Tori: It's like a candy shop. It's the best thing you're going to eat in a long time. Doesn't look like much, huh? Yes...all the new boards. Yes, this is where all the new board pianos are. This one...[plays] We're making friends. That's how you make friends. How you make friends - you know, you don't know, you kind of have to go, 'what's your name, what's my name? Do you believe in reincarnation?' 'No, I don't know,' all that stuff. You know, there's magic down here. This is, um...pianos, to me, are real things. Real beings.
And this one and I aren't really communicating that well, I mean we don't have an incredible vibe. It's okay. It's not like you're gonna date every guy you meet. It's not like you can't have a cup of coffee with them or something. We understand that it's not, you know, a marriage. [pointing at pianos] These are, um, these are my friends. And I'm their friend, and I think that most pianists will tell you that - Jesus, if I saw somebody destroying a piano I'd fuckin' murder 'em. Wouldn't think twice. Just defending the life of your best friend.
This is like an ice cream shop. Serious [unintelligible] in this store.
Where can I go?
Man: Down to the studios.
Tori: Yep.
Man: You just go round the stairs there to the bottom and then turn left.
Tori: Thank you!
Hi!
Another Man: This way!
Tori: You know, these aren't songs. These are just...introductions. [I couldn't understand what she was saying here] Low fat. Let's go upstairs and play those.
This is a good, fun night.
Interviewer: So what was the first piano music that you could play, that you can remember?
Tori: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Early in the Morning, Our Star Shall Rise to the Thee...Holy" You know, church music. I played everything in C, then. I played everything in C. Oklahoma! "Every night my honey love and I sit alone and talk and watch the hawk making lazy circles in the sky."
Interviewer: Which musical is that from?
Tori: Oklahoma.
Interviewer: How about Mozart? You played Mozart, didn't you?
Tori: Oh yeah, all that stuff. That was great stuff playing. But...everybody was playing it really well. But nobody was...you choose what side of the fence you want to be on. If you're going to be a performer, if you're going to be a classical pianist and play the classics, then be the best. And to be top 30 in the world is commitment, it has to come from the deepest place in your being to represent those songs in a way that the others...and I wasn't interested enough. Not that the music isn't...come on, I'm very otherworldly.
I'm not a technical as much as I am...
Interviewer: You were considered a very gifted child when you were four or five.
Tori: Yeah.
Interviewer: So they sent you to a specialist school.
Tori: Yeah. The Peabody Conservatory.
Interviewer: At the age of?
Tori: Five. You gotta remember, I entered when it was 1968. And I was a minister's daughter in a conservative home. And you go to these guys who have hair to their butt, hair everywhere, mostly guys, more than girls, just because. And there's this one black guy. I can't tell you exactly right now what he looked like. He wore one of those things around his hair, you know, one of those scarves. And he had such a soulfulness to him. Which a lot of classical artists had no soul, you see. So it was a big kind of deal for me. My first love in a way. Through the music, I mean, I was six, he was eighteen. And he'd sit and talk to me, and he's talk to me about music, and he'd say, 'do you know what's going on out there?' and I'd go, 'no, what's going on?'
There hasn't been independence for women that we've known in Christian culture, there hasn't been independence for women. Hasn't existed. It's happening, during my lifetime. Which is exciting. But this is very serious. When a 19-year-old girl comes up and talks to me about choice, 'I'm anti-choice, Tori, and I can't believe you can be for something like that.' Girls in America, 19-years-old, come up to me and say this. And I say, 'do you know where we've come from? Do you know our history as women?' It was put in our mind and taught in our history if we really look and read history that we are the daughters of Eve and sinful creatures. And you know, any woman who had sex before she was married was defiled, we weren't decent goods, we couldn't be traded, so that [unintelligible] and the men could secure all these alliances. Very involved, that. But what it did is it made us feel shameful. Or made us feel really -- okay -- if that's how it is -- then pay for it, honey, and you pay big.
And let's look at what's happening now - now it's much more subliminal. But I had a dinner with ten women recently - you would have loved to have been there.
Interviewer: Yeah, why?
Tori: But like, you would have had to have been there without them knowing you were there because I don't think it would have been as open because we were all talking about our relationships with men and how we fall in love - I don't mean in lust. I mean when you're with a guy, but let's say a couple years, over a couple, let's push three, four, that's when you get to know him. And you get to know when they're not feeling confident, get to know when, um, they're not feeling like the provider, it's really easy for the wolf to come in, you know. Marching, 'I'm here!' And then you get to know each other, and so you become good friends. Well, it's real interesting talking about how we feel like we can have friends and that passionate, throw-me-up-against-the-wall-and-lick-me. It's a bit interesting, and we all talked about how our minds - passion was not a part of love.
Interviewer: It wasn't?
Tori: Yeah. Passion was more apart of lust. When we say passion I don't mean, 'oh, darling, I love you,' I don't mean romantic, I'm talking about gestures sex.
Interviewer: I think men have that, too.
Tori: I do, too.
Interviewer: Men have it, too.
Tori: I do, too. It's just been a bit different how, I mean, let's really look. A sixteen-year-old boy sewing his seeds is a bit different than sixteen-year-old girl coming home pregnant to daddy. It's a bit different. You're not a nice girl if you're sixteen and pregnant. But you can be a nice boy and sewing your seeds at sixteen. This is very serious. In society, they way we look at that, that if you spread and you're a girl, you're a slut at that age. But if you're a boy, you're just being a man, growing up.
[transcribed by Kristen Loftis]
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