Resistance: The Tori Amos Interview
This week we welcome special guest Tori Amos, the iconic singer-songwriter whose new book Resistance: A Songwriter's Story of Hope, Change, and Courage is a must-read! We discuss the value of creativity during times of chaos and crisis, processing grief during a pandemic, the challenges of motherhood in this political era, what’s in store for the 2020 election, and much more.
{begin film trailer for ‘Mr Jones’}
Male:
Hello.
Male:
Paul, I need your help arranging an interview with Stalin.
Male:
Go through Walter Duranty at The New York Times.
Male:
Listen, I really need to talk to you. I found something big. You can break this story wide open.
Male:
Mr. Jones.
Male:
Mr. Duranty.
Male:
Why are you really here?
Male:
I need your help.
Male:
This is Ada Brooks. She's my star.
Female:
What do you want?
Male:
The story no one is talking about.
Female:
Ukraine.
Male:
Stalin's called.
Male:
You will retract your statements to the press immediately.
Male:
Or they will shoot our engineers?
Male:
You actually thought you could interview Stalin and make some kind of difference, didn't you?
Female:
I guess the agenda now...
Male:
I don't have an agenda, unless you call truth an agenda.
{end film trailer}
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the bestselling books, The View from Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight.
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, which is available for streaming now in the UK and soon in North America starting June 19.
Sarah Kendzior:
And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the Trump administration and rising autocracy around the world.
Andrea Chalupa:
And today's very special guest is the legend, the mythological goddess, that is Tori Amos, who's going to be talking to us about her new book, Resistance: A Songwriter's Story of Hope, Change, and Courage. For an exclusive listen to a heart-stopping chapter of Tori Amos' new book Resistance: A Songwriter's Story of Hope, Change, and Courage, check out our Patreon for more.
Andrea Chalupa:
Tori, we are so grateful to be speaking with you. This is a huge honor. Sarah and I both devoured your book, Resistance: A Songwriter's Story of Hope, Change, and Courage. And I have to tell you, Sarah and I have been stretched very thin. Obviously our lives have been... Everyone's lives have been very disrupted by this pandemic, a once in a century pandemic, so we haven't had a chance to really come together and compare notes of reading your book. We're doing so now with you.
Tori Amos:
Great. Let's do it live, ladies, and thanks for having me. I'm such a huge fan and follower.
Andrea Chalupa:
Oh my gosh. Well, we're tremendously honored. But I have to tell you, Resistance, it helped so much in dealing with those things I can't bring to the surface because I'm just trying to get through the day and take care of my baby. And so you allowed me to have a place to allow all this grief and all these emotions to come, and you gave voice to it in your book. And I just wanted to thank you for that and just tell everybody listening that if you love Gaslit Nation, get Resistance by Tori Amos because it is such a necessary outlet for the collective grief we're all feeling especially now, but have been for many years with the rise of Trumpism in America.
Tori Amos:
Grief is something... I had never experienced anything like it until I lost my mother, which was a year ago yesterday. And I really went down a dark path where I had no idea after she had a stroke for two years, and it was such a severe stroke that she wasn't really the same person, if that makes sense. But we tried to make sure that we loved her and treated her. She was at home. And so I thought it would be a relief when she passed, but to be honest with the both of you, I just went into a really dark place of such loss that I wrote about it in the book and that was really what brought me out of it.
Sarah Kendzior:
I felt the same way reading your book as Andrea did. I thought it was very of the moment. I know–we both have new books out–that you wrote this in 2019, but it felt like it was written for our time. And particularly... This is just a passage, I hope you don't mind if I read it, I think our audience will grasp it well, on page 32 where you were talking about grief and you said, "There are devastating events that affect not just family and friends, but a whole community, a city, something even greater. Some people use the tragic event to twist the narrative and push their own political agenda. These are the warlords of hate.
Sarah Kendzior:
Others work through a tragedy by figuring out ways to process grief, and we all grieve differently. Some of us shut down. Some of us reach out. Some of us lash out. Some hours of the day convulsed with torrents of shock. In other moments, we find ourselves left with a bleak numbness. Collective trauma is its own energy." And I was just wondering if you wanted to just speak more about that kind of in light of what's happened with coronavirus in this collective trauma that not just the United States, but the entire world is in, because you had so many interesting thoughts related to creativity, related to mourning, related to that whole process of the interpretation of emotion.
Tori Amos:
Cataclysm is something that we are experiencing, and it's so real and it's so raw. I find it hard to process every day. There are times during the day when if I think too far ahead about, well, what does this mean? What does this mean even if I'm having a moment of missing playing concerts, because that was such a joy in my life. It was one of the favorite things that I get to do, is to collaborate with an audience and change the show every night. And when I think about that, I have no idea. I couldn't say to either of you when and if that will happen again in a timeframe that I can even cope with, if that makes sense.
