American Doll Posse

So, I have become a Tori Amos fanatic. I was just telling my friend Mer that she hadn’t been in my life for very long, but I couldn’t imagine life without her. Her edge and her rawness really speaks to me.

Her newest album is entitled “American Doll Posse”. And in the insert, she is dressed as different people. There is Pip the dark one, Santa the passionate beauty, Clyde the jaded dreamer, Isabel the documenting artist, and Tori the philosopher.

It is an amazing portrayl of the different people that we are everyday, in different situations. People say that if you have more than one personality that it is schizophrenia, but I disagree. We are all simply millions of personalities packaged into one deal. Each day we feel a plethora of emotions and we we encounter multifarious situations and we react according to the appropriate personality.

We all have our days when we feel dark. Those days when you wake up to see a bright sunny day and think, “Damn, another bright and shiny morning,” as we throw the covers back over our heads. How can this personality be the same as the one from the week before who only wanted to go out and run 2.5 miles in the sunny May day?

Then there are the days when we are simply radiant. We glow with beauty and passion. I’ve seen it happen with friends who get boyfriends. I remember them from before, jaded and bitter about the male sex just as I am, and they suddenly change to become this strange new being who can only fantasize about their significant other. They find this new vigour for life and a passion unlike any I have ever seen before. And they exude the beauty that they have found inside themselves all along.

I’m jaded. I know this, and have no problem accepting it. I’m jaded about the system, and most of all about males. It’s about control, and me not having any. I go to the extremes to get control over every situation. It comforts me. The system sucks because it takes all my control, and men suck because I can’t control them, and I can’t predict what they will do next.

We all have those experiences that we know are deep and profound, but hurt like hell. And we all have at one time wished that we were on the outside looking in. Well, sometimes it is easier to look at a situation through a lens. It’s no crime, it’s simply us trying desperately to keep ourself from pain.

I’ve had moments in my life when something hits me. Something deep and profound, and I have to write it down. Later, I’ll look at it and think, “what was I smoking?” But in all seriousness, there are times when the grey rain curtain of life is pulled back to reveal the core, the soul, and the bare raw facts, which are carved with intricate detail into the cracks of time. And you are able to comprehend it, even if just for a moment. It may not even make sense to anyone else, but that does not matter. It is only your enlightenment that you should worry about. That is philosophy. That is realising what the meaning of life, or the lack thereof, is.

We all have a bit of Tori Amos in us. Why not name them? She’s given them human names, she’s made them her friends. But most importantly, she has embraced them, and not tried to shoo them away with psychotropics. So for Pip, Clyde, Santa, Isabel, and Tori.
I’m Kikki.

~kikki