Second Ayahuasca Experience

I woke up on Friday morning still feeling an ambiguous anxiety leftover from the previous night.  I was ready for some kind of explosion--it just seemed as if something terrible were about to happen.  After the experience, I read a lot of personal accounts and watched several videos about ayahuasca, and realized something I had missed in the hundreds of previous readings/viewings: most ayahuasca treatments are a series of experiences, not one isolated experience.  One shaman stated that, for some people, nothing happens the first time--no visions, no vomiting.  I was one of those people.  He explained that sometimes the vine (spirit) has to explore the person and get to know who it is dealing with; it shares lessons only as the person is psychologically capable of handling them.  The person has to go into the experience with the appropriate intentions and frame of mind.  I thought I had, but his statement made me doubt my intentions: maybe I wasn't as open-minded as I had thought.

So I decided to try it again.  I spent the day brewing, boiling, straining, reducing, repeating.  I felt a little ridiculous doing this, but I held the cup of the finished product in both of my hands and stared into it, thinking to myself, I am going into this for the right reasons.  I am open to whatever it brings me--even if it's panic and nothing else.  Please help me.  I drank.

This time, the drink was absolutely vile.  I gagged a bit because of the taste, and I kind of hoped that nauseousness and purging were on the way.  I sat and waited.  I felt a little strange, but not nauseated, not at all.  My phone chimed.  I turned it off.  I turned off the music that was playing on my computer.  I turned off the computer.  I decided to try to meditate, to concentrate on making something happen.

No nausea and no real visions.  I kept opening my eyes and saw nothing psychedelic--just the room and the lights of the microwave, the cable box.  I closed my eyes again and eventually felt something come over me...just a calm feeling that seemed to be in some way in answer to the panic I had felt before then.  Still no visions except that the darkness seemed to become all-consuming, and it seemed to sort of envelop me, as if I were entirely lost in it and although I was still sitting in a chair, I was in a completely antonymous, safe place.  I decided to lie down.

In bed, I closed my eyes and there it was--the comforting darkness.  It was quiet and calming.  I tried hard to make visions typical of ayahuasca depictions I've seen manifest, but they didn't.  Instead, I realized at some point that I was asking questions rather than waiting for something to happen.  And I wondered who I was asking--because although these questions were internal and not spoken, they were formed in language, and they were asked to someone who was not me.  It was a strange moment of recognition.  Who was I talking to?  Myself?  A partial answer was yes, but no, this wasn't just me being introspective.  People who've taken ayahuasca often report seeing supernatural creatures, whether they're snakes or imps or elves or demons or angels, that sometimes speak to them, sing to them, or communicate in fractal-type arrangements of shapes.  I didn't see anyone; I didn't hear any voices except the interior voice of my own thoughts verbalizing questions; the recognizable language was a one-way thing.  And yet, I was asking these questions of someone and I was expecting answers that were not originating entirely within me.  Eventually I accepted this; I felt the presence of something physically inside of me and also detached from me as I was detached from myself.  I kept talking to it.  And after that recognition, it somehow told me or guided me to ask questions that resulted in my understanding that I was completely supported here, and that made me feel completely grateful.  I heard myself repeating 'thank you,' and then came my first epiphany.

Now, to explain this experience, I need to use language--but it is important to emphasize that, although I felt I was in conversation with someone, and I was using words to make questions and sentences, the information I was receiving was not coming in any recognizable communicative form--not through words, not pictures, not sounds.  But the only way I know to convey this information is through words.  What follows is a summary of the 'conversation,' keeping in mind that the italicized text is a translation of the knowledge I was receiving in a way that I cannot explain.

Me: Thank you, thank you, thank you...

Now you understand.


Me: Yes, I understand.  Thank you for your generosity and your compassion.  I've never felt anything like this before.

That's why it was necessary to terrify you the first time.  You had to be afraid, to really feel fear and feel what it is not to be able to trust.


Me: Is that what that was?  I've felt that feeling before, but there was no reason to feel that way last night.  I didn't see anything that scared me.

There was a reason.  Now you understand.  You were afraid.  Are you afraid now?


Me: No!  Thank you!

There is no reason to be afraid.  Why were you afraid?