Tori Amos:
I find that I'm having to push myself to say, "Okay, you must be in the moment. You must remember what your mother taught you." And Mary taught me about the most important thing was empathy and compassion for other people and what they're going through. And can you just show up, Tori? Can you just show up, first of all, for those in your own house and have gratitude for what you have? And it's amazing, you two, how that begins to shift and then I'm able to think about creating.
Andrea Chalupa:
Reading your book, as I said, it's tremendously healing. The process of reading the book was healing. Did you find it healing to write?
Tori Amos:
It's probably the hardest thing I've ever done. And I know, Sarah, you've written two books. I'm holding Hiding in Plain Sight in my hand, and I saw Mr. Jones. And first of all, as artists and journalists, wow. To combine the two, that's just... what a marriage that you all have done. The path that you've taken. And I can't imagine when I hear about the death threats that you both have had to endure and go through. It's overwhelming that you're still out there doing it and the resilience that the two of you have, and I'm not blowing smoke, I'm saying, my God, thank you for the service, and it must have been hard to create those things.
Tori Amos:
I found writing Resistance the most challenging thing I've ever done in my life, and I had to rewrite it. Once I turned in the Mary passages, the editor said to me, "Look, T, the good news and the bad news. I think you found your voice for the book, but now you've got to rewrite the whole thing and bring that to it." So that was a big challenge on 10,000 words a week.
Andrea Chalupa:
My heart goes out to you. I think Sarah and I both have really close relationships with our moms and our moms are characters, if you don't mind me saying about your mom, Sarah.
Sarah Kendzior:
No, she is.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah. And so I think that's kind of why we came together because we were raised by, it sounds like, very similar women. Mom's always going to be there, and I think it's just such a trauma when she's one day just not. And so my heart goes out to you because I think with everything going on right now, it's like all of us are being so reminded in such a disruptive way of how limited our time is and how we simply don't have as much time as we think we do.
Andrea Chalupa:
And just so many people are going through their own grief right now, and I can't imagine losing someone like your mother, someone so dear to you, anybody in your family, against the backdrop of actual authoritarianism threatening to take hold and stay in your country for decades to come. My heart goes out to everybody that's dealing with personal loss against this collective loss that we're all struggling with.
Tori Amos:
My daughter said to me at a certain point, it really kind of was like freezing cold water that just surrounded me, but in the most loving, shocking way when she just said, "Mom, I know you've lost your mom, but I need mine back. I've lost mine. Okay? Mine's gone. She's sitting right in front of me, but she could be as far away as Jupiter. She's gone. What can I do to bring her back? What can I do?" And my God, you two. You're just thinking, okay, I've been swallowed by this grief and I have to crawl my way back. And whatever it takes to crawl back, I have to do it because I have a daughter. She's 18 at the time. And I thought, I'm not leaving this planet yet.
Tori Amos:
And I was so overwhelmed by the grief that I think when she finally took my hand and she said, "You know, grandma, there's a piece of her in you and there's a piece of her in me. And the only way we can get through this is to let that piece of grandma grow." And wow, that was really the beginning of the turnaround for me.
Sarah Kendzior:
You’re getting me and Andrea very emotional I think for obvious reasons. But I mean, I think there's sort of a shared sentiment with all of us. We all write about these political things that often are framed as abstractions. They're framed as policy issues and so on, but in reality we're mothers. We're daughters. We're always linked in that way to the past and informed by the past. But in terms of what we fight for, it is for that future. It is for that generation. Your daughter, I think, is the same age as my nephew, and I always think about the course of his life.
Sarah Kendzior:
Conceived during 9/11, becoming dimly aware of the world at age six when we had the global financial collapse, starting high school with the election of Trump, finally graduating high school this year into a coronavirus era in which there is no ceremony, in which college is a very uncertain thing. It's both a motivator for me, but also a struggle. Andrea and I share this, probably, that we refuse to give up. We refuse to just surrender to a bleak future. We're going to fight and change that future and bend that arc. It can be overwhelming. How do you cope with that? How do you see yourself moving forward?
Tori Amos:
When you talk about the two of you not giving up, I see you as these Boudicca, Athena mythological but in human form who light fires under my ass and everybody else listening to you because there are days that I think people need to hear are hard for all of us and are scary and are we going to lose, as you kind of put in your book in a better way, a form of democracy? At least we have a form of it. And that is the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning, thinking the thing that our ancestors, some of them bled and died for, was to fight for a right to vote.
Tori Amos:
Finally, getting the female vote in the 20th century and my mother explaining to me, what a fight it was. And then for racial minorities to finally get the vote, but with all the gerrymandering that you all explain in detail and how really, it's fucking sham amateur hour, this voting, how out so many people aren't able to vote. And so yeah, I think the mother in us, it might be that amazing–what is it?–just grounding force that says Mother Revolution, which is a song that the muses gave to me years ago. And in it, it really gives me something that when it says... The song itself just took my hand and said, "What they didn't count on was another mother of, a mother revolution."
