Your life's a silent movie that I haven't even heard, for ages
Tell me everything
Someone's gotta hear this
Beautiful thing"
Have you ever heard a song that is so beautiful that that there is no way to convey its beauty by merely typing the lyrics? You sing it to yourself as you put them on the page, and sadly sigh, because you know that the person reading them will not know the melodious loveliness that you know, and she will be missing out on such an important part of the song. Did you notice the feminine pronoun? Hahaha, I failed an English paper that way once. I did it just to be a brat.
You know how the unknown pronoun is supposed to be he/his/him? As in, "When someone enters the room, direct him to hang his coat on the rack. He should then be seated in his assigned seat and wait patiently for class to begin." Well, I found that extremely sexist! So, I completed all the sentences with feminine pronouns. Why not? If we can assume the unknown is masculine, why can we not assume she is feminine? So I did. I failed the paper, but I made a statement. I doubt that it made much of an impact on my English teacher, but I was spunky, and it was worth it to me nonetheless. ;)
All roads must eventually lead to Tori, at least here in the land of Serendipity. As proof of that fact, I have an excerpt here from an article that I stumbled upon while reading Bitch magazine online today. It was a lovely article in its entirety, but much too long for me to include here. Of particular interest to me was the following:
"Amos defined her music, from the outset of her career, around feelings of social ostracism and the expression of a complex inner self that had trouble finding acceptance. Little Earthquakes, the solo album that made her name, brimmed with first-person, seemingly autobiographical confessions about rejection, self-doubt, and adolescence. “Every finger in the room is pointing at me,” began its first song; the album’s first single, “Me and a Gun,” was an a cappella recounting of Amos’s own rape. But though it could easily have turned into a paean to self-pity and victimization, Little Earthquakes was also full of defiance, as well as assertions that being true to oneself was its own reward. And then there was the implicit message of the music itself: All of this happened, and I’m still here.
Amos’s music and lyrics were pretty, emotionally expressive, vulnerable: in other words, stereotypically feminine. But they weren’t coy or girlish; they were laced with anger and sadness, and they addressed taboo topics. A song in which a little girl talked to an icicle could turn very quickly into a song about masturbation; a song about a miscarriage could contain lyrics about mermaids. Amos wasn’t connected with a feminist music scene like riot grrrl; she didn’t tour with Lilith Fair or perform at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. But her mouthy, brash style wasn’t easily assimilated outside of feminism, either.
In rock music, there tends to be two types of women granted the stage: tough girls and nice girls. Tough girls—Polly Jean Harvey, Patti Smith—get respect, albeit grudgingly, because they display traits we honor in men: They’re confrontational, direct, balls-out. Nice girls—Dusty Springfield, Sarah McLachlan—are admired for displaying the compliance and sweetness we associate with femininity. Of course, it’s a false dichotomy: No one is purely nice or purely strong. But Amos, who was both achingly, publicly vulnerable and openly defiant, fit most easily into a shadowy third category, feared by performers and lambasted by critics: the hysterical, shrieking female. It had claimed Sinead O’Connor before her, and would claim Fiona Apple after. But her fans loved the combination of public hurt and defiance. The story of the wounded ugly duckling turned rock-star swan spoke to women. It spoke to social outcasts. It spoke to survivors of sexual violence or abuse. And it spoke to LGBT people, especially young gay men, who had particular reason to connect with Amos’s recurring themes of religious repression and sexual shame, and who still constitute a large part of her fan base." (full article here: http://bitchmagazine.org/article/birth-of-the-uncool)
Verrrrrrrrry innnnnnnnnnnnnnteresting. Hmmmmmmmmmm. In any case, I love Tori. Forever and ever, no matter what, and I don't care who knows it. I never sat down and analyzed why, because if I did that with music, it would take up all my time. However, if I HAD done that with the music I listened to as a young teenager, I wonder what conclusions I would have arrived at? What would I have discovered about myself? I believe that you can tell a lot about a person by the music she listens to. Sometimes it's scary -- for example, I knew this girl who seemed so sweet and bubbly. She was a tall blonde, dressed very feminine, and had very girly mannerisms. One day, I was hanging out with her and she pulled out her laptop. She asked me if I had ever heard of a particular type of music (I just had to google it a second because I forgot the name of it, but it was called horrorcore) and I said no. She then proceeded to play this HORRIBLE music with lyrics that would have the potential to induce nightmares. It was gruesome, horrible, and traumatizing. I wondered how such a sweet girl could enjoy such awful music. I wondered what thoughts went through her mind as she listed to those lyrics. I wondered if she had violent thoughts herself, if she had ever thought of killing someone -- if she was thinking of killing ME, right that instant. I thought about the band -- did they need therapy? Had they been abused as children? Did they torture small animals? What the FUCK was WRONG with these people?????? (Incidentally, while googling "horrorcore", I found two articles on the first page about horrorcore artists or fans being suspects in multiple murders. Apparently my uneasiness was not completely unwarranted.)
Ick. On to another topic! So, after I came out to my husband, we had a serious conversation. He asked me a few questions, which I answered honestly. One of those questions was whether or not I had orgasms during sex with him, and I answered no. I explained to him that I had never had an orgasm from penetration since the day I lost my virginity at age fifteen, so it would have done me no good to be honest about that because he would have kept trying to find a way to get me off and I already knew that nothing was going to work. Don't you think that if there was some position, some rhythm, some magic combination, that I would have discovered it by now? So, having experimented exhaustively and found no route to Orgasm-ville, the kindest solution that I have found is to fake it. I explained all this to him and he took it much better than I expected him to. However, last night, after a month of no sex, I gave it up. Afterwards, he asked the dreaded question. Why???? I hated to see the dejected expression on his face. I felt like I had failed him, like it was my fault that I was incapable of orgasm. That look right there -- THAT is why I fake it. Guys tell you to be honest, well, I call bullshit. So I tried to soften the blow by telling him it had felt good, though, even though I didn't get off. He still wasn't happy. Well, fuck, what do you WANT from me?????
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