Me: I don't know.  I was scared.  I didn't know what was going to happen.  But I went in trusting...no.  No, I told myself I trusted this and went into this experience yielding control of myself to whatever was going to happen.

You couldn't do that, could you?


Me:  No.  But now--I've never felt anything like this.

Now you understand.  You had to feel the shock of not being able to trust so that you could feel what it is to really give up control and trust not to be afraid.  You can trust this; there is no reason to be afraid.


Me:  I know.  Thank you.  I know that now.  I can feel it.  I didn't know.

Now you understand.  You are not afraid.


Me:  I'm not.  Why was I afraid?  Because I couldn't let go?  Oh my God, I am always afraid, aren't I?  I think of myself as a trusting person, but I can't trust anyone or anything, can I?  Everything I do is self-protective.  This isn't about this, here, right now, is it?  This is...my whole life.

Now you understand.  Next...


Next?  Where are we going next?  Who are you?  Am I actually asking someone questions?  I hear myself asking questions but I don't hear any answers.  But I'm getting answers.  How is this working?  Hello?  Are you there?  I can feel you there.

[The fear/trust recognition resulted in a lot of crying; after the recognition immediately above, I started to laugh, which made me feel particularly crazy.  I felt self-conscious when I was laughing, but there was a really indescribable feeling of humor and it was as if I were being gently poked or something--again, not physically, but psychically--and it was this extreme relief.  It was a feeling of someone telling me, basically, that yes, this experience is intense, but don't take it too seriously.  You can laugh.  Everything is just fine.  EVERYTHING is fine.  This was a lesson in itself because as soon as I registered that everything was fine in the present moment, that idea expanded to encompass the entire experience that had already come and which would come yet.  And then it expanded to include everything in life.  And that led to this next exchange.]

People talk about seeing specific things when they do this.  A lot of people see snakes that scare them, or they see jaguars.  I don't see anything recognizable at all.  I barely see moving patterns when I concentrate very hard with my eyes closed, but none of the technicolor stuff that people describe, and no animals.  Why do people see snakes and why can't I see them?  Is it because I'm not afraid of animals or something?

Are you afraid?


No.  I am not afraid at all.  But I don't know if I would be afraid of fluorescent snakes that talk by way of shapes flying out of their mouths.  I could be.  I don't know myself as well as I thought I did.  Is that right?

You already understand.

So maybe I don't see these predatory animals because I don't think there's anything terrible about them.  I don't think I am afraid of being hunted by animals.  I've always said that I have eaten so much meat that I feel like being killed by an animal would only be fair.

That's OK.  That would be just fine.


It would be.  Rationally, I think it would be.  But I feel so guilty about eating creatures.  Even...I even boiled the plants that are bringing me this experience.  Was that wrong to do?  How could I be responsible for killing and eating something and then that something gives me this extraordinarily full and warm feeling.  So compassionate.

Because you have to eat.  It is a part of who you are.  Everyone eats.  A jaguar is not a monster because it eats other animals.  It is exactly like you.  You are like it.  So am I.  It doesn't matter who eats what or who kills what or what part of yourself you try to kill--you can't kill it.  You can feel this, understand it now, can't you?


Yes.  Thank you.  Everything feels like...just complete.  But it's not familiar.  I feel like we are moving somehow, and I don't know if you're me or if you're someone else.  This doesn't feel like normal introspection.  I hear myself asking questions and somehow I am receiving answers, but I don't understand where those answers are coming from.  Everything here is dark and I feel like I am moving, being conveyed somehow, and you are that conveyance.  But I don't understand the mechanism.  How does this work?  It's all dark and I feel like I can see without seeing, and I'm not afraid of the dark and there's nothing dangerous here.  I could be here forever.  And there's a specific way we are moving...it's like...it's like I'm a worm tunneling through the ground.  Somehow it's just the natural place to be for who I am now; somehow, I can see without being able to see anything, and this movement is so slow and twisting, but there's a direction to it, too, that I can't understand.  The next time I hold a worm in my hand, I know I will look at it and realize that it is its own little intelligent person; it's just like me or...wait.  I was about to feel sad for this little worm when I see a bird fly off with a worm in its mouth, but I realized that the bird isn't doing anything bad, and I wonder if the worm knows this.  Probably not.  It's just in a panic; it is afraid.  But we are the same, and so it has this place, too, where there's nothing to be afraid of.