Tori Amos:
And I really think on those days, come on moms, we can revolt and fight for our democracy, for our kids' future.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah. The French Revolution was started by women.
Tori Amos:
Oh, I didn't know that.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah, it was women marching. And obviously as we saw the opposition to Trump, it was Women's March. All the women around the world did. I want to just clarify for people that your book is extraordinarily empowering ,and allowing grief to come in and finally dealing with it in a way that feels inspirational, that's what your book provides. And grief is reclaiming your power. Because if you look at... For instance, you mentioned my film, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine, that was a genocide where the survivors, the victims, they weren't even allowed to grieve. They weren't allowed to grieve their dead.
Andrea Chalupa:
And so being allowed to grieve, that's power. That's reclaiming power. And you write about the revolution in Ukraine because you were supposed to go to Kyiv. You were in Moscow doing a show, and then you were supposed to fly to Kyiv, and you couldn't because Kyiv was on fire. The center of Kyiv, Maidan Square, was a battle zone. Ukrainians, of course, rose up and overthrew their Putin puppet, Viktor Yanukovych. And when the revolution came to an end and Yanukovych fled town, he went to Russia, where he's still to this day.
Andrea Chalupa:
Ukrainians took to the square, thousands of Ukrainians took to the square, and they carried the caskets of those that were killed fighting to overthrow his tyranny, his corruption, his dictatorship. And so even though they had won, they took a moment to collectively come together and grieve, and it was tremendously powerful. For those of us in the Ukrainian diaspora watching this on the live stream on the internet, we did a Twitter storm where we gave everybody a name, where we said, "Here's this young man that gave his life. Here's this person that was killed."
Andrea Chalupa:
And so we collectively, we joined in the grieving with them by sharing their names on social media and their photos, And that is so powerful. I want people to understand that Resistance isn't a book that's going to depress you. It's actually a book that's going to empower you. And so we all have to, in light of everything that's happening, take a moment to just sit with our grief and reclaim it because that in itself is owning our power.
Tori Amos:
You two have really educated me over the last few years, and thank you for continuing to do that, because I think during this time, even if you get tired, whatever we can do... For me, the only way I've been able to fight forces of corruption within, say, the music industry, and to fight for the projects and the songs, has been sometimes to really out-create. And I talk about it in the book because that's just my way of not being destroyed, realizing that for artists out there, there really is a moment for us, too. You don't have to be a political journalist versed in corrupt politics, as you both, to offer something.
Tori Amos:
And I think it's worth encouraging and talking to people because sometimes they think, well, I don't know enough to offer something, but everybody has their own story. Everybody has their own experience and point of view. And I really think that we're all being called right now. We're all being called to fight this Trump regime.
Andrea Chalupa:
No, without question. And art itself, for art's sake, is tremendously powerful. Like you talk about throughout your book, you're working with an energy. You're shifting energy when you... The creative process naturally shifts energy and that is powerful. And that is really why the intelligentsia, people like you, tend to get liquidated first because you...
Sarah Kendzior:
Hey, don't tell our guests they're going to get liquidated, Andrea.
Andrea Chalupa:
Welcome to Gaslit Nation.
Tori Amos:
That's okay. That's okay, Sarah. I'm there. I'm fine.
Andrea Chalupa:
You know Tori Amos? She's now scrubbed out of the history books. She didn't exist.
Tori Amos:
Yeah. As long as I get some booze in me if I'm liquid, I'll be all right. Husband can drink me. Let me ask you guys a question, if I may. How do you see the upcoming election? And I know you've been talking about it, but in this moment, if you could, talk to us about what we need to be doing and what we need to look out for? How are we going to have this vote in the fall?
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, that's a good question. I've been worried, as you know from listening to the show, about this election from the moment Trump was "elected," or I should say installed, in 2016. There are all the typical problems with this, of domestic voter suppression, foreign interference, insecure machines, the matter of Trump possibly refusing to concede, even if Biden runs and there's a clear sweep and he gets into office, I think that he will refuse to leave. And so this is really a referendum on power versus law and whether just raw power will be able to overwhelm it. There are technical issues at play because of coronavirus.
Sarah Kendzior:
That's why we've been pushing for voting by mail. One of the things that's frustrating about this is that every mechanism of vulnerability in the election that we need to address in advance–we need to tackle these kinds of things now instead of in October–can then later be exploited and will be exploited by the Republican side to say, "Oh, the election was insecure. They didn't figure out this vote by mail thing in advance, or these people weren't able to get out." It can go both ways. So it comes down to who do you trust, who do you believe? And so ultimately what we want is transparency.
