Corn Mother: Genealogies : Part 2

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

(Page 2 of 3)

Poppa was born Calvin Clinton Copeland and answered to C.C. or Clint as a boy. But I only heard most people call him Poppa-at the shops in town, at choir where he sang every Sunday and collected pieces for his stories-whether inspired by the organist making eyes at the minister or the manager of the hardware store running off with the pharmacist's wife . . . Poppa, unlike Nanny, did want to unravel the covert darkness of a small town while we all sat together on the porch snapping beans-Nanny, Granny Grace, Aunt Ellen, me, and my mom, Mary Ellen.

Nanny and Poppa each had a full-blooded Cherokee grandparent who was on the Eastern Cherokee tribal rolls. They were spiritually drawn to the old ways and chose to stay on their native ground. From the Smokies of east Tennessee to east of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, they settled on old Cherokee ancestral land. They understood that this ancestral land was their sacred spiritual source, just as the Lakota will say the Black Hills are theirs. This is where I spent all my summers as a child.

Tori:

Poppa wouldn't give up on me.

"Focus on that tree, little 'un," he would say. We're talking around 1967, when I was four.

"Come on, Poppa, I'm hungry."

"You almost have it. You can get this. Feel her strength. Let her tell you her story. Now sit still and let her play you like you play that piano."

As I got older Poppa would push me.

"Can you hear the ancestors, little 'un? They are not happy today."

"No, Poppa, I can't really hear them."

"Then ya just aren't listenin', are ya? Now don't you roll those eyes at me. Yer gonna needs to know this one day."

"Know what?"

"How to tap into a place's power spot." He would bend down with his hand, touching that sandy Carolina soil.

"What are you talking about?"

"Hum. Ya gotta hear the hum." He looked straight at me as if I were being told the most important piece of information ever.

"The hum?"

"Yes, the hum of the Great Mother. Let this sink in. Every inch of this land has been walked on by somebody's ancestors. That means there are events, conversations, killins', singins', dancin'-Lord almighty-squabblin', you name it. It has happened. So ya decides first what ya needs to tap into. Find the way in. Ya must hear the tone. Follow it and yer probably at a vortex."

"You believe this, Poppa?"

"I know this, Shug: the white man don't know."

"Careful, Poppa, Dad's white."

"Hmm. He's Irish-Scottish. That ain't white. They been fightin' the white man who takes the land-takes the land till the Grim Reaper comes up and taps the white man on the shoulder and says, 'No weaslin' outta this one, yer time has come.' It used to tickle your old Poppa to see a white man turn white as a ghost."

"Okay, in English."

"Most people nowadays, Shug, don't see. Don't feel. Don't hear anythin' that science can't prove. A hundred years ago people said a man would never fly."

"But he couldn't."

"Yes, granddaughter. Yes, he could. He just hadn't figured out how. The Eagle Dancers knew man could fly. It was only in this dimension that the mechanics hadn't been worked out."

"So now we know how to fly."

"Only in the physical, granddaughter, not in the spiritual. Back to your studies, and find me a vortex before lunch."

"Does my hungry tum-tum count?"

"Nope."

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.