You understand now.

That seems so hard to believe.  But...I know it's true.  Everything here is true.  There is no way to deny it.

You do understand.  But it's not like a worm.  Don't think that.  Don't get stuck there.


Not like a worm?  Then...wait, a snake?  Is this why people who do this always depict serpents?  Because of the way we're moving, because it seems like some kind of serpentine movement?  It doesn't feel like that to me.  It's a totally gentle, slow, unstoppable movement.  It's not animal at all.  Wait, people also say the spirit of the vine is the guide here.  Yes, that's exactly what this feels like--it's a slow, corkscrewing way of moving. I feel like we are moving together in the way a vine grows...always forward, relentless, persistent, gentle.  Is that who you are?  Is this the point at which I realize I'm being guided by the spirit of this particular vine?

Is that what you believe?


I don't know.  I'm asking you.  You seem to have the answers.

Would you understand anything else?


I don't know.  This is a hard one.  It seems too easy.  But this exactly matches up with how people describe this experience, except that I didn't imagine it happening the way it is happening.  But I definitely feel that you, whoever you are, whoever is prodding me to ask questions and then provoking the answers without telling me in a voice or in pictures, you are someone, a separate entity from who I am, but you are taking me on a tour through my own psyche.  You just told me that, didn't you?  You can't answer, can you?  You're telling me, but I have to tell myself to hear it.  But you are there.  Thank you.  Thank you.

---

This went on for hours; honestly, it was exhausting.  I took several breaks, sitting up and reading online.  My eyes worked fine and I was thinking perfectly well...I didn't feel drunk or drugged or anything, didn't see any crazy colors.  But as soon as I lay back down and closed my eyes, there it was, waiting to give me the next lesson, to keep traveling.

This was a really challenging experience--not in that it was agonizing or anything; it just took up the whole space of my mind and, although everything about it was gentle, everything revealed was emotionally and intellectually overwhelming.  I could not stop saying thank you, and every time I did, I felt gratitude returned to me.  Over six hours in, all I wanted to do was go to sleep and when I finally felt like the presence was leaving me, I thanked it over and over and said goodbye to it.  That confirmed to me that I was truly interacting with an entity separate from my conscious mind--maybe it was my subconscious, maybe my soul, maybe the spirit of a plant.  Whatever it was, it was with me and then it slowly slipped away...although three days later, I still feel like it's inside.

I know how crazy or airy-fairy this all sounds; in my opinion, that's because 1) this requires a more open mind than I have, rationally, even to this day, and because 2) I've had to put this experience and the conversation into words, which do not accurately convene the experience as it happened.  I don't have the communications tools to convey it as it happened.  But I feel absolutely changed.  I was an atheist for most of my life, and then over recent years, I've chosen to believe that all things material are connected and that, probably, all things energetic are connected through one collective consciousness.  This was something I never thought I'd believe--there was something, some kind of wonderful being that I couldn't observe but which was observing me, inside of me, and I communicated with it in a way that's indescribable, and it was absolutely separate from me, with its own separate identity.  That's a huge challenge to even my most spiritual beliefs because it implies that, no, we are not all simply made of the same source material and possibly will return to it; this experience suggested that we are all made of the same source material and should know one another in that way, but that the collective consciousness really does have room for separate identities and separate entities, and that conscience seems to be a materially based thing because without it--disembodied, in essence--everything is perfectly fine and natural as it is, and so there's no need for mistrust or anger or fear.  Everything is wonderful.

First Ayahuasca Experience

I've been reading so much about ayahuasca, and viewing videos online, that I decided to take the plunge and try it.  I had flirted with the idea of doing this last summer, and I purchased shredded caapi vine and brewed it, but I couldn't find a source for psychotria viridis and accepted that I couldn't find a source and simply froze the brew (after two full days' work of boiling, adding more water, boiling again, adding more water, boiling again, straining and reducing the strained brew while boiling and straining the vine twice more).  I had read online that caapi brew keeps well frozen.  Anyway, after a lot of reading and a lot more soul searching--including, especially, considering my intentions--I tracked down a source for the psychotria and added them to the mixture, repeating the process described above.

