Tori Amos - Snowblind

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Night of Hunters intro by tori

Snowblind

variation on: Granados, Anoranza (from 6 Pieces on Spanish Folksongs)

Lyrics by Tori Amos

Anabelle:
Some get SnowBlind

tori:
with the daylight
but then with the Night

Anabelle:
for once see clearly

Through fox's eyes
I've been watching you

tori:
How do you free your mind
so that you're not confined
by our concept
of what we call Time?

Anabelle:
Follow me, Call me

tori and Anabelle:
Anabelle

tori:
Some get SnowBlind
with the daylight
But then with the Night
for once see clearly

I will follow you, Anabelle

Just imagine Him there upon that hill
over 3,000 years from now till then

Anabelle:
A key fragment of you and him

tori:
and one I must now bring back

I'm Wondering...

Anabelle:
were you giants or friends?
even The Morrigan?

tori:
Lovers or Enemies?

Anabelle:
one or all of these?

Tori Quotes

She soon meets a shapeshifting creature named Anabelle who appears firstly to Tori as a fox and explains to her that only with the night and darkness can we truly begin to see with our inner eyes. Anabelle suggests that a missing fragment in the couple's story lies back in ancient Ireland. She encourages Tori to allow herself to cross time and space and go back in time mentally to where this couple walked these same hills, but in Ireland's mythic past. [Night of Hunters commentary - July 2011]

I am preparing a musical for the British National Theatre and this taught me to compose for characters other than those I played on my albums. Tash seemed perfect to be the voice of Anabelle, one of the protagonists of the album. She wants to become an actress and is studying at the Sylvia Young Theatre School, a school of the performing arts. I warned her: If you want to be an artist, you must be willing to be criticized every day of your life. [Le Matin - September 16, 2011]

I thought that if Anabelle represented the duality of nature and was able to shape-shift from fox to goose, hunter to hunted, and show this woman a different perspective, I could jump in and out of Irish mythology, because I had a pivot point in her. [Wired - September 19, 2011]

When I'm out on the road and a bit out of sorts, Tash and her dad will look at me and say, "It's tough at the top." There was one session with Tash where she'd been at the mic for two hours, and it was like, "Okay, one more time." She looked at her dad and said [tearfully], "Tough at the top." We melted, of course, but she did a great job... It was something Tash wanted to do and I felt it brought an authenticity and closeness. My niece Kelsey [Dobyns] is on there too, singing the part of The Fire Muse on the title track. I thought having their energies on the record made sense, because that's who I would turn to on a dark night. Tash and Kelsey are very close even though Kelsey is nine years older. [The Independent - September 23, 2011]

Where magic seems to happen in song cycles is when nature comes alive and is a character, has a soul, has a voice, and speaks to the protagonist. And I felt that it was essential that this happen. The more that I would think about it, I would watch Tash [her eleven-year-old daughter, Natashya, who sings on the album] -- just how she communicates with nature. And she sings. She's in a trance and dances her dances around the water. And I kind of looked and I thought, "Children have this incredible sort of connection with nature, where they don't ask questions about it. It's just alive and real in them, and they're not outside of it looking at it, but they're inside of it experiencing it." So I thought, for her to play Anabelle, the shape-shifting fox-goose, the hunter and the hunted, who is really duality, I thought that's when nature could come alive and speak.

So the goddess is really speaking through her child aspect. And the goddess is in triple form, the triple goddess. We're in Ireland, remember, so I'm working off that mythology. And the triple goddess is maiden, mother and crone. And this, of course, is in her maiden, childlike aspect. But she's ancient. Anabelle is ancient. And I thought for nature to come to the woman in a child creature form would be less intimidating, and maybe the woman -- meaning me, the woman -- would be more open to looking at her part in the destruction of her own relationship if it came through the eyes of nature as a child. [Opera News - October 2011]

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