WALKER: Are there any parts of yourself that you only deal with in your music?
TORI AMOS: Get my shrink on the phone. Sure. Yes, obviously, that's why I don't talk about it and I put them in the songs. But I'm acknowledging, yes, you're right.
JOHN NORRIS: Are you surprised that you were able to create anything out of something that might have been as gutting and exhausting as a miscarriage? Were you surprised that that actually led to creativity?
TORI: Yeah, because when it happened, I had a very hard time getting from the bed just to the kitchen. You're so helpless when you're having a miscarriage because there's nothing you can do to save this little life. The most natural thing you think for women to do is not working. It's hard. You can't be the woman you were before you carried life, and you're not a mom, so you're in this no-man's land. And the songs started to take me by the hand and say, "You can't create as a mother at this time, but we're coming to you. Can you hear us?" And as I said, "Well yeah, I can hear you," and they said, "Well, honor that. This is another form of the life force." This album is about having an appreciation for the life force in a way that I really hadn't seen before. It's amazing, but I'm a different person because of it. I wouldn't wish anybody through it, and I mean that, I wouldn't wish an enemy through that. But since it happened, you can either crawl into a ball and become bitter and, of course, I got very angry at every deity that exists and you start asking questions and that's all through the record. But other things are through the record too, like this unbelievable respect for life.
MELISSA: Your single, "Spark", seems to deal a lot with that, but then in the video, you're all tied up, and it seems like such a helpless kind of image. You kind of break free, but then in the end, some people drive by and don't even acknowledge you. What happens to Tori in that video?
TORI: The car crash saves her. So the things that you think sometimes are horrible... The car is crashed, she was obviously in the trunk, tied up and blindfolded, you have no idea why, did she know something, whatever. So she's out of the car, struggling, some guys on the ground, one guy's roaming around later trying to find her, but she has a commitment to get through this eye of the needle. The most important thing about this video is that second -- it's is the only one that counts. She's still alive by the end, that's all that matters, this girl is breathing, there is no other second except this one. This is it. Five minutes, you don't know where you're going to be. This is our reality, this is where God is, this is where it's at, right here, every second. And I think that was the feeling that I got in "Spark" of my God. She has this tenactiy, this wish to live, this wish to just be there for herself. As I was making the video -- my God, the test of endurance, it was freezing --
JOHN: It looks pretty grim.
TORI: Yeah. I know some of those cameramen were having some fantasies (laughs). You're running around, but you know, you'd never be tied up and blind-folded unless, you know, whatever... (she puts her hand on John's shoulder and everyone laughs). But there is a thing where you go, she felt, obviously, helpless, but she wasn't a victim, she found a way to strive. A lot of things in life are like that. Everything isn't OK all the time. Sometimes a bad thing happens.
SAROA: Tell me about "Jackie's Strength". Is that the strength you found through your experiences, your miscarriage and all the things you've been through in your life recently?
TORI: Wow, I never thought about that. I saw a book in an airport about Jackie Kennedy Onassis -- what a mouthful -- and I opened the book and there was this picture of her in her wedding dress. She was so radiant and beautiful. I didn't think I was going to be a bride.When I was like 13, it was like, you're kidding. Me, a bride? I'm going to be a shiek, a shiekess. Obviously, that's changed. But I look at the picture, and I had been proposed to, so I knew I was getting married, and it struck a chord. But then I turn the page and right on the next page was a picture of J.F.K. getting shot and she's in the car. And again, it's that birth of a bride on one page and then the death of her love, and it's this cyclical thing that I was aware of at that time in my life. Some days, in that moment, you're really so close to that edge. I just started thinking of the elegance of this woman, who, when her love died, carried the heart of the nation. My mother would talk about Jackie in tears, saying, when J.F.K. was shot and the country was just torn to pieces because it was like, we are not safe, this woman, with her faith and deep love somewhere in herself, held the nation together.
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