Before I describe what I experienced last night, I need to note a few important facts and factors.  To begin with, I have never in my life taken an illicit substance, and I've never even so much as smoked a cigarette.  I didn't take my first sip of alcohol until I was 22 years old because I was afraid of becoming addicted, as alcoholism runs in my (Irish--go figure) family.  So I have never experienced a psychedelic or hallucinogenic substance with a single exception: about ten years ago, I made a very, very weak tea from a brugmansia (datura, angel's trumpet, etc.) flower and took maybe three sips.  Within minutes, my pupils were almost the size of my irises, when I walked I felt as if I were stepping through the floor, and I went straight to bed and lie there for about twelve hours in a state of acute and severe panic, and I felt certain I was going to die.  It was a nightmarish experience and I have never been tempted to try it again.  I did it pretty much on a whim and out of boredom.  Other than that, I have taken several prescription drugs, including for the past year and a half all of the following: klonopin (for panic attacks), Wellbutrin (for severe depression; a very high dose for almost a year--200mg, which I had my psychiatrist cut back to 100mg because of its awful side effects), Zoloft (a low dose/25 mg, for depression and anxiety), and a low dose (25mg) of Seroquel, an atypical antipsychotic that is generally prescribed for bipolar mania and schizophrenia, though at much higher dosage of 800-1,200mg.  My shrink gave me the Seroquel after I had a month of excruciating pain centered in my right eye--it felt like a terrible toothache--that would come on almost every night, and she felt it was likely a symptom of conversion disorder and speculated that Seroquel might help.  (Incidentally, two days after I started taking Seroquel, I had my last-ever eye pain of that nature.)  So I have been on a great deal of psychological medications over the past year or so, and mixing those drugs with ayahuasca can be extremely dangerous and potentially could result in seizures or death.  I haven't taken Klonopin for about three months, I weaned myself off Wellbutrin entirely about six weeks ago, and I slowly cut back my dosage of Zoloft and finally stopped taking it, as well, about two weeks ago.  I still take Seroquel every night, as I could find no indication of danger in mixing it with ayahuasca.  I know that I should have waited at least a couple more weeks to fully flush the Zoloft out of my system, but I didn't, which was admittedly stupid.  But anyway, last night I took the ayahuasca and what follows is my experience.

I had a stressful day at work and it drove me to want to try this supposedly therapeutic brew as soon as I got home.  It was already made and waiting in my freezer.  I debated whether to actually try it so soon after having stopped taking Zoloft, but my job can be very upsetting and whatever one might call the opposite of life-affirming, and I just decided to do it.  I thawed the brew in a warm water bath and then I took about a third of it, put on some Tori Amos music because I listen to it so much that it's a natural comfort to me now, and I waited.  I sat in a chair and even put my two little potted plants on the floor because supposedly ayahuasca is known to enable communication between human beings and plants.  It felt silly, but I was alone and figured why not?  There was nothing to lose by doing it.  I also removed my contact lenses because I was curious whether the 'visions' that might set in would be clearly defined or blurry since I am legally blind without visual correction.

So I sat and waited for something to happen.  I listened to the music that was playing--I began the play list with several songs from Abnormally Attracted to Sin--Strong Black Vine, Flavor, Starling...nothing happened.  I became bored pretty quickly and started text messaging on my phone.  Then I got on the floor and started adding songs to the play list and suddenly I felt like I had ridden a large swell on a small boat.  I stopped moving and waited.  A minute or so later, the same thing happened.  That happened for several minutes.  And I developed a visible, strong twitch in my right biceps that lasted for about ten minutes.  And then...nothing else.  I waited and waited and nothing was happening, so after about 45 minutes, I drank more...and waited.  Other than feeling an onset of mild panic/paranoia about what I was in the middle of doing to myself, nothing happened.  I thought about what Tori sings in Strong Black Vine: "strong black vine/submission is my mission for a/strong black vine/con-concentrate," and I decided that I was too impatient and too easily distracted, and so I drew a warm bath, turned out the light and got in.  I felt slightly disoriented, as if I kept sinking into the water although I was lying perfectly still, and I experienced several waves of severe panic--not unlike the feeling I had with datura or when I used to have horrifying panic attacks from social anxiety, usually at the grocery store of all places.  I decided the bath was not the place to be, so I got out, dried off, and got in bed.  Nothing seemed to be happening except a sustained feeling of panic, and I decided to drink the rest of the ayahuasca and wait it out.  Nothing at all.  I decided that it simply was not going to work, which could be for several reasons:

