#torisongs

[torisongs]

#10.

« S I L E N T  A L L  T H E S E  Y E A R S was foundational. I started writing it for Al Stewart (the melody, not the lyrics) because he'd asked me to write something. I allowed myself to find my voice for somebody else, but not for myself.

Then Eric Rosse made me ask myself the question: How could I give a song like that away? So, as I started to claim it as my own, I was able to write the words around it.                                                       This song became my mantra.  It was a talisman which brings me back to the tale, and to the mermaid mythology.

I wrote this song because you can have a big mouth and not be saying anything. It's about realizing, painfully, you've kept that voice inside yourself locked away from even yourself, and you step back and see that your jailer has changed faces.                                         You realize you've become your own jailer. »

[torisongs]

#2.

« There’s a lot of symbolism in it, there are moments when I turn around and I say something like:          "she’s convinced she could hold back a glacier           but she couldn’t keep baby alive" 

Really clear. There are moments when it gets really clear and it goes back into symbolism again:           “ballerinas that have fins that you’ll never find“ 

Which makes a lot of sense to me, because it’s obviously a mermaid reference, but it’s more than that. 

Maybe you’ll be a mother and you’ll never have that physical experience                      – like you’ll never have the experience of being a mermaid. But even though you might not be a physical mother, it doesn’t mean you can’t have that kind of maternal love. »

[torisongs]

#21.

« When you start talking to people who have that kind of loss [miscarriage], somebody piping up, going "Well, the angels were there for us during this time". 

Well, that's beautiful. But people have to understand that they're not there for everybody all the time. 

They get lost on the way. 

That's why in  C R U E L  when I say, "I don't know why", I really don't know why I can be cruel. I don't know why the angels aren't there for everybody, but they're not. »

[torisongs]

#34.

« Coming out of a lot of miscommunication with friends and family and extensions of all that, where I think in everybody's life, sometimes, you don't know how you got there.

You don't know how the meltdown happened within a group of people; lots of finger-pointing and I couldn't cope. And it wasn't my family this time. These days, sometimes friends are family, and it was a group of us, and I needed to pull back and re-look at my life and who was in my life, and the kinds of people that I wanted in my life, and the kind of person I could be in a relationship where I wasn't able to maybe be what someone needed me to be, so I needed to be with somebody else who I could give what they needed.

This was a real turning point in claiming what kind of life I wanted to live. It was a real beginning. »

[torisongs]

#18.

«  My friend Karen Binns and I were talking about the idea of betrayal, and friends who don't stay friends because you feel they've crossed some kind of line, but they can't see that they've crossed it.                                                       They think you crossed the line.

We gave these behaviors terms. We had our own language going so that people didn't know what we were talking about, and raisin girls were the girls that wouldn't let you down. C O R N F L A K E  G I R L s  were the mean girls. 

It was a rejection of the projection of wholesomeness in America being seen as better than someone who might have had many experiences, but she's had to get her hands and her knees dirty to learn from those experiences.            She's seen as tainted because she has knowledge. »

[torisongs]

#66

« Everyone understands basic emotions: feeling like a coward, wanting to kill some cunt and having no remorse about it. It’s like, no, I don’t feel guilty about this. What I feel bad about is that I don’t feel bad about this.

That’s what I have to look at. I try and crawl into my unconscious, and it’s not that different from what’s inside any of us.

All of us have a bit of the vampire and a bit of the nightingale.»

[ Keyboards - November 1994 ]

[torisongs]

#36.

And somewhere Alfie cries and says "Enjoy his every smile...        You can see in the dark         through the eyes of Laura Mars" How did it go so fast?     you'll say as we are looking back and then we'll understand we held  g o l d   d u s t in our hands                  Sights and Sounds                  pull me back down                           another year                   I  W A S  H E R E

[torisongs]

#59.

« It keeps moving into the dance of   T a l u l a   and her desperately trying to dance, desperately trying to figure out the whole idea of loss: it must be worth losing if it's worth something. 

So if I feel like I am losing something, at least I valued something enough to lose it in the first place... it's going back into that train of thought.  T a l u l a   is very much a riddle. The sense of loss is such a tricky one, because we always feel like our worth can grow with things we are willing to lose. So there's a real letting go.  T a l u l a   is about letting go and getting the dance. 

I do not want to lose him... The loss of Eric in my life was... it felt like half of me walked out the door. And   T a l u l a   came as a nursery rhyme, my little dance that I would do when things were so sad. Because I started thinking, "But God, I have these feelings, which means..." We shared so many moments that I value, I really valued that, so what a gift that I can feel this loss, that I am not so numb, that I haven't cut myself off so much, and once I could feel the loss then I started to feel free. I want to dance and go, "Yeah, I want to be with  T a l u l a .  I want to be able to dance through the people that come in and go out of your life. I want to learn how to dance with the gifts when they come and the gifts when they need to take a different route. »