Sarah Kendzior:
We want transparency about the nature of the problem, the nature of the threat, and also, how are we going to solve these issues? And so yeah, I mean, that's just election day. What happens after election day, quite honestly, is what concerns me more in a way than the day itself because of this aspect of Trump refusing to concede power.
Tori Amos:
Wow.
Andrea Chalupa:
I would second that.
Tori Amos:
That's a lot to process.
Sarah Kendzior:
Sorry. I know. That was kind of a lot... What are your thoughts about it?
Tori Amos:
Well, my thoughts are... I'm terrified that we are seeing the end of democracy. That's what drove me to write the book in the beginning. When Rakesh Satyal approached me, a dear friend, a lover of your show, too, and he just said to me, "Look, you've got to step up, Tor. You’ve got to write something, and I want you to write a book, and I want you to write about the artist's role and to galvanize the artists, because artists can talk to people's emotions in ways that are unique."
Tori Amos:
I think you both must find when you're writing your work, when you're stepping into your creative self with the film and with the books, that there's something magical about that aspect where people will open up and listen. They will kind of say, "Hmm, I might not agree with their politics, but I will be open to their art." And so that's what I'm trying to do, is encourage other artists not to sleep through this time because we can't see, maybe, a way for us to gather how we normally have. See, that has been... not exterminated, I don't want to use...
Tori Amos:
But in a way, we can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, of when we will play live music and collaborate with each other and gather together again. So we have to adapt. We have to become adaptable and find ways and realize this is the fight of our lives, and you've been telling us this for years. But it really is the fight of our lives and it's the most important thing, the absolutely most important thing. And I think artists, mothers, those of us that don't always feel like we are as strong as those at the FBI or those in the intelligence community, but we have something. We have heart, and we will die for our kids and for their future. And that's power. That's power.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. I felt that that obviously came through your book very strongly, and honestly, I prefer your book over a lot of the kind of dry, analytical summations of this time that I've read from political scientists, historians. I think sometimes people try so hard to kind of... I don't know. We're living in a time that feels surreal. Every day, people are remarking upon that fact. And I think describing it that way is as a refusal to just see what's in front of us and to feel the emotion that comes with seeing what's clearly in view and the horrors of what we've experienced over the last four years and what people worse off have experienced.
Sarah Kendzior:
It's a deficit of empathy. And your book is such a wonderful alternative to that because it's overflowing with empathy and with poetry and, as you said, with heart. And so I am appreciative of that. And I've noticed also when I kind of look at, well, who understands the situation? Who understands the stakes of what we're going through politically in the U.S. and the world? A lot of times it's been people who are in entertainment, who are musicians, who are creative writers, fiction writers, artists, and less so I feel the kind of people who are expected to understand it, the pundits on TV, the politicians, and so on and so forth.
Sarah Kendzior:
That was something that struck me. I was curious what you feel about how... I don't want to say the music industry because it's so broad, but you could look back at different moments in time where you see mass movements of musicians addressing the political moment, putting out songs. You see that basically from the '60s through the '90s, and then things kind of... I mean, it still exists, but not in that kind of mass pop culture way. How do you see the moment now in terms of how musicians are addressing, or not addressing, the Trump administration and its dangers?
Tori Amos:
Wow, what a question. Okay, so let's break it down in this way. The music industry particularly, I really understood it in the '90s because I made it a point to understand how that particular creature operated. And it was complex, in that to get radio play... Now, this is before the internet pretty much. I'm talking about when the first solo record I did came out, which was 1991 in England and 1992 in the States. And so, in order to get radio play, particularly in the States, there's a thing that we all know, but don't really bring into this equation, which are advertisers. And over the years now we've learned which corporations are very Right Wing and what their beliefs are.
Tori Amos:
So how it works is as an advertiser, you don't want a feminist. You don't want Sarah and Andrea's band played during your slot of thousands and thousands and thousands for your advert that gets played, then that artist is not going to get played. Okay? So now you begin to see how things are banned, no pun intended, without being banned. Because if they're not being played because such and such a company says, "Well, we don't want that messaging,"–and don't think they don't know who is pro choice or who believes in women's rights or equal rights or gay rights or all these things–you see? Like you talked about, liquidation, Andrea. You have to find a way.
Tori Amos:
Then how do I do this? How do you combat this monster? And we're back to, I must out-create it. I have to out-Tor it. I have to do double shows. And then you get the following. And without the following and then the internet, I would have been absolutely lost, gone, done by some of these huge corporations that don't want you, either of you, or me to have a voice.
Andrea Chalupa:
That's our story. That's why we thank God for the internet because nobody, nobody would have given us the chance to do Gaslit Nation. They just wouldn't allow it, so we had to create our own show. So we hear you.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. I was going to say, this sounds very familiar, and it's weird because I feel like journalism has come to resemble the entertainment industry more and more in the last 20 years as part of this infotainment complex. And to be able to just tell the truth, to just be able to do good work, you often have to take matters into your own hands. And what you just described is what Andrea and I had to do. We developed a following. I mean, that kind of happened accidentally. And then we were just like, screw it. We're not playing your game. We're not going to work for a big corporation.
Sarah Kendzior:
We're just going to do our own thing, and then we'll be able to, in this very repressive political environment, speak the truth. And that kind of reminds me of something you were writing about in your book, where you were writing about censorship and self-censorship and about how in these conditions self-censorship is often what's really the dominant force. Do you want to expound on that? Just because I feel like it's such a resonant thing not just for music, but for just commentary in general in these times.
Tori Amos:
As you can imagine, there's a game that every artist plays with themselves, unless they really choose to see what's happening. And if you choose to see what's happening, like the two of you–I don't want to be British and say bang on about–but you're drying to get us to wake the fuck up. I know it's not easy and sometimes it's not hard to hear it, you two. Sorry, but sometimes the truth is hard. And so do we self-censor as artists so that we can be accepted? So that we can get played? So that we're not ostracized by this award show or that? And then you have to ask yourself, okay, as an artist, what is my intention?
Tori Amos:
And some guy really said to me in a great British accent, "Look, I just want chicks, fast cars, and to be famous." And I went, "Okay. Well, at least you kind of told me what you want," and then I'm hearing you and you think, no, that's not my path. That's not what I want to do. That's not my True North. And I try and talk about it in the book, sometimes it takes artists a while to find what kind of artists do you want to be? What kind of world do you want to create? What do you want to say to your kids or your nephews or your nieces? "This is what I did. I just had a career to serve myself. That's what I fucking did. Yay. Go team."?
Tori Amos:
No. But guys, sometimes it's really hard to get to that place, and I needed to fall on my face and have failure in the late '80s with a record called Y Kant Tori Read and be so... What is it? Treated like I had the plague. Again, no pun. Treated as if I had a disease, and it is a disease in Hollywood if you have a failure. And I'm sure you've interviewed people that have talked with you about that. Nobody wants to catch failure.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah. And it's almost like you were wired in such a way that you simply can't get away with being anything but authentic. And that can be, as you said, a very lonely and dangerous path to go down.
Tori Amos:
My mother took my hands after the failure and after a couple months of me just not being able to get off my studio floor. And I had to ask myself, how do you go from being at the conservatory at five? How do you go from that to bimbo? And that was a real lesson of betrayal, betrayal of the muses, betrayal of the piano, betrayal of the art, betrayal of the songs, and betrayal over the vision that I had as a little girl. Remembering the '60s, I was at the Peabody in 1968, I was accepted then at five, and I was able to see teenagers and how they responded to that music. And I kind of thought, okay, wow, this music is a driving force.
Tori Amos:
This music is documenting people's emotions, and wow, there is such magic here and a force. And this is a force that I wanted to be a part of and then betrayed in the late '80s. And my mom just said to me, "Honey, thank God it was a failure or you'd never get out of that boosty and that horrible hairdo and that Aqua Net hair spray." So I just said, "Oh mom, thanks. Thanks for allowing me to have that experience and to love me through it because not everybody..." Again, this is what I learned in LA, is that when you have a failure, a lot of people don't want to touch you because they can't see the transformative side of something failing can be your greatest gift.
Tori Amos:
And when you're on your knees, that's where you mine for gold. That's where I began to find it and said, "I don't care if I never have success again. I don't give a shit. If I can wake up in the morning and have self-respect and create with the muses, then we're golden." And that was what really changed things for me, you two. It changed my life.
Sarah Kendzior:
It's so interesting. Orwell wrote about that, how he raged against his true self. He tried to run from himself. And you write about that as well in your book, how difficult that was. Your father compared it to the story of... Is it Job in the bible?
Tori Amos:
Jonah. Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa:
Jonah. Jonah and the whale. Yeah. He compared that you were your own Jonah with that record running from your true self. And I think with great artists like you, like Eric Blair/George Orwell, with artists that have something urgent to say to the world and to open up a channel from some higher realm of some greater truth and bring that message down to the world, which through your music that's very clear–and I want to explain why that's very clear in a second–but it just feels that sooner or later you have to stop running from who you are. And one thing we say on the show a lot to people is don't fall into the trap of savior syndrome.
Andrea Chalupa:
There's nobody coming to save us. We have to save ourselves. And I would say the evil twin of savior syndrome is imposter syndrome. People that we're talking to all over the world and we're begging them, please go to the action guide on GaslitNationPod.com and check out something that you can do. You can start a law. You could write a bill. You could run for office. There are so many things that you can do as a global citizen wherever you are with what little things that you have around you. You're far more powerful than you realize. And one thing that we don't address enough is that imposter syndrome.
Andrea Chalupa:
People might be driving and listening to us and thinking, well, that's all fine and good, but who am I to do that? And I think a lot of great artists have struggled with that and said, "Who am I to really put out my true self to the world?" And I think imposter syndrome is just as dangerous as us sitting around and waiting for a great savior to come and make everything better when we're the ones who are the saviors.
Tori Amos:
Yes. Wow. Tough though stuff, because it can be scary realizing that, okay, no, Tori, your calling is not going to be in a dance club for most of the time. That isn't your work. Yes, maybe a dance record here or there happens and that can be a great collaborative experience, but that isn't really the calling. The calling is to write about songs that reflect people's emotions and document the time, and they're different times. We've talked about after 9/11 and that was trying to write about that. It was really about being on the road, bearing witness after the fact with a one year old. We were touring two weeks after 9/11.
Tori Amos:
And through listening to people, people telling me what their perception was, what was happening, that Imagine the songs had... That had been banned, that song. And when I realized Imagine had been banned, then I could understand the war narrative and how they were steering the nation into wars, endless wars, because they didn't want this dangerous song, Imagine, out there where people could imagine living life in peace. And so yes, at different times it's been a real kick up the bum to say, "Okay. You can't fall asleep, T, during this time. You just can't." And it might be overwhelming sometimes.
Tori Amos:
And people at the label might not like your work because it's not seen as commercial, but that's just not who you are. And so when you're talking about being an imposter, Andrea, sometimes it's not that easy to admit that you're not necessarily the one that they want to play on the radio, and it's accepting what type of artist you really are.
Andrea Chalupa:
And so I want to talk about what kind of type of artist you are because I have to speak on behalf of everybody listening who's listened to your songs, and you gave us the space to figure out how to be ourselves. I look very conventional from the outside, but inside, as a little girl growing up, I felt like a massive weirdo, and I felt very lost and awkward for a very long time. And listening to your music, especially Cornflake Girl, that was the opening for me, that slowly was like the unraveling of everything conventional that I was taught from all around me, from radio to playing top 40 Ja Rule Radio nonstop, corporate radio.
Andrea Chalupa:
And then Cornflake Girl was one of those moments I remember very vividly hearing for the first time and saying, "Hey, Andrea, there are other beautiful weirdos out there in the world, and you guys are going to find each other and then you'll start a podcast." I think your music is just so timeless. I'll enter Tori Amos on YouTube, and I'll watch some of your videos, and I'll listen to some of your music while I'm working, and then the YouTube algorithm will pump in some other songs, recent songs, not so recent songs. And those songs sound... You can hear how mass produced they sound and how stale they sound.
Andrea Chalupa:
But then when your music comes in, it sounds fresh and timeless, and that staying power, that's such an interesting thing to me, as an artist, like how you create work that withstands the test of time. Where do you think that comes from? Could you just comment on that?
Tori Amos:
Well, it's really a mix. Sometimes it's I have to have conversations with the self to get out of the way and serve the muses and how can I best do that? Well, I still have to do my part and not, as you're saying, wait for something. Even if it's waiting for the muses to come do it, they don't just sprinkle the star dust every day or every week. Sometimes it's really... I call it chop wood, carry water stuff where you have to go out there. And I'm not sure how you both create, but I find that I have to sometimes push it and I listen back. And there's some things that really aren't worth going to record, so I keep working through it.
Tori Amos:
And there are hundreds and hundreds of entries in this audio file that I've been building for the last two years since 2017. I was on the road then after the Trump administration got in, and now it's documenting those observations and those songs and building the bones, building the structures that then I'm collaborating with the energy of the songs themselves and they begin to form and guide. And that's the thing about that collaborative experience with ether, because I know that the muses exist. They're alive. They've always been alive. It's just sometimes I'm not listening and sometimes I've chosen the commercial path over the spiritual path.
Tori Amos:
And when I do that–this is just my experience–I fall on my face. So then I have to remember, what is my intention as an artist? Well, when I remember that, then the songs begin again.
Andrea Chalupa:
I think Resistance is necessary reading for all artists, all artists, no matter what stage they're in, in terms of whether they're struggling or thinking about it or whether they're just locked inside right now and want to make art. I think you just capture so perfectly what that creative process feels like. You called it “chop wood, carry water”. You have to sit down day after day and face yourself and write even when you don't feel like it.
Andrea Chalupa:
But what you do beautifully throughout your book is you let us into your relationship with the muses, and that is what allows you to show up and face yourself. It's this reminder that you're not alone and you're surrounded by the great artists throughout history, their energy, their spirits coming through, who have walked this path before you. And so that's what I think is so inspiring about reading your book is that you let us into all the relationships, the spiritual relationships, that sustained you throughout all these years of breaking through and making your art, and like you said, out-creating them.
Tori Amos:
There are intake and outtake moments in a project for me. And so sometimes to really get those fires going, I have to intake. Breathe in other artists, whether it's film, books, visual art, the dance world, whatever it is. Sometimes it's history. Sometimes it's all kinds of things. Just being open to other people's expression, and then that begins to build a new world, a new place to dive into every day. And I think during this time of lockdown, it's an opportunity. And I know we have to fight, I call them monsters, the monster of lethargy, of depression, of not having that endorphin rush that you can get from thinking, okay, I'm going to take a pilgrimage, I call it.
Tori Amos:
I would travel and go to places and see different cultures and get inspired that way. So now we have to travel in different ways, but we can do it. We have our minds, and we have our hearts, and we have our souls, and it's an amazing time if we choose to expand our artistry. Thank you, guys. It's just been such a... I've been looking so forward to being able to not just collaborate together, but to hear your thoughts of this time.
Andrea Chalupa:
We were thrilled and honored, and we can't thank you enough for this opportunity to quarantine with Tori Amos for a bit. But I have to say one thing, we covered a lot about what your book does, and one very striking element of it is how it keeps a record, a very important record, of recent history. Because we didn't get Trump overnight. It's been decades of corruption. It's been decades of Republicans and complicit Democrats allowing us to reach this point of possible no return. And you document that in your book.
Andrea Chalupa:
You write about being a teenager, a young woman playing the piano bars in Washington D.C. and seeing the culture shift in Washington D.C. with the changing of the guard from Jimmy Carter as president to Ronald Reagan as president. You even have this striking moment of you and a co-worker at this piano bar laughing about this whole concept of Reagan coming in and lowering taxes for the super rich in order to help the rest of us. You were laughing at this theory of trickle-down economics, just like we laughed at the idea of Trump even winning the election. Many people did.
Andrea Chalupa:
And now trickle economics is the dominant force in our country now with income inequality growing to historic levels. And the horrible outcome of that is being shown in this pandemic with this utter lack of a social safety net for the rest of us and Jeff Bezos not paying taxes and so forth. You have this oligarchy in America that's growing stronger, and it's just so chilling to see you as a young woman at the start of that trickle-down economics coming in as being this laughed at idea to now we're living the aftermath of its devastation. I think your book is also so important for all the recent history that you take time to capture and explain.
Andrea Chalupa:
It's not just an artist’s journey. It's an artist’s journey through the context of how we got here.
Tori Amos:
Bush Sr. laughed at trickle-down economics as well and called it “voodoo economics”. I had it in the book, but it just wasn't... For some reason, it wasn't singing from how I wanted to get from sentence to the next. But it's important to remind people that before he became the running mate, he even said it was voodoo economics. How we've gone from that time with the Koch Brothers, one of them running for vice president on the libertarian ticket, and I was playing three blocks from the White House at that time. And I was hearing people talking about controlling the narrative.
Tori Amos:
They were talking about it in different ways, but whoever could get into universities and groom the students to think like Reagan and to think like the Koch Brothers, that was the war. It was a war of ideas. And when you all talk about 2010 and Citizens United and their judgment and their win, to be able to not just buy a politician, but possibly buy the presidency… talk about the word chilling. That's really our world right now. I wish you both would talk about that for a minute and how you see us getting out of that. How is it possible?
Sarah Kendzior:
It's a tough slug. I mean, I had this moment, Tori, of just thinking of you in the early '80s in D.C. as the cabal that we often discuss on Gaslit Nation of Manafort and Stone and their Torturers' Lobby and Roy Cohn and all of these individuals who now have shaped the future. As you just said, they were recreating their own world, their own vision of America and how to take America apart. I don't think the path forward is going to be easy by any means. You can look at that duration of time.
Sarah Kendzior:
You could look back 30 or 40 years and you can see the amount of time and effort it took for their plan to reach its culmination in what we currently have with Trump and in all of these seminal votes like Citizens United or the partial repeal of the VRA that paved the way there. We need to have a long-term vision, and I think that that's one of the things that's so gut-wrenching for this time because we need... As people who value freedom, who value justice, we need that long-term vision, but we have the ticking clock of climate change bearing down on us. We have things like the coronavirus completely assaulting our sense of time, our sense of the future.
Sarah Kendzior:
But I think we still need to be able to imagine it. We need to be able to imagine possibilities that are outside the range of the political experience that's been conjured by the opposition. They in their own perverse way were able to imagine something new. They were able to imagine an American oligarchy, an American autocracy. I think honestly, there's lessons to be taken from your book and from your career in being willing to be an outsider who will stand for the truth, who will talk about difficult subjects, who will refuse to just bow down and take it, but try to create something of our own.
Sarah Kendzior:
I think if we have a generation that sees clearly the challenges ahead of us, that isn't sugarcoating anything, that isn't looking for saviors and whatnot, we may be able to get there. But the road ahead is murky. Like I wrote in my book, we live in the tunnel at the end of the light. We are deep in that tunnel, and I don't quite know how it's going to go. I just know that we have to continue to go forward. We have to be creative in our solutions. We have to definitely think in ways that are unconventional and not just expect that laws will be followed and precepts will be honored and so on and so forth.
Sarah Kendzior:
We also have to be innovative in the way we fight these innovative authoritarians.
Tori Amos:
And do you both think that the Democratic Party is getting to a place where they really understand? They really can see that we’re so deep in this tunnel? Are their blinders off, their blind spots? Are they looking in that periphery vision and seeing if they don't act and prepare for the voting this fall, that this could be it? This could be it.
Sarah Kendzior:
I've been very frustrated with them. The Democrats are not a monolith. I think there are people within the Democratic Party who certainly understand this. I think Elizabeth Warren understands it. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understands it. The leadership, especially those who are very dependent on big donor money, if they understand it, they're not communicating their understanding to the public. And I don't get how anyone can NOT see this. We have a president and an administration, they confess their crimes. They lay out their evil schemes. It's not some mysterious thing that only me and Andrea can figure out. It's all out there.
Sarah Kendzior:
But the fact that they act like it's not a crisis at times I think is what has kind of confused citizens. It's made them sometimes lethargic in their reaction because they're thinking, well, it can't be that bad or people would be behaving differently. They'd be throwing protocol out the window. They'd be talking about this in a more urgent way. And so if they don't understand what's going on, they should not be in office. I'm sorry. They should just leave and go home and certainly not be in positions of leadership. If they do understand, they need to speak frankly to the American public, in blunt terms, and not pretend this is just a regular election.
Sarah Kendzior:
We're not voting for one candidate over another; we're voting for one system of government over another. And the other system, the one that Trump embodies, is authoritarianism. And I think they need to just say that. Obama very recently admitted that this is an American autocracy, that this is what we finally have ended up with. I wish he had said that four years ago, and I wish they all, the Democrats had all said that four years ago because those of us who were saying that four years, we got labeled as hyperbolic, alarmist, hysterical–there's that word–and so on and so forth.
Sarah Kendzior:
It's just so much easier if people can name the problem, then tackle it. And so hopefully that's what they'll do.
Tori Amos:
I think that was said so spot on that we're fighting for a system of government, and that's what we have to wake up every morning and remind ourselves. And everyone is needed. This is the fight of our lives. I truly believe that, and also fighting for the love of our life and what our ancestors... Our ancestors risked their lives, some died, for us to have America. And so this is our time. Whatever age we are, this is our time. And sometimes yes, I know, it can be just, really? This is really happening? You bet your fucking life it is. It's happening on our watch, and you guys are helping to keep us aware and to tell the truth.
Tori Amos:
And the truth isn't easy. Sometimes I know it can't always be fun to be the messengers that you are, but well done. You know? Giving air hugs, thanking you for telling us the truth, although the truth can be a really hard pill to swallow.
Sarah Kendzior:
Right back at you. Thank you so much. We're both grateful. You've taken on so many topics. Like you first sort of emerged when I was a pre-teen–I was in middle school–talking about things like sexual assault that I really wasn't seeing a nuanced perspective on. I think for a whole generation of women, you've been an inspiration and just your perseverance I think especially has been an inspiration.
Andrea Chalupa:
Oh yeah. We stand on your shoulders.
Tori Amos:
Well, women, you rock. Respect. Thank you for having me, and thank you for supporting the book, and thank you for your art. And hopefully, when I get back to the States, I can find the two of you and we'll have that cup of tea. We'll become liquid together, okay?
Sarah Kendzior:
Sounds good.
Andrea Chalupa:
Our discussion continues and you can get access to that by signing up on our Patreon at the Truth Teller level or higher.
Sarah Kendzior:
We want to encourage you to donate to your local food bank, which is experiencing a spike in demand. We also encourage you to donate to Direct Relief at DirectRelief.org, which is supplying much needed protective gear to first responders working on the frontlines in the U.S., China, and other hard-hit parts of the world.
Andrea Chalupa:
We encourage you to donate to the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian relief organization helping refugees from Syria. Donate at rescue.org. And if you want to help critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry, donate to The Orangutan Project at theorangutanproject.org. Gaslit Nation is produced by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners, and check out our Patreon. It keeps us going.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our production managers are Nicholas Torres and Karlyn Daigle. Our episodes are edited by Nicholas Torres, and our Patreon exclusive content is edited by Karlyn Daigle.
Andrea Chalupa:
Original music in Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Visonberg, Nick Farr, Demian Arriaga, and Karlyn Daigle.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smyth of the New York-based firm, Order. Thank you so much, Hamish.
Andrea Chalupa:
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