1. I had brewed the vine about a year ago, and I had no recollection of how much I used.  I knew how much psychotria viridis was in it, which should have been enough, but nevertheless, perhaps the vine had lost its potency in the freezer over time.
2. I didn't take it last night, but I had been taking Seroquel regularly for about six months.  Given that it is an antipsychotic medication, albeit in a very low dose, part of the medication's action is to reduce visual and auditory hallucinations, which I figured may have deactivated the psychotropic effects of the brew.
3. I didn't concentrate; I was distracted the whole time.
4. Although I decide constantly to behave open-mindedly, I am by nature a very reserved and skeptical person; so, this could have affected the experience in that: 1) my skepticism may have kept some of the effects at bay or 2) I figure it is possible that there must be some kind of 'buy in' for the usually described ayahuasca experience, which often are very new-agey.  Most descriptions I read online involve talk of chakras, third eyes, spirit guides, etc., and I've never had any awareness of these sorts of thing and can't help but feel prejudiced about them as airy-fairy and fantastical.
5. I have no way to know whether either plant that I purchased is authentic, so for all I know, I may have boiled shredded pine bark mulch and oak leaves.

So I decided to go to bed.  I lay in bed, but I couldn't sleep because of the panicked feeling.  I had a sense of dread that I might be in for another nightmarish night like the one I had under the influence of datura tea, but I was willing myself not to give into the panic because, unlike datura, which can easily kill a person, ayahuasca often comes with a "near-death" feeling, but almost never results in death, even in cases of antidepressant drug interactions.  Eventually I became more comfortable and then I did a bit of a double take as the lights on the ceiling seemed to be very slowly moving.  I thought, oh, yikes, is this the beginning of seeing crazy LSD-type things?  The truth is, I have zero interest in psychedelic hallucinations; in fact, the idea of them scares me.  My hope with trying ayahuasca was that it might allow me to perceive things that I am normally closed off to, but not things that are not really there.  My apartment faces a large park that is lit up at night, and the horizontal blind slats were letting through lines of light that look something like: === | ==== | === .  The horizontal ones seemed to be swaying a bit, but when I focused on the ones that were moving, they were still; it was only the ones in my peripheral/unfocused view that seemed to move.  It was a little unnerving, and so I put on my glasses.  With them on, the lines of light were still.  So I calmed down and though, oh well, big fat fail, bed time.  I eventually fell asleep.  And then I awoke from a nightmare, but it was a very strange post-nightmare feeling.

I have extremely vivid dreams as a matter of course.  I actually get annoyed when people tell me "you can sleep when you're dead," because for me, dreaming is a very active, very alive experience. Even nightmares are fascinating to me, and I almost always realize that I am dreaming when I am dreaming, and so I watch the events and visions unfold in my sleep and I really treasure them.  I don't take them as portents of events to come in waking life; I don't get creative inspiration from them, but I do get the same kind of feeling that I get from traveling to new places--dreaming is one of my favorite parts of life.  I always think about my dreams when I wake up from them--so last night's post-dream experience was strange.  I couldn't recall any events or even any clear visions.  What I could remember wasn't really so much a dream memory as a feeling that something had just happened to me.  Somehow, without any vision, my interpretation of the feeling was that I was in a dusky wooded area and something very tall and dark--I didn't see it, so to say it was a tree would not be accurate, but I had the sense that it was--was encroaching on me, and I was scared to death.  And when I woke up, I was afraid, but I also felt some weird sense of comfort from it.  It didn't make sense rationally.  I went back to sleep and awoke again after the exact same experience.  It happened for hours.  My interpretation all night was that I was dreaming, but that the dreams were influenced by the panicked feeling I got from the ayahuasca, and I probably dreamed about trees or the jungle or something because of the obvious connection...but somehow it felt slightly more lucid and real.  Anyway, it was a pretty miserable and restless night.  After I got used to waking up in a panic over and over, and my pillow feeling unusually hard under my head all night, I turned my head to the left and suddenly a very typical ayahuasca/Mayan sort of image was moving about at the speed of a steady stream of water.  My eyes were closed, and I opened them and what I saw was just the blurry room, and I closed them again expecting not to see anything, and there was that strange scene again.  Shape-wise, it was very much like Quetzalcoatl, the Mesoamerican diety (pictured below) known as a 'feathered serpent,' except that every part of it was moving around like gears in a clockwork.  I couldn't discern anything specific, but I felt like I was seeing some kind of humanish creature in a strange getup surrounded by just a bunch of flowing shapes.  Unlike every single ayahuasca vision I have read of or seen depictions of, there was no color whatsoever.  It was just a bunch of shapes.  I focused on it for a while and then moved my head and then suddenly it was gone.  No more vision.  I believe it was only a minute or two.  I went back to sleep and then woke up again, this time not having had a nightmarish feeling, and as I woke up, I felt very calm and warm.  Actually physically warm, which was a huge change from the chills I had been having all night.  And I thought, oh, this is really nice.  I went back to sleep.

