CW: rape, abuse, transphobia, homophobia, anti-Black violence
On June 16, 2022, Tori Amos performed her a capella song, “Me and a Gun” at Los Angeles’ Orpheum Theatre for the first time since 2011. Her performances of this song over the years have varied somewhat; most often simply holding a microphone as she looked out into the audience, but during one tour her performances included a pantomime involving a knife and with Amos, in character ostensibly as a version of herself personifying rage and frustration (among other things), holding a gun herself.
Amos wrote the song after viewing Thelma and Louise; when it was written, she had long been a piano bar performer (and in fact, had been giving a man a ride home after one of her gigs when he assaulted her) and had a record deal through Atlantic Records. She’d released her first album as Y Kant Tori Read in 1988 and had gone back to her roots as a solo pianist and begun working on the seeds of Little Earthquakes in London and had felt compelled to tell her story publicly for the first time as a result of the movie. Her activism on behalf of rape victims led her to become the first spokesperson for RAINN (an organization now, sadly, going through a terrible degree of turmoil as it reckons with patterns of sexist and racist behavior shattering the organization and exposed in a Business Insider article in 2022).
As a longtime fan of Amos’, and as someone who has experienced trauma myself, I watched fan recordings of her recent performance with rapt attention. Tori had spoken earlier in the same show about her history as a piano bar performer (beginning at age 13 and extending into her career jump from the D.C. area to L.A.; Amos had long been established as a piano bar performer before releasing Little Earthquakes at age 28), and in some ways, it felt like it could be the closing of a book. In addition to writing “Me and a Gun”, Amos has alluded to the impact of trauma throughout her career (with songs such as “Peeping Tommi”, “Smokey Joe”, and “Baker Baker”).
More significantly, however, her most recent album — Ocean to Ocean — felt like a tremendous reckoning in terms of seeing additional facets of how trauma unfolds over time for victims.
In her song “29 Years” Amos dives into a deeper, often unspoken component of trauma: the way in which victims may create protective webs or coping measures which inadvertently push those we love away from us or even lie to us about those we care about.
Amos is not someone who seems to feel forced to perform any of her songs; her later career has been one she has charted independently, without restraint from a record label, and she has long discussed the measures she’s taken to protect her own work and legacy. It would be unfair to assume, then, that she performed “Me and a Gun” 30 years after the release of Little Earthquakes because she “had” to in any capacity.
In some ways, it felt like an acknowledgment of where she has been and where she is now as a woman who has done well for herself with a total of 16 studio albums including frequent collaboration with her sound engineer and husband, Mark Hawley, and her daughter, Natashya (who sings backing vocals on several Ocean to Ocean tracks). Amos also enjoys a strong bond with a large and still-growing fanbase and is looked upon by other musicians as a source of inspiration.
Her recent performance of such a significant song, and the revisiting of this trauma, could be seen as her way of recognizing how she has in so many ways come full circle from where she has been, and how her relationship with the song has changed over the years.
It felt at times like a fresh reclamation of it; she carefully placed emphasis on her words at several points and held a lyric sheet in one hand seemingly more for the sake of comfort and strength than the result of a need to reference words she had not sung in public for over a decade.
Yet, simultaneously, it felt like an acknowledgment of what seems to many of us to be a form of societal backsliding that we have been forced to reckon with here in the United States.
In May of 2022, a draft of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case protecting abortion rights for those who can bear children — a case understandably considered to be settled law — was leaked. The draft was not a surprise per se; that Roe would likely not stand had seemed a likely conclusion given the way in which the Court now skews.
But even if it was not unexpected, the potential revocation of clear and established rights to reproductive bodily autonomy was a terrifying revelation piled upon additional legislative horrors visited upon United States citizens of late, including Texas’ anti-transgender directives, which threatened to remove transgender children from loving homes for the crime of simply being provided with love and gender-affirming care.
