Cruel

Ok, I know it's hard for people to get past their predispositions as far as how they relate to certain types of music and artists.  I know I had my troubles with that issue, and had to "get over it."  The Choir Girl Hotel was an album that prompted me to confront my own insecurities.  Now from what I've been told by fans who were following Tori Amos's personal life more closely than I, she had more to "get over" at that particular moment in her life than I could ever possibly imagine relating to.  This coming on top of all that she'd endured beforehand, which she showed no apprehension in delivering, in the form of song.

It is a dark and piercing work, haunting and menacing.  It confronted what we thought was going to be the future of music (electro-industrial sounds) and embraced it, and brought a foreboding chill to her already stark music.  All that said, the razor thin boundary between love and hate, care and apathy, the turns we take emotionally to survive, that is within Tori's wheelhouse.  She taps into a part of the emotional palette that troubles me, when I bother to care about how I feel, rather than just Manage how I feel.  I can exhibit a coolness that does not sit well with me.  It is a distance that I have been served, that I would rather be taken off the menu.  But cruelty is sometimes the spice of life.