Corn Mother: Genealogies : Part 1

Tori Amos: Piece by Piece
by Tori Amos, Ann Powers

From her critically acclaimed 1992 debut, Little Earthquakes, to the recent hit, Scarlet's Walk, Tori Amos has been a formidable force in contemporary music, with one of the most dedicated fan bases in the industry. In Tori Amos: Piece by Piece, the singer herself takes readers beyond the mere facts, explaining the specifics of her creative process - how her songs go from ideas and melodies to recordings and passionately performed concert pieces.

Written with acclaimed music journalist Ann Powers, Tori Amos: Piece by Piece is a firsthand account of the most intricate and intimate details of Amos's life as both a private individual and a very public performing musician. In passionate and informative prose, Amos explains how her songs come to her and how she records and then performs them for audiences everywhere, all the while connecting with listeners across the world and maintaining her own family life (which includes raising a young daughter). But it is also much more, a verbal collage made by two strong female voices - and the voices of those closest to Amos - that calls upon genealogy, myth, and folklore to express Amos's unique and fascinating personal history. In short, we see the pieces that make up - as Amos herself puts it - "the woman we call Tori."

With photos taken especially for this book by the photographer Loren Haynes, Tori Amos: Piece by Piece is a rare treat for both Tori listeners and newcomers alike, a look into the heart and mind of an extraordinary musician.

Chapter 1

Ann: Our mother is the ground we stand on, and the earth itself is our mother. How many people have believed this, over the centuries? Society itself began with kinship, lineages marked by blood and love, while civilizations took root in relationship to the places where people settled and learned the land. The idea that the world was born of a woman is common in myth, across continents: in Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean, northern Europe, and the Americas, such stories abound. The Genesis story of a lone male God making life with a lift of the finger has achieved cultural dominance, but beyond that bragging tale of six days' labor are others that present Creation as an ongoing process, undertaken by a matriarchal force nourished by her family's respect and love.

Throughout the ages, people have chosen gods to suit their apparent needs; similarly, an artist can view her personal acts of creation in light of various sources. She can thank her ego alone, but that is dangerous-the limits of an individual's personality can quickly turn genius into a dry spring. She can acknowledge her peers as inspiration, cite the demands of the marketplace and the influence of various schools, but influences not so carefully chosen also cannot be avoided.

Every artist is born in a place, within a family, and though she may leave those sources far behind, they remain within her. The achievement comes in acknowledging those origins without being devoured by them. The Cherokee have a story that relates to the need to find balance between personal ambition and accepting life's offerings:

Selu, the Corn Mother, lives with her grandsons in the mountains. The young men are hunters, and Corn Mother provides the staples that round out their meals. The men want to hunt and hunt, and this greed for meat makes Corn Mother sad, yet she loves her descendants and does not challenge them. One morning her grandsons spy on Corn Mother as she makes the corn, which falls from her body whenever she slaps her sides. This terrifies the men, and they reject her. She withers, but before dying instructs them to bury her in the earth and tells them she will arise again as a plant that will need to be cultivated. Corn Mother does as she promises, but in her new form she cannot be blithely generous. People must learn to cultivate her; they must earn her fruitfulness. With this lesson Corn Mother teaches humankind the need for balance and the love of nature's gifts.

Tori Amos heard the story of Corn Mother from her grandfather as a girl, during summers spent with him in North Carolina. The love of the earth was ingrained in her, along with an awareness that her own talents were a blessing she could not take for granted. Her Cherokee blood is one element in the complex weave of influences that created Amos as she grew toward the moment when she could begin, respectfully, to create herself.

Tori:

"The grass. The rocks. The trees. Don't care nothin' about who ya are or who ya think ya are or who ya pretendin' to be." Poppa would be in fits of tickles by that saying. "And Shug . . . [what Poppa called me-short for Sugar Cane and Shush all mixed up], Shug, when ya think yer mighty like a mountain ya might wanta think of being a Rock Nurse. You didn't hear yer Poppa say Rock Star. Or Night Nurse. I'm sayin' Rock Nurse, Shug. Ya know what that is? That's somebody who's needin' to take care of a rock for a year before they go and hurt themselves tryin' to move a mountain. And after a year of being humbled by how much more a rock knows than Jack's Ass, then they'll be seein' stars. The real ones, Shug-remember those?"

Conversation Between Tori and Ann:

My mother's father, my Poppa, had perfect pitch. He rocked me to sleep ever since the day I was born, singing with a tone that reminds me of sunlight shining through black strap molasses. It was a pure velvet tenor voice. He and my Nanny had a town life-he would shoot pool, they had culture. I remember every Saturday Poppa and Uncle John would bring home chili dogs from the pool room so that Nanny would have a break before the big Sunday family dinner. Nanny was a four-by-four. Four foot eleven inches and 214 pounds. Poppa would say there could never be too much of Nanny to love. When no one was looking, he would bring her a flower that he picked up on his storytelling wanderings, give her a kiss on the cheek, and say, "This flower wished it was as perddy as you, Bertie Marie."

Nanny grew the garden. It was tiny, but it enticed me because of the begonias and the honeysuckle. It was wedged up against the Lutheran church parking lot. Nanny didn't want to unravel the covert darkness of a small town. She just wanted to uncomplicate everyone's life once they came into her home and sat at her table. Nanny's table would wrap its arms around you with soul food. The biscuits, the creamed corn, the corn on the cob, the corn pudding, the corn bread in the skillet, the whole thing. Fried okra, pinto beans, turnips, and mustard greens-"Sweeter than collard greens," she would say. And in a way, Nanny's love was in the food. It was very much that kind of twelve-people-for-lunch-every-day kind of thing. She was this warm, warm creature who wasn't overly educated. When Poppa died, when I was nine and a half, she started to lose her mind. Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces" finally started to make sense to me then.

Copyright © 2005 by Tori Amos.

About the Author

Tori Amos is foremost among the artists who have redefined the role of women in music in the last decade. Her piano-based music revived that instrument in rock and roll, and her complex yet accessible songs have pushed the parameters of songwriting. Since the double-platinum success of her solo debut, Little Earthquakes, in 1992, Amos's albums and tours have reached millions of listeners worldwide. She is the co-founder of the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN). Her latest recording is The Beekeeper.

Ann Powers has been writing about popular music and society since the early 1980s. She is the author of Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America and co-editor of Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap. She was a pop critic for the New York Times from 1997 until 2001 and an editor for the Village Voice from 1993 until 1996. She has written for most music publications and her work has been widely anthologized. She is currently a curator at the Experience Music Project, an interactive music museum in Seattle, Washington.