About a Piano

I started taking piano lessons when I was 5 years old. It was 1987. I hated parts of it. I loved playing. I loved being able to take the things I listened to and generate them myself. Practicing though, my God, did I hate to practice. Some of it had to do with the environment I lived in at the time, every request felt like a demand that striped away pieces of my soul. Even if it was to do something that I actually liked. I was good at the piano. Not a genius or anything like my grandfather, but I was good. My first recital, at 6 years old, I played Somewhere Over the Rainbow. My piano teacher had what felt like nearly a hundred students. I played toward the beginning of the group. She arranged people according to proficiency. I was young enough that I didn’t feel bad about the fact that I was near the beginning. I was, in fact, a beginner. I didn’t yet have a full year of playing under my belt. I watched with awe as the students got better and better. I knew that I wanted to be placed further in next recital (they were put on every two or three years). I had my task and I would achieve it.

The next recital piece, my teacher picked for me, was Pachelbel’s Canon in D. My tiny fingers struggled to stretch to reach all the notes. We had to modify some of the more difficult chords so that my fingers could hit the keys. At 8 or 9, I had moved from the beginning of the recital group, to the last third to play. I was so proud of myself and so unexpectedly nervous. When it was my turn, I felt the spotlight in the high school auditorium make me sweat. When I sat down at the monstrous baby grand, my hands were shaking. I wished that I had the sheet music in front of me just for something to look at to take my awareness away from the hundreds of people in the audience watching and waiting on me to begin.

My fingers knew exactly what to do. Once I started to play, I disappeared. I let my hands do what they were trained for and trusted them to hit the right notes. When I finished, I stood shakily and looked out at the crowd for the first time. There were so many people clapping that it hurt my ears and the spotlight blinded me. I tripped over myself in my half curtsy, half sprint off stage. My teacher was so proud of me. I got to pick my next recital piece. I chose the theme from Jurassic Park. (Of course, I picked that, if you read one of my last posts you understand why.) My teacher this time, told me I would be one of the last five or ten students to play in the show. She broke her time down with me between coaching me in playing with emotion and in teaching me to curtsy and SLOWLY walk off stage. Apparently, my awkward running off stage was something people continued to talk about for a while.

After that second recital, I started to notice pianists. I wanted to emulate them. I watched the woman in church, how she played. Her back was rigidly upright. Her arms at perfect parallel to the keys, her hands slightly arched in the way that my teacher always tried to get me to hold my hands. It felt sterile and uncomfortable, but I tried to copy during my practice times. On the rare occasions that I was allowed to visit my grandmother, I would watch MTV. One day I was watching videos, my grandmother was doing the lunch dishes in the kitchen. A woman with bright red hair came onto the television. She moved at the piano with the music. Her posture was fluid, her stance was open. Like she was welcoming the music to pour through and over her body. I was enraptured. I wasn’t even paying attention to the words, so I was shocked when my grandmother abruptly turned the channel and said I wasn’t allowed to listen to that. The video was Crucify.

It was too late though. The impression was already made. I knew now, that a piano could be played like an extension of one’s own body. I never worked out how to marry the posture my teacher wanted of me with the emotional expression that the red-haired woman showed me was possible. I was experiencing things in my life that made fracturing of myself necessary. So, I closed off that part of me that opened watching Tori Amos at the piano. I continued taking lessons until after that last recital. I think my last lesson was at 12. I kept playing, because we still had a piano, until we moved to Indiana when I was 14. By that time though, I had joined band and was playing flute, so I didn’t have much time for recreational piano playing anymore

I quit band after 9^th grade and put away my flute. (I assume my parents still have it somewhere, but I’ve not seen it in years.) I traded musical instruments in for journalism. My senior year, I had free credits that I could do anything with, so I decided to take “Piano for Beginners” taught by the high school choir teacher. The first few weeks, I didn’t tell her that I knew how to play. I sat with the class in the little room with twenty or so keyboards set up in rows. I was quietly trying to relearn how to play. It was shockingly easy. I picked it back up almost immediately. Between lessons, I would play around. One day the teacher caught me and called me out in class. I admitted that yes, I knew how to play. She pulled me aside to the piano in the large choir room to test my ability. It wasn’t the only surprise test she would throw at me. Partway through the semester she also realized that I could sing. I must’ve been goofing off or something. She stopped class and threatened not to bring us donuts on Friday if I didn’t go with her and do scales in the keyboard room for her. Feeling adequately compelled, I followed. After running several scales, she huffed at me and asked whether I had been in the school since 10^th grade. When I confirmed, she all but shouted at me for never being in any of her choirs. No one in my entire life had ever told me that I could sing before. Let alone get incensed enough to chastise me for not being involved in their choir. I was equal parts terrified and pleased.

Once satisfied that, in fact, I did know how to play piano, my teacher gave me leave to play the grand piano and anything I wanted so long as I learned one song well enough to play for the “final exam” at the end of the semester. I played The Point of No Return from Phantom of the Opera. She was happy and seemed, against all my sense, to like me. She approved me to audit the class again next semester. For that final, I played some classical piece by Bach or Strauss, I don’t recall which. I spent most of the class helping her put papers together for choir performances (probably as her way of reminding me she was disappointed that I didn’t clear out some of my schedule to join a choir she had promised to make room for me in) or in doing assignments for yearbook.

I picked up guitar in the intervening years. I never quite worked out how to play properly. Being left dominant made learning more difficult than I expected. Strumming was a nightmare. Finger picking came easily enough but strumming, God I struggled. Piano always called me back. Like a friend waiting patiently for the phone to ring. It took rediscovering Tori to bring me back to the piano.

