Scarlet's Walk
Mrs Jesus
Pancake
A Sorta Fairytale
Carbon
Crazy
Virginia
Strange
improv/Purple People
Wednesday/Cooling
transcript
DJ: Thank you so much for being with us, thank you for coming to play, it's really a pleasure, it's a honor for us and as I said before, congratulations for the album which I think is really a masterpiece, so thanks again.
Tori: Thank YOU for coming, people who've driven all over the place.
DJ: Scarlet's walk is a journey through America, Scarlet moves from L. A. , meets tons of people, the good and the bad and after all this travelling she feels herself changed as it happens everytime you go on the road, is that a correct vision of the record?
Tori: that's a good vision of the record. (laughs as the audience)
DJ: is that all? I mean because otherwise I have to go on to the next question. . . (laughs)
Tori: going to the next question, yeah.
DJ: va bene (alright)
Tori: what kind of wine do you like?
DJ: sorry?
Tori: what kind of wine do you like?
DJ: ahm, red wine
Tori: do you?
DJ: mmh
Tori: italian?
DJ: yeah, also Californian. . . do you prefer. . . your best wine is my best wine [a very strong personality!!!!]
Tori: tonight ITALIAN (funny face)
DJ: mmh mmh (laughs and applause from audience)
DJ: how important it was for your writing the remembering of the stories that your Cherokee grandfather told you when you were a child?
Tori: I think something happened so that when I was trying to rock my daughter to sleep, you know at a certain point you're trying to sing lullabies that will get them to sleep and it's uah uah ( baby's cry), so you try every thing you know, you know I let my (???) go a long long time ago so you start singing anybody's song. And then finally I would talk to her and I started remembering that my grandfather would get me to sleep by telling me stories, he rocked me on the porch with his smoking pipe, I can still remember the smell of that pipe, and he would tell me stories.
DJ: many songs deal with the violence toward Native American and Scarlet travels by Little Big Horn, Wounded Knee, so I love America but the question is, how can a country that started its history with a genocide pretend [ here I think the dj meant claim, not pretend. . it's a common error because pretendere that is claim in italian is so similar to the verb to pretend. . . you know false friends and all that stuff] to be the mother of democracy?
Tori: you mean the FATHER
(laughs from audience)
DJ: the father, ok.
here the dj (in italian) claims she did know the questions before his interview and that's the reason why she makes fun of him. . . well I think that's not the reason. . . the only reason is a very large gap of I. Q. between the 2.
Tori: I think that as I was researching for this record, a Native American woman came back to see me on the last tour and she said to me that people that hold the land and the white brother who owns the land must come together for the sake of our survival. And I said to her"but so much has been taken from you and your people already" and she said, and there were tears rolling down her face, and she said "Sadly enough, my dear. The white brother only took the land, now he needs to come and take more" , and I think in that moment I understood activism in a way that I haven't understood before. This woman, older, knows fanfare but her commitment to building bridges to people who has not integrated her story, her people, her culture. . . she's still as compassionate and holds this space by the fire. When you stop holding a space by the fire, then there's no chance for the people who own the land to know what they really don't have access to. It isn't taught in our schools, their culture is segregated , they're merchandised ], yet they're still willing to share even when they've lost so much. Yet still not pretend that agreements weren't broken, that there wasn't betrayal, so I learned a lot in this woman's activism that she carried a torch and she carried a tomahawk but she carried compassion in her other hand.
Dj translates
Tori: I have a question now. How did you remember all that?
audience laughs
DJ: no no no no. I've just made it up. . . I just. .
Tori: wow
DJ: I was talking about the charactre of the first song which is Amber Waves which is a line from America the beautiful but also the name of the porno actress in the movie Boogie Nights. So even in her name there's all the magnificence, all the corruption which , I guess, is a metaphor for not just herself but for something more.
Tori: that's right.
audience laughs
DJ: so it's one short answer and one long answer. . .
Tori: ya, you know what? you can come with me and I can bring you to America and you can do my interviews for me otherwise
DJ: the 2 biggest post 9-11 records are The Rising by Bruce Springsteen and the new Pearl Jam record. They're very different one another because The Rising is full of optimism, faith, even anger, but strength. The Pearl Jam record is full of disillusion and pain. How would you. . . where would you put your record? Close to who?
Tori: where'd you put it?
DJ: Ah!
Tori: are you putting me in between 2 men?
DJ: I would like to put you in between
Tori looks astonished
DJ: that was supposed to be the long answer. .
Tori: mmmh, ah! (laughs). well, I guess writing a story that really is about real people and real events but at the end of the day it is about dicovery and it's maybe about betrayal, inner as well as outer, and I think Scarlet is every woman because she bleeds, so she's any woman, she's a thread, this thread takes all of her body map, she begins to believe that all of us have their own unique body map and if you put you under a miscroscope, or me, you couldn't see it but it's here (ponts to her heart), it is emblazoned(???) here. . . mh. . question that were being asked after the Twins went down, what will you do today if tomorrow doesn't come and I think that is a core question that I heard asked across the country. If you put aside leaders or people who really are leaders but have not that title, then you go to the core and that's what she's trying to find, who is this soul, this being that we call America but was never our mother until she was lying wounded , until we could smell her burning.
Next questions were from audience.
DJ: any plans on coming on tour to Italy?
Tori: oh, yes!
audience: when? when?
Tori: early in the new year, that's the idea.
DJ: any chance that this record could become a book?
Tori: no.
laughs
DJ: is there any relation between the interior journey of Boys for Pele and Scarlet's Walk?
Tori: . . . puzzled mommy. . I was rocking on different substances then. . . that could be all kind of influences, different people, I did not have a daughter then, I wasn't a mommy then, so I was taking a journey, that's for sure.
DJ: last questiom:is there any other thing that you'd like to say to Italian audience?
Tori: Brunello di Montalcino 1997 (laughs) so!
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