When I finally woke up for the day, around 5:30 a.m., I awoke with a mild feeling of panic and feeling very alone and empty.  That feeling has persisted all day.  I definitely did not have a life-affirming or life-altering experience, and it was really very uncomfortable and ruined what could have been a lovely night of sleep.  However, those little moments of some kind of new dreamlike vision and that feeling of comfort, albeit short-lived and ultimately fleeting, made it a very interesting and in the end not bad experience.  

I believe we contribute to if not make our own realities, and so I would guess that the fact I didn't see any crazy technocolor-trippy lucid visions may very likely have to do with my fear of hallucinating, not to mention that I take a medication that is supposed to suppress natural hallucinations in mentally ill people.  I feel like something of a failure for having had such a mild and abbreviated ayahuasca experience, and it was not as fascinating and certainly not as enlightening as I had hoped it could be.  But I really didn't have any expectations other than preparation not to be surprised by anything I might feel or see or hear, and since what I did feel and see actually wasn't exactly as I have read and heard described, it made the whole experience just a little bit more surprising that it would have been otherwise.

Battle of Trees Discussion

My thoughts on the Tori Amos song "Battle of Trees" from the album 'Night of Hunters.'

Read more about Ogham, the Celtic tree alphabet.

Read more about ayahuasca.

Battle of Trees lyrics by Tori Amos:

Our language of love
The Battle of Trees
We fought side by side
No one had more

Sharper consonants than you, love
And my vowels, well, were trusted

First comes the Birch
Rowan followed by the Ash
Then through the Alder she forms
And merges with Willow

The Hawthorne blossoms
As the Oak guards the door
She is the hinge on which the year swings
He courts the lightning flash and her

Summoning the spirits
Through incantations
You said the Thunder God seems to have
And our enemies are the Reed
But we knew the Furies held the Holly sacred

We were insulated
In a circle of words we'd drawn
With wisdom sent from nine Hazels
A Rowan fire and a Willow rod

At ten comes the vine
That generates bramble wine
The constant change of the night sun
A song in the blood of the white bull

Our language of love
The Battle of Trees
We fought side by side
No one had more
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/tori+amos/battle+of+trees_20976256.html ]
Sharper consonants than you, love
And my vowels, well, were trusted

From Ivy leaves is an ale that can unveil
The hidden meanings and serpents
Only revealed through visions
Yes vowels could insert
"A" was for the Silver Fir

The Firs of course
Then came next
With Heather at her most
Passionate

The White Poplar's gift to the souls of the dead
A promise that it was not the end
But for the vine the "U", it's coffer

Vowels and consonants
The power of trees
The power they hold
The power of prose

So when the church
Began to twist the old myths
They built their own Tower of Babel
From Ulster to Munster

The Reed gave way then
To the Elder
The Earth turns her will
So that night follows day

From dawn to dawn
Fom Winter to Winter
At day the Ash had power over the Alder

Our language of love
The Battle of Trees
We fought side by side
Then he said to me:
"I've dodged bullets and even poisoned arrows
Only to be foiled by the blade of a vowel"

