Image Source: Rhino.com

As I sit here preparing to write this post, one monumentally daunting question looms before me: where do I even begin?

Anyone who is familiar with Amos knows that her back catalogue includes a vast amount of high-quality material – her iconic 1996 Boys for Pele album comes to mind at once – but if I were pressed to name the works I love the most, I would choose The Beekeeper (2005) as my favourite album, while my favourite song would have to be Shattering Sea from Night of Hunters (2011).

Every ardent Amos fan also knows of her tireless advocacy for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). She has fought for womens' right to self-determination and autonomy throughout her career, which is one of the main reasons I admire her so much.

In this post, I will discuss the profound impact her music has had on my life.

Mentally searching through Amos' back catalogue for a single track that stood out to me the most was no easy task, but as I have mentioned, Shattering Sea is my favourite. Its mood is somewhat ominous. Its stirring notes and frenetic pace evoke the sounds of an oncoming storm. Listening to this song makes me feel as though every nerve in my body is being stretched tight as a bow, and yet – just like the passing of a storm – when it ends, I feel as though I have been washed clean: calmed, stilled, relieved of my anxiety.

Shattering Sea's effect reminds me of the homeopathic principle of fighting like with like (I'm not seeking to get into the whole "does homeopathy work" debate here – I'm well aware of the controversy surrounding that issue – just stating that in line with the basic theory that underpins it, the tumultuous, seething notes of Shattering Sea are often far more effective at soothing my anger than any nice, calming melody that you would think might be more likely to help). For those who want to listen to a quick sample of this song (or the whole thing, if you happen to be a SoundCloud subscriber), I have embedded the track from Amos' SoundCloud page below. You can also listen to it on YouTube here.

The entire Night of Hunters album can be heard here.

Another album of hers that has to rank as my favourite is the more folksy The Beekeeper. Two of the songs from this album – The Power of Orange Knickers, featuring Damien Rice, and the short yet lyrically intense Original Sinsuality – delve into a theme that often surfaces in Amos' work: women's right to assert and reclaim their sexual agency, autonomy and pleasure, in a world that deems them guilty of "sin" if they choose to do so. In a deeply moving interview published in 2010, Amos spoke about how her own sense of authentic, loving sexuality had been shattered by a sexual assault in her youth, and how religious guilt had made the experience much worse than it could otherwise have been.

I've been told love and lust cannot be part of the same equation; that being fucked against a wall is not love. Who thought up that idea? It has kept people from giving to each other completely, and under control for centuries. And thoughts like these had me in a rage for years . . . I didn't confront my religious past until I was 24 and I'd become so ill from sexual guilt I sought help.

People must be told about the self-loathing that follows rape and how it is the greatest breakage in divine law to mutilate themselves. Emotionally, I mutilated myself by feeling I'm not worthy of being loved and fucked at the same time. I already had the hatred women feel for themselves in the Christian church in terms of that tyranny of believing love is one thing and lust another – that was where I began to be segregated within myself – but the rape compounded that feeling a thousandfold. So . . . my boyfriend has to say, 'I am not the man who raped you.' And, when we make love, he'll leave on the light and say, 'Look at me, what's my name?' And he'll ask, 'What am I doing?' And I'll say his name and try to say, 'You're fucking me'. Then, he'll hold me and say, 'And I love you.' So, I really am healing, ceasing to see myself as a victim, which is the only way out of this.

I also want to highlight Toast: a deeply affecting song about having to say goodbye to a loved one. I will always remember listening to it at the start of 2009, after the end of what I felt could have been a promising romance. Melodramatic as the experience was in some respects – tinged with teenage angst and turmoil – I was genuinely saddened by the fact that things would never work out: that circumstances beyond our control were intervening, whether I liked it or not.

During that time of turmoil, Amos' haunting voice was a balm to my bruised heart.

When I heard her gently sing about the necessity of having to let go, all of the suffering within me broke and gave way to a new sense of understanding and acceptance. I knew in that moment that I would always be grateful for how the guy in question had affected my life. I knew – much as it saddened me to admit this – that it would be better for us to part. I knew that wherever his journey took him, I would be happy to have known him. From that moment onwards, I listened to Toast any time I was struggling to deal with things. The song played a vitally important role in my ability to genuinely let go and move on.

I also wanted to share this live performance of Toast that I find particularly beautiful.

The Beekeeper can be listened to in full here.

At this point, I also want to give an honourable mention to Amos' amazing live rendition of Smells like Teen Spirit below, which dates from the year 1992. Smells Like Teen Spirit is a difficult song to cover – as it belongs totally to Nirvana – but Tori somehow managed to produce a version that carried her own unique twist.

Thank you for reading. ❤️ I hope this post will inspire someone else to check out Amos' powerful, mesmerising music.

I haven't had time to cover everything I wanted to say about it (this post would have been been ridiculously long if I had!) but I hope that the songs, analyses and anecdotes I have provided here will be of interest.

P.S. I also want to make a brief note stating that I found the small photograph of Amos at the piano on Wikimedia Commons (I went through an inordinate amount of stress figuring out how to successfully wrap the text around that picture. I had to try out a number of different HTML codes before I finally found one that worked ... and then I wasn't able to place the image source caption right under the picture, as I had wanted to. I've endured quite a tale of woe this afternoon. 😭🙃😂)

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