Beyond Texas, Florida (a state where Amos has long owned a home in addition to her home in Cornwall, England) has passed a bill known colloquially as the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, said by some to have originated with a single case in which a transgender student asked to be gendered properly within the confines of a school setting only to see their own parents retaliate. Florida’s bill has already begun threatening the safety not only of LGBT students, but of teachers as well, and has begun to find itself serving as the foundation for additional groundwork harming the LGBT community; recently, the Florida Agency for Health Care announced that it would cease to provide transgender adults on Medicare with gender-affirming care. Within the leaked Roe decision, an additional insult was hinted at: the possible overturn of Obergefell v. Hodges, which compels states to honor gay marriage.
Beyond this, we’ve watched as a victim of abuse, Amber Heard, found herself embroiled in a humiliating court case launched by her abuser (in an abusive situation in which Heard herself has long conceded she behaved poorly as well, often even by retaliating physically herself) which was generally seen by an angry public as the “answer” to the #metoo movement; Heard was seen as a woman falsely claiming victimhood, who “performed” victimhood in a way that was deemed unpalatable or false to many (including one juror, who recently spoke out about their views on the case, alluding to the fact that Amber’s behavior on the stand, which ranged from tears and anguish to seeming indifference — hallmark signs of trauma known to any of us who have experienced abuse ourselves).
We’ve also watched as the wife of one Supreme Court Justice, Ginni Thomas, emerged yet again to strike blows against others. Thomas had previously distinguished herself by leaving a voicemail message for Anita Hill, who had been sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas, to demand an apology for her allegations. Now, we see that Thomas has found herself complicit in the effort to overthrow election results which culminated in a violent coup attempt on January 6, 2021. Amos, whose career as an entertainer often involved working in bars in the Washington D.C. area early on (which she recounts in her recent book, Resistance), would have likely considered herself especially attuned to such political intrigue and dealings.
Amos has long endeavored to call out that some of those eager to tear women down are women themselves; in the song “Girl Disappearing” she speaks of those who pit “woman against feminist”.
Beyond all of this, we have the continued reckoning of the toll of racism in our country as police violence against the Black community has continued unabated with little by way of justice.
School board meetings have become inundated with conservative outcry against CRT, or Critical Race Theory, an academic premise not taught in K-12 school settings and instead used as shorthand for any means by which we educate our youth about enslavement, Jim Crow laws, systemic racism and continued patterns of injustice and violence.
Far-right groups such as Patriot Front, Oathkeepers, and Proud Boys have begun showing up at innocent events such as Drag Queen Library hours, in which children’s books are read, threatening LGBT individuals volunteering their efforts to further education. Neo-Nazis are now piling into U-Hauls to terrorize individuals at Pride Events. A man in Buffalo, N.Y. shot 13 people, 11 of whom were Black a supermarket, killing 10. The shooter was spurred on by racist “great replacement” theory narratives. Beyond this, social media accounts are galvanizing far-right forces to attack liberal individuals, aiming to have them fired from their jobs or worse. The recitation of continued attacks can continue page after page, detailing threats of violence and destruction against marginalized people.
It seems unending. It feels as if a wound is reopened daily, forcing those who have experienced trauma to face each day with a dwindling supply of personal reserves. It feels as if the efforts of activists are barely enough to begin to push back against an onslaught, let alone force it into retreat. In the face of all of this, many who have experienced abuse have felt compelled to engage in the recitation of their pain and trauma in attempts to create bridges of understanding with others; all desperate and earnest efforts to create empathy with those who would arm themselves against us.
It feels that we must, at every level, continue to perform our traumas for what at times feels like an uncaring and antagonistic audience.
It is as if we are no longer allowed the luxury of healing in a world continually disinterested in community efforts at unity, peace, hope, or harmony.
As Amos prepared a setlist for her recent show, I wonder, then, if she felt uniquely compelled to bring the song she used to raise awareness for rape victims back to the forefront, to perform it with a depth of passion one nearly wouldn’t expect of her at this stage in her career. It was as if she was reminding us all that our traumas, both personal and collective, cannot be set aside fully and must be looked dead on as we muster our strength to continue to stand up for what we believe in. Like so many of her performances on her most recent tour, it felt like her way of reaching out to the audience to create a sense of communion; to galvanize ourselves and allow no one to minimize what we have experienced and how it has shaped us as people.
