Post by Julie on Mar 10, 2005 18:58:06 GMT -5
Past the Mission
I don't believe I went too far I said I was willing she said she knew what my
books did not I thought she knew what's up
Past the mission behind the prison tower past the mission I once knew a hot girl
past the mission they're closing every hour past the mission I smell the roses
She said they all think they know him well she knew him better everyone wanted
something from him I did too but I shut my mouth he just gave me a smile
Hey they found a body not sure it was his but they're using his name and she gave
him shelter and somewhere I know she knows somethings only she knows
Although this song's meaning is still very blury to me. I do see the 'trying to cope or heal' from a situation. I also see the misjudgement of Mary Magdalene being clarified.
Here's Tori's description of it:
"With Past the Mission, there's hope. Past the mission, I smell the roses, and Trent sings on it. I wanted him to sing on it because of his energy. I love Trent's work. Past the Mission wanted him to sing on it. Past the Mission is a love story. It's kind of a strange one in that it's me again, still trying to find pieces that I've left other places. It kind of breaks my heart when I hear him sing with me, I once knew a hot girl. Where is she now? She can come back again. It's that same thing, where in Pretty Good Year and Past the Mission and Space Dog, where everything is reclaimable. ...there's also a bit of the Mary Magdalene/Jesus relationship in Past the Mission, because I was reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail at the time. It has a lot of thoughts. It's a very long book about a historical viewpoint on everything, with the Cathars and all that happened in the Pyrenees, and the Merevindian dynasty and the whole nine yards. It's an interesting read. It opened my mind up a bit. More than anything, it was the sexual relations, even if it's just with yourself, surrounding the oppression of the church, and that's where Past the Mission again -- it's really freeing to me, that song. I've always kind of -- there's no resolve, either."
-- Tori; The Baltimore Sun, '94
"Directions were always interesting...'o.k. honey what you gotta do is you know the Wal-Mart? well keep going soon you'll see a road across from the chevron take a left and follow that road till you see a bright turquoisey painted bird house it's right after the creek at the bird house it's not the first dirt road but the second go on down past the mission and you wanna take a right and you can't miss it'"
-- Tori; Under The Pink Songbook
“This is Past the Mission. In New Mexico, there's a big Pueblo nation there, Native American. And there are a lot of missions where the Spanish, the Conquistadors, came in. And they really stripped the native peoples of their culture and forced them to worship. And when I saw the missions, you just see. They're very beautiful but this is where a whole culture was really lost.” [Simon Mayo Show - March 30, 1994]
“I always loved what he did. So Past the Mission said to me, ‘I want Trent to sing on me.’ And I said, ‘I’m sure you do.’ And, so, I made the call, and he was, uh, ‘open to that’. And we, uh, did it at his house, you know, the old Tate House...” [CFNY, Toronto - Fall 1995]
“We love Elton [John]. Past the Mission has - yeah, I can see that. George Porter Jr. from the Meters played on the whole record, and there’s a lot of him on that, as much as Carlo Nuccio from the bottom end. I did the piano vocal first, but they played the track, which gave it that - especially in the verses, that New Orleans kind of church meets Otis Redding meets, and they had a lot to do with bringing that out of the piece itself. Trent, obviously, it’s nothing like he does in his work, which I found an interesting choice, because it wasn’t for him to sing on something that was his, why do that?" [Baltimore Sun - January 1994]
“Of course I believe they [Jesus and Mary Magdalene] were together. Of course I believe they were a couple and that she understood things. She represents the Goddess, the female, the feminine, the joining, the equality. ‘Some things only she knows.’ And until we acknowledge that there are some things only she knows; and there’s some things only he knows, too; and until we have mutual respect, there’s that prison tower, and there’s that mission (church), and the hot girl got lost somewhere in between.” [Access - February 1994]
“Some things only She knows. There is a power that the feminine energy holds that hasn’t been claimed, especially in religious mythology. Past The Mission is claiming that, I guess.” [The West Australian - August 11, 1994]
“There is also this huge underlying Holy Blood, Holy Grail theme in this song. What the Holy Grail was, the Blood Royal, was Mary Magdalene coming on a boat to the Mediterranean south of France carrying Jesus’ baby - the King of the Jews.” [Upside Down #5]
“Past the Mission refers to a personal experience with sexual violence, which I had a song about on Little Earthquakes also. So, the remark ‘I once knew a hot girl’ is painful. Where’s she gone? On this record there are songs about the healing from that experience, like Baker Baker (‘Make me whole again’), Past the Mission, Yes, Anastasia. The idea is to rescue myself from the role of a victim. That I have a choice left. Though I can’t change what has happened, I can choose how to react. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being bitter and locked up. That’s also the thought behind the phrase ‘past the mission/I smell the roses’” [St Louis Dispatch - July 15, 1994]
“The trouble in the churches is what I sing about in Past the Mission. But there’s also a lot of hope in that song because ‘Past the mission I smell the roses.’ There is a denouncement, I think, in this whole earth life. I’m not going to say - although I think R.E.M.’s right that it is the end of the world as we know it - that I think it’s really showing itself as that. But ‘Past the mission I once knew a hot girl...’ Where is she? Where did she bury herself? Again, it’s trying to find the pieces of myself that I have numbed over the years. And there is life past the mission.” [Schwann Spectrum - Spring 1994]
“Past the Mission is about a girl who refuses to be a victim anymore. But she has to face a lot of thought patterns to do that. I wrote this when I was reading the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail. It talks about different theories on Christ. It talks a lot about Mary Magdalene. It’s an underlying theme about how the church, the mission, has suppressed all this truth down through the years -- the Goddess energy. They refer to Mary Magdalene as the Black Madonna. She had this cult following in France. They believe that she came to the shores pregnant. When they say the Holy Grail, they mean the Holy Blood, the Blood Royal in her body, Jesus’ baby. And some scholars believe this. The other parts don’t necessarily ring right, but there have been these secret societies. That’s what I’m talking about also in Space Dog. There are loads of secret societies, this is only one of them.” [Really Deep Thoughts - Winter 1995]
I: Who’s the man in prison in Past the Mission?
T: “The man who dies.”<br>I: Are you the “hot girl” in that song?
T: “Yeah, but also wondering, how do you get that back again? That part of you that hid in the holly bushes, as your father walked by after church. It’s finding it—the “hot girl”—in you.” [Aquarian Weekly - February 21, 1996]
“I wanted to keep the [piano at the] center while I experimented with different sounds. I mean, that was the whole idea. What arrangements can the piano hold? And through the whole process, we learned the piano can pretty much take anything. It’s just this choice, like in that bridge of Past the Mission, I’m playing a Vox organ around the piano, and Eric had styrofoam being pushed on the bottom end of the strings of the piano to create that strange bassoon sound. So there was a bit of prepared piano experimenting that we really didn’t take as far as we really wanted to because we were short on time.” [St Louis Dispatch - July 15, 1994]
Her latest, “Under the Pink,” made its debut this spring at No. 12. “It’s a good feeling,” she said of its success. “I didn’t know what this record was going to do.” That’s partly because she was putting divergent elements into her songs. “Like in ‘Past the Mission,’ I was putting three totally different structures together: the verse, chorus and the bridge belonged to different things.” When she played an early version of it to a musician friend, he said he didn’t think it worked. “And, I’m like: ‘That’s your opinion. I mean, I was playing Chopin when you were peeing in your bed, so see ya!’ I’m sorry, but sometimes you have to get a little protective. Or you put nothing out.” [Star Tribune - July 10, 1994]
: Datura - Tori Amos
I don't believe I went too far I said I was willing she said she knew what my
books did not I thought she knew what's up
Past the mission behind the prison tower past the mission I once knew a hot girl
past the mission they're closing every hour past the mission I smell the roses
She said they all think they know him well she knew him better everyone wanted
something from him I did too but I shut my mouth he just gave me a smile
Hey they found a body not sure it was his but they're using his name and she gave
him shelter and somewhere I know she knows somethings only she knows
Although this song's meaning is still very blury to me. I do see the 'trying to cope or heal' from a situation. I also see the misjudgement of Mary Magdalene being clarified.
Here's Tori's description of it:
"With Past the Mission, there's hope. Past the mission, I smell the roses, and Trent sings on it. I wanted him to sing on it because of his energy. I love Trent's work. Past the Mission wanted him to sing on it. Past the Mission is a love story. It's kind of a strange one in that it's me again, still trying to find pieces that I've left other places. It kind of breaks my heart when I hear him sing with me, I once knew a hot girl. Where is she now? She can come back again. It's that same thing, where in Pretty Good Year and Past the Mission and Space Dog, where everything is reclaimable. ...there's also a bit of the Mary Magdalene/Jesus relationship in Past the Mission, because I was reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail at the time. It has a lot of thoughts. It's a very long book about a historical viewpoint on everything, with the Cathars and all that happened in the Pyrenees, and the Merevindian dynasty and the whole nine yards. It's an interesting read. It opened my mind up a bit. More than anything, it was the sexual relations, even if it's just with yourself, surrounding the oppression of the church, and that's where Past the Mission again -- it's really freeing to me, that song. I've always kind of -- there's no resolve, either."
-- Tori; The Baltimore Sun, '94
"Directions were always interesting...'o.k. honey what you gotta do is you know the Wal-Mart? well keep going soon you'll see a road across from the chevron take a left and follow that road till you see a bright turquoisey painted bird house it's right after the creek at the bird house it's not the first dirt road but the second go on down past the mission and you wanna take a right and you can't miss it'"
-- Tori; Under The Pink Songbook
“This is Past the Mission. In New Mexico, there's a big Pueblo nation there, Native American. And there are a lot of missions where the Spanish, the Conquistadors, came in. And they really stripped the native peoples of their culture and forced them to worship. And when I saw the missions, you just see. They're very beautiful but this is where a whole culture was really lost.” [Simon Mayo Show - March 30, 1994]
“I always loved what he did. So Past the Mission said to me, ‘I want Trent to sing on me.’ And I said, ‘I’m sure you do.’ And, so, I made the call, and he was, uh, ‘open to that’. And we, uh, did it at his house, you know, the old Tate House...” [CFNY, Toronto - Fall 1995]
“We love Elton [John]. Past the Mission has - yeah, I can see that. George Porter Jr. from the Meters played on the whole record, and there’s a lot of him on that, as much as Carlo Nuccio from the bottom end. I did the piano vocal first, but they played the track, which gave it that - especially in the verses, that New Orleans kind of church meets Otis Redding meets, and they had a lot to do with bringing that out of the piece itself. Trent, obviously, it’s nothing like he does in his work, which I found an interesting choice, because it wasn’t for him to sing on something that was his, why do that?" [Baltimore Sun - January 1994]
“Of course I believe they [Jesus and Mary Magdalene] were together. Of course I believe they were a couple and that she understood things. She represents the Goddess, the female, the feminine, the joining, the equality. ‘Some things only she knows.’ And until we acknowledge that there are some things only she knows; and there’s some things only he knows, too; and until we have mutual respect, there’s that prison tower, and there’s that mission (church), and the hot girl got lost somewhere in between.” [Access - February 1994]
“Some things only She knows. There is a power that the feminine energy holds that hasn’t been claimed, especially in religious mythology. Past The Mission is claiming that, I guess.” [The West Australian - August 11, 1994]
“There is also this huge underlying Holy Blood, Holy Grail theme in this song. What the Holy Grail was, the Blood Royal, was Mary Magdalene coming on a boat to the Mediterranean south of France carrying Jesus’ baby - the King of the Jews.” [Upside Down #5]
“Past the Mission refers to a personal experience with sexual violence, which I had a song about on Little Earthquakes also. So, the remark ‘I once knew a hot girl’ is painful. Where’s she gone? On this record there are songs about the healing from that experience, like Baker Baker (‘Make me whole again’), Past the Mission, Yes, Anastasia. The idea is to rescue myself from the role of a victim. That I have a choice left. Though I can’t change what has happened, I can choose how to react. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being bitter and locked up. That’s also the thought behind the phrase ‘past the mission/I smell the roses’” [St Louis Dispatch - July 15, 1994]
“The trouble in the churches is what I sing about in Past the Mission. But there’s also a lot of hope in that song because ‘Past the mission I smell the roses.’ There is a denouncement, I think, in this whole earth life. I’m not going to say - although I think R.E.M.’s right that it is the end of the world as we know it - that I think it’s really showing itself as that. But ‘Past the mission I once knew a hot girl...’ Where is she? Where did she bury herself? Again, it’s trying to find the pieces of myself that I have numbed over the years. And there is life past the mission.” [Schwann Spectrum - Spring 1994]
“Past the Mission is about a girl who refuses to be a victim anymore. But she has to face a lot of thought patterns to do that. I wrote this when I was reading the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail. It talks about different theories on Christ. It talks a lot about Mary Magdalene. It’s an underlying theme about how the church, the mission, has suppressed all this truth down through the years -- the Goddess energy. They refer to Mary Magdalene as the Black Madonna. She had this cult following in France. They believe that she came to the shores pregnant. When they say the Holy Grail, they mean the Holy Blood, the Blood Royal in her body, Jesus’ baby. And some scholars believe this. The other parts don’t necessarily ring right, but there have been these secret societies. That’s what I’m talking about also in Space Dog. There are loads of secret societies, this is only one of them.” [Really Deep Thoughts - Winter 1995]
I: Who’s the man in prison in Past the Mission?
T: “The man who dies.”<br>I: Are you the “hot girl” in that song?
T: “Yeah, but also wondering, how do you get that back again? That part of you that hid in the holly bushes, as your father walked by after church. It’s finding it—the “hot girl”—in you.” [Aquarian Weekly - February 21, 1996]
“I wanted to keep the [piano at the] center while I experimented with different sounds. I mean, that was the whole idea. What arrangements can the piano hold? And through the whole process, we learned the piano can pretty much take anything. It’s just this choice, like in that bridge of Past the Mission, I’m playing a Vox organ around the piano, and Eric had styrofoam being pushed on the bottom end of the strings of the piano to create that strange bassoon sound. So there was a bit of prepared piano experimenting that we really didn’t take as far as we really wanted to because we were short on time.” [St Louis Dispatch - July 15, 1994]
Her latest, “Under the Pink,” made its debut this spring at No. 12. “It’s a good feeling,” she said of its success. “I didn’t know what this record was going to do.” That’s partly because she was putting divergent elements into her songs. “Like in ‘Past the Mission,’ I was putting three totally different structures together: the verse, chorus and the bridge belonged to different things.” When she played an early version of it to a musician friend, he said he didn’t think it worked. “And, I’m like: ‘That’s your opinion. I mean, I was playing Chopin when you were peeing in your bed, so see ya!’ I’m sorry, but sometimes you have to get a little protective. Or you put nothing out.” [Star Tribune - July 10, 1994]
: Datura - Tori Amos
