Recently, I went back to listen to Boys for Pele. Boy, I forgot how much it cuts.


The album came out during my freshman year at college. I was lonely, depressed, floundering in my studies and finances and all around was in a very bad place.

Sometimes I've said that Tori saved my life, and this album reminds me just how much.

I waited nearly three weeks from the time I bought the album to when I sat down to listen to it. I wanted no distractions, and I was right to do it that way. Her whispers, her harpsicord, Caton and the faeries all held me down while I drowned in near hysterical tears. Someone who "got it" was with me, stroking my hair telling me it would be ok. I'm fighting back the tears as I write this. It's really kind of amazing.

She helped me to understand that I can reside in the deepest pits within me and still know that joy is possible. She helped me to not fear despair and to realize that I wasn't the lost cause a lot people had written me off as.

Tori kind of found me like a bolt of lightening finds a lightening rod. I was 16, driving out someplace with my mom, listening to the local alternative rock station (back when there was an alternative and before Tori was relegated to adult contemporary *sniff*). A song started up with a weird guitar chord and effects that sounded like seagulls wheeling and diving over an empty beach. Somehow, for some reason, I knew what the first line would be. Maybe I had heard it before and it hadn't registered. But I knew it would be "God, sometimes you don't come through." And when I heard her actually say it I felt shocked, like ice water through my center. I've paid close attention ever since.

I got to college only thinking I needed something new to get away from home. It wasn't bad, just tiresome. A place I had outgrown and had no more use for. I hated high school and just couldn't handle living with my parents any more. I thought getting away would do the trick and failed to pay attention to what I would need in the new place. By the time I was curled up on the floor of my dorm room completely without illusion of where my life was I didn't have friends or anyone I thought who would give a damn about me.

It's like Pele came into my life and set fire to my internal house of cards. It hurt and I was freaked out but Tori sat me down and told me about destroying the old world to make room for the new. She held my hand and let me cry on her shoulder.

Aesthetically, I like the band stuff better especially live. But when i'm lost somewhere deep inside and it feels like the days are dark and everything is hopeless BFP comes to me reminds me that life is suffering. But that's no reason to forget to celebrate. When I listen I can still remember the smell of my dorm room and the way the sunlight spilled in through the window and how lonely I felt.

I pulled out some lines that still slap my memory synapses around:

off with supafly sniffing a Sharpie pen
the threads that are golden don't break easily
he likes killing you after you're dead
sometimes you're nothing but meat
you alwasy did prefer the drizzle to the rain
he says I run and then I run from him and then I run
girls that eat pizza never gain weight
I'm gonna strike deal & make him feel like a congressman
ratatouille, strichnine sometimes she's a friend of mine
too bad the burial was premature, she said and smiled.
I knew you, pigtails and all
making themselves pesters and lesters and jesters and my traitors of kind
she could outrun the fastest slug
there's no way in, use the phone
made my own pretty hate machine
I need a big loan from a girl zone
didn't know my love was so small
we both know it was girl, back in Bethlehem
teach me how to love my brother who don't know the law
moses I know, I know you've seen fire but you've never seen fire
this little masochist, she's ready to confess all the things that I never thought that she could feel
thought we both could use a friend to run to
if my heart is soaking wet, boy your boots can leave a mess
thought I knew myself so well
your apocalypse was fab
maybe I'm the afterglow
gonna have it all here on the way down
little amsterdam in a southern town
it wasn't my bullet
you've got to know these days which side you're on
her best friend is a sun dress
father only you can save my soul, and playing that organ must count for something
balancing cake and bread, say good bye to a glitter girl
run into the the henchman that severed Ann Bolynn
I don't want to lose you, but it must be worth losing if it is worth something
wrapped in your papoose, your little fig newton
what you want is in the blood, senator
all the Russians die on the ice
I never give too much for the money
and are there devils with halos and beautiful capes
just another pilot down
many there know some girls with red ribbons, the prettiest red ribbons
mr suntan mr happy man mr i know the girls on all the world tours
southern men can grow cold can grow purty, blood can be purty like a delicate man
blood lets you in, lets you in, lets...
you told me last night you were a sun now
hand me a trick and your message, you'll never gain weight from doughnut hole
2 girls 65, got a piece tied up in the backseat, honey we're recovering Christians
right there for a minute I knew you so well
got an angry snatch, girls you know what I mean, when swiveling a hip doesn't do the trick
every road leads back to my door
I know she's not that foxy, boys
boy, you're still so pretty
it's just your ghost passing through
but I know a girl twice as hard
gonna twinkle