TORI AMOS: SPEAKING WITH TREES, AN INTROSPECTION
The first single that was lifted from Tori Amos’s 16th studio album Ocean To Ocean was the surprisingly upbeat sounding Speaking With Trees.
In the deeply personal track, Amos sings of hiding her mother’s ashes under the tree-house, while in her mourning she laments in how she cannot let her go. In a lot of ways, the track is reminiscent of her earlier work, where Amos partnered painful and sensitive lyrical content with vibrant, offbeat pop hooks.
Of the trees guarding her mother’s ashes, Amos sings “I’m almost sure they are igniting memories for me / I’m almost sure that they are grieving with me.”
It is in lyrics such as these that the singer displays her aptitude for using the elements as inspiration. In many ways, Amos has carved out her own language, by transmitting meaning through the components that surround her, whether those components consist of people, places or the intricacies of Earth’s design and Mother Nature. She has long been using them as a palette in which to mirror her life’s journey.
In her recent interview with me for Music News, Amos spoke about how she collaborates with the world around her when it comes to creating:
“I think if you see things as an input, if you’re taking things in… you are reading, watching documentaries, watching people, you’re listening, really listening, as hard as you can — that’s part of the whole process for me. Sometimes it’s about observing and shaking up my routine. Having experiences that make me feel awake.”
On 2002's album Scarlet’s Walk, Amos used the landscape of her home country, America, as the catalyst for her musical journey.
With tracks such as Virginia, Don’t Make Me Come To Vegas and I Can’t See New York, Amos reached deeply into the history, movement and story of the land, extracting the true life narratives that she encountered and evolving them into music.
In Native Invader, Amos’s 2017 release, the singer yet again used the rich history of the earth to explore themes such as immigration, the plight of Native Americans, climate change and her disenchantment of the political sphere.
Weather, the land and nature’s complex design all seem to lend Amos a hand in planting seeds of inspiration, so it may have been no surprise to her legion of fans that with her leading single of 2021, the iconic songwriter used trees as a basis for translating and processing her emotions over the tragic loss of her mother.
In Boys For Pele, the artist’s 1996 album, Amos sings in the opening track, “If there is a way to find you I will find you/But will you find me if Neil makes me a tree?” Is there a deep connection between Amos and these natural beauties? It would seem a type of bond is apparent when one takes a deeper look at her lyrical content. Trees hold a place in the singer’s mental landscape. In 2011, for her project with Deutsche Grammophonn, one of the centerpieces of the project is the epic and majestic Battle of Trees, in which Amos uses the many types of trees to illustrate the dynamics of a relationship.
In truth, there seems no greater character in nature than trees to communicate Amos’s longing. Trees possess qualities some would not imagine.
‘Trees are like slow animals; the only thing they can’t do is run away when attacked…”
Some trees are able to communicate by sending airborne chemicals to each other; there are ‘mother trees’ that are connected to younger trees that emit excess carbon to seedlings beneath them which enrich them, and when humans are exposed to chemicals released by trees, it is known to reduce stress, blood pressure and anxiety.
Scientists from Grenoble University studied trees, and found that yes, trees do cry when they suffer, they transmit sounds (at a frequency that humans cannot detect) and that the landscapes of forests are like a natural internet formation, whereby messages and chemicals are released, aiding survival of these organisms.
The British saying “knock on wood” (which supposedly brings about good luck) stems from an ancient Celt belief that claims by knocking on a tree, you are rousing a spirit of protection.
These characters of our world that many have long taken for granted have been providing us with means for survival in the most literal sense.
In Speaking With Trees, fans have been able to glimpse again into the ways in which the singer draws from her surroundings to produce meaning and understanding. Being such a beautiful, powerful and evocative track, it is not hard to see why she allowed trees to stand guard at the gates of her new album, Ocean To Ocean.
