Lyrical Exegesis / "Professional Widow"

This is only my second true Lyrical Exegesis post and as I come down to the end of this blogging project I really wish I set aside more time and put more effort into writing more of them, there are so many songs out there that I want to share and spin from my perspective because I feel it's a great way to share my... well, just share... my experience. I might have one more of these posts in me before the end but I can't be sure...


Professional Widow
- Tori Amos (Boys For Pele)

...
Give me Peace
Love
And a hard cock



When I first envisioned the Lyrical Exegesis feature I thought I would dissect a song's lyrics and music in full, but now I see that's far too daunting a task. For a song like Professional Widow there's just too much to delve into lyrically; conceptually. Fortunately, it's also one of those songs you can sum up with a short excerpt... at least, there's one facet, one message I want to latch onto. The excerpt above is the final verse of the song and the one I want to focus on.

I love this lyric, this message. I have it posted here and there on certain online profiles of mine and it was actually a friend of mine on one of these sites that sparked this post. I felt the need to explain myself and my love for these words... this concept.

I wasn't raised a Christian. That whole sphere of Judeo-Christian philosophy that exists in the hearts and minds of many is foreign to me. It's alien but still a part (however, small) of my mind and heart by virtue of being the predominant philosophy in America. You can't live here, or anywhere, without being affected by it in some way... it sees and rules all. In it's view I'm a heathen, I come from a noble ancestry of heathens. Although I also wasn't raised Navajo, It was still there... but it wasn't a part of my life in the way that Christianity was a part of my church-going friends' lives. But I had enough of that world (Navajo culture), that philosophy (Navajo spirituality) around me that I absorbed it more than anything else. It was a philosophical/spiritual osmosis... what I managed to take away came in the form of an understanding of symbology and a mind for metaphor (that's probably fairly obvious to anyone who knows me well enough). It's because of that absorption that I've been able to... relate. Comparative mythology is more my bag than anything else... I love it. So I don't have a problem with religion per se. I don't even have a problem with Christianity. My problem is with indoctrination... well even that's not true... I have a problem with misinterpretation. The greatest tragedy as it pertains to religion/mythology is mistaking shadow for substance and poetry for prose. The concept of a literal mind interpreting a spiritual language is... well I won't even get into it here, I need to focus.

Tori Amos is one of my two favorite artists of all-time, of any medium. She was raised Christian, the daughter of a minister no less. So her work is very much focused on... damn I knew this would be hard. :P

I feel like I'm on the outside in a lot of ways. I feel I'm under attack. It's that force... it's not Christianity but it's the perversion of Christianity that I feel at war with. I respond to and crave any work that speaks to that tension... The Cannonade Against