MOOP!

Four and a half years ago, I was engaging in a mindless little elljay survey "What have you done" sort of life experience thing.

One of the items was "Seen Tori Amos perform live". I was fifteen. I was not especially pop culture savvy. I responded with "Who?"

A few days later, ShadowKevin wrote a post about picking battles, which touched on my offhand answer. He had chosen not to fight that fight, figuring it was ridiculous to force Highly Important Music on the snarky fifteen year old. What he essentially said (either there or in other posts) was that you couldn't force Tori on people. She had to be Found.

He said some other stuff, but what I took away from all of it was that Tori Amos had music that was strong and sad and beautiful and full of cope, and eventually, I would be at a point in my life where I would need her, and at that point I would go find her.

I've held that in the back of my mind for the last four and a half years. I've figured out who exactly Tori is, and what she's for, and yes, I've managed to fall just a little bit in love with her -after I read her introduction to the Sandman comic "Death: The High Cost of Living".

But I've never heard her music. I've never made that effort to Find her, perhaps because I've never needed to Find her. It's not that I've never felt sad and scared and empty and lone, or that I've never needed music to protect me when I'm in that zone. It's just that, I think, I've fond my own safety nets for when that happens.

I've nothing against Tori. I'd be perfectly happy to put her in my "Sad Girls with Pretty Voices" playlist, which is pretty much what I need when I'm in that bad place. But when I cry, when I truly need the music to protect me, I'm first gonna turn to the old protections, the old comforts, those made strong by a year or more of already spilled tears. I've never Needed Tori, because at all those points where I really would, I had someone else to catch me.

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She didn't play "The Tower"
And she didn't play "Lullaby for a Stormy Night"

But she did play "Harbor", which was my first, and she did play "City Hall", which makes me cry with the beauty and the sadness of it all, and she did play "Gravity" and she did play lots of new and beautiful songs and wrapped me up in her music and her voice. And so, for a few hours, in the real world (and not just in my head) I was safe.

I saw Vienna Teng yesterday last the other week. Vienna, who has held me through tearstorms and panic attacks, who has let me dance my way back into stability, who's words have wrapped themselves 'round my arms and through my mind. Vienna, who above and beyond anything else she makes me feel, makes me feel incredibly perfectly safe,

Vienna Teng who is my Tori Amos.

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And who knows. Maybe there's still time for my brain to break in just the right fashion so that Tori is the only thing I need. I wouldn't mind that. And maybe I'll just find her anyways, where I don't need her at all but am perfectly happy to add her songs to my collection. In the meantime, when I'm broken, and need my music to heal me...I have my resources.

I have Vienna. And that may be all I need.

~Sor
MOOP!