Welcome & Introduction

Tori Amos has a dedicated following for many reasons: some people simply enjoy her music, some musicians are impressed by her unusually high aptitude for playing and composition as relates to other contemporary artists, some people find solace in her lyrics, which often carry feminist and pro-humanitarian messages.  I admire Amos for all these reasons: When I first saw her 'Hey, Jupiter' video on VH1, I felt haunted for weeks afterward and then finally bought the album Boys for Pele from which the song came.  The striking visuals of the video caught my attention--in it, Amos is lit to be beautiful but made up to appear to have been through some terrifically devastating event.  The album version of that song was stripped down, with just Amos's voice and spare piano, and it initially disappointed me because it didn't have the slow-trance effect of the single version on which the video was based.  But soon I fell in love with the delicate vocals of the verse and the soaring, mournful chorus, and then over time, the entire album slowly came together for me and became my favorite.

But not just my favorite collection of music.  It was something different that I could not classify; it was entirely unique.  Then I acquired the albums Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink and was disappointed in those because they were comparatively so straightforward and seemed to offer so much less space to explore than Boys for Pele.  And then, one by one, each of those albums hooked me and I realized that each was its own cohesive statement.  It would be years later when Amos entered her concept-album phase, beginning with Strange Little Girls and carrying through every other one that followed, that I realized Amos creates works of art that cannot really be compared with albums I know by any other artist, and that despite their tremendous differences in musical and lyrical compositions, all of Amos's music has a common thread of spiritual exploration and education--at least for this listener.

So where I see Little Earthquakes as pop art, Under the Pink as impressionism, Boys for Pele as expressionism, and so on, each album illuminates encrypted messages that I never understood or misunderstood or did not fully understand within previously released works.  In my MFA in creative writing program, there was a strong focus on Modernism and experimental writing.  Effective works of experimental writing, we students were taught, teaches the reader to read it.  In other words, experimental applications of text often feel inaccessible or even incoherent, but when the reader forges ahead, she or he begins to adapt to what is effectively a new language with its own symbols and sometimes even its own mythology--and in the end, the effect far exceeds the sum of the parts.  So a great experimental novel--the example most often given is James Joyce's Ulysses, but I prefer To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf--may not necessarily have a defined or linear beginning, middle, and end as we typically expect from a plot-driven book, but this may bear a closer resemblance to life as we live it and not as we tend to translate it (birth, life, death and all the things that happen along the one-way road).

So what is the point of all this?  Well, for me, the music of Tori Amos--including instrumentation and vocals, as well as lyrics--are for this human being the most effective experimental literature that I have encountered.  Amos's music always challenges me, and each new work is an acquired taste that earns its place in my mind, and as a person who is naturally cautious and conservative (in the sense of believing what is not proven to me through tangible evidence or sound, linear reason), Amos's music has worked a kind of alchemy on my view of life itself.  My allegiance to her doesn't have to do with, for example, having been sexually assaulted and subsequently healed by her music (as many claim, wonderfully), but the musician who likes to describe herself as a librarian (certainly because she is not pretentious enough to call herself a teacher) has sent me in so many varied directions of knowledge seeking, piecing information together in ways that don't make sense until they suddenly do, and trusting my own creative instincts.  Her music satiates my hunger for information and, in the process, she has passively guided me through realms of possibilities that I have always deemed the domain of religious zealots, potheads and hallucinogen addicts, or schizophrenic people.  I don't think that way anymore and, while I sometimes grow concerned that I may one day become any one of those types, I feel now that that is unlikely because I have an enlightened guide who has taught me and who will continue to hold my hand as I explore ideas and continue to see new correlations between nature, art, history, and humanity and subsequent revelations. 

So, in a sense, Tori Amos's music feels to me as a sort of mechanism of apocalypse--not the end of the world, but the unveiling of hidden meanings and secrets about consciousness and being that suddenly become obvious with certain knowledge and understanding.  My intent with this blog is to do a 'close reading'-style interpretation of Amos's music, with a particular emphasis on her lyrics since the effects of music are inadequately described with words.  Inevitably, I will mis-translate much based on my own assumptions and naivety especially about religious scripture and traditions...but this is what I understand.  So far.