I don’t remember what made me pick up The Beekeeper album. Did someone suggest Tori to me again and I just was ready this time? I wasn’t ready for her when my former bookstore manager suggested her in 2003. I did, however, out of politeness, take the Hello, Mr. Zebra single from him. I never listened to it though.

Whatever perfect storm brewed to send me to the store to purchase The Beekeeper in 2005, I am grateful. That particular album wasn’t especially influential. I loved it, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t until I started digging into her back catalogue that I started to unearth myself in the tapestries she wove through Little Earthquakes, Boys for Pele, and From the Choirgirl Hotel. I sipped them like communion wine. I felt connected again. It had been a while, by that point, since I had felt a kindred kind of connection with an artist. She sang in a language that I understood instinctively. She played piano in a way that I had nearly forgotten about, like water pouring itself over melodies. I was transfixed. I would finish one album then put on the next and the next and the next. I sat in my car for hours just listening to her songs over and over. It felt like someone was singing my whole life.

I went looking for every bit of information about Tori that I could find. I found that and I found a group of people who loved her the way that I did. They quickly became the closest friends to me. Closer than anyone had ever gotten before. I felt, for the first time, entirely known and seen by these people. Partly because, for the first time, I opened myself. I felt like if they loved Tori the way I did and for the reasons I did, that they would accept all of me exactly as I was. Tori’s music, and the friends I made, allowed me to finally start looking at pieces of me that I had been unwilling to accept. For the first time, I let myself actively (and without shame) question my sexuality. It would take another two years of fumbling around with my feelings and an assault to force my hand in owning who I am, but even through that and the traumas, Tori was there for me.

I met Tori twice. Once in 2005. I could barely speak. I was lost in the crowd. I managed to ask for a photo somehow. And then in October 2007. I’ve met a handful of people in my life who are amazing huggers. When I say that Tori Amos is the best hugger ever, I mean it. If you are lucky enough to be hugged by her, you feel seen and held in a way that is hard to explain. She just envelops you. And when she looks at you, she looks as if she sees clear all the way through to the soul of who you are. Maybe I was a frayed nerve at that show and that’s just how it felt in that moment, but I will never forget the care presented to me in that small fragment of time. I managed to be only the slightest smidge more articulate the second time. I asked if she could play a particular song. She was so kind in telling me how it wasn’t possible. I said I understood. By the end of the tour, she played the most amazing version I’ve ever heard of the song I requested. It was beautiful and I felt, again, that I had been somehow seen and known in that brief exchange. She played it in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. I knew someone would record it and I like to pretend that she did to when she played my Talula. (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s-6WhJF4c4)

I’ve met her twice, but I’ve been privileged to see her live five times. The first in Chicago, the second in my hometown Louisville, the third in Indianapolis, and the fourth and fifth in Los Angeles. I sometimes think about what my perfect Tori concert would be, and I am never able to land on something. How do you narrow such a prolific catalogue to 20 or so songs? Even if you picked one song from every album she’s released, it’s not enough. I’d still miss out on so many songs. I completely understand why people go to multiple of her shows per tour. For other artists, that is a bit unnecessary. They have static setlists and shows are the same one to the next. Tori is something else entirely. Going to one of her shows is magical. Even if you aren’t a fan of her music, her sheer musical ability is impressive. The way she floats between the pianos that surround her, back and forth and sometimes together. She is a force unto herself. No one is quite like her. Her improvisations even add layers and textures to songs you know inside out.

There was a while where I would write song impressions from Tori’s music. I would put a song on repeat, close my eyes, and just see where the music would take me. See what stories her girls would tell me. I still have a handful of them on my computer. The name of this blog page is taken from the song impression for Pandora’s Aquarium. It was a way for me to practice writing. Like practicing an instrument; I learned what worked in my creative process, what phrasings generated the emotional responses I wanted, I played with sentence lengths, word choices, and worldbuilding. It was her music that I started with as the soundtrack to writing. The song impressions that I wrote from her songs were not great. The one this blog is named for is, we’ll say, not awesome.

Tori’s willingness to be used by the muses freed my mind to play in fields I hadn’t dreamed of before. If you were to look at my writings over the years, it’s easy to see the moment Tori’s music came into my life. I stopped trying to fit the mold I thought I ought and just let the stories come as they wished. The way I phrased things even changed. I stopped stifling my imagination. I’m not the best writer, just like I was never the best pianist. But I trust my voice, and the stories that find their way to me. And, as with musical instruments, practice makes you better. I’ve learned now to walk in my creativity rather than the clumsy crawling of before. I owe part of that to the example set by Tori and her willingness to be led by her songs wherever they would have her go.

If you were to ask me who is the single most influential musician of my entire life, I would not hesitate in saying Tori Amos. I came to her music at precisely the right times. Tori didn’t save me—I don’t think she would like that said of her—but her music gave me the tools I needed to save myself. She showed me doors that I had locked away and hidden. I found that I still had the keys I needed to open them. Her bravery in looking at the dark places in herself gave me the confidence that I, too, could look inside and not be destroyed by whatever I found. I will never be able to fully thank Tori for just being bold enough to be thoroughly herself. That’s what it comes down to, she is authentically, entirely herself. Weirdness, melancholy, joy, anger, I-don’t-give-a-fuck, fuckups, and everything in between. Being willing to share as much as she has shared over her life isn’t a gift I take lightly or for granted.

Thank you, Tori. It’s nowhere near enough but thank you. I adore the pieces of you that you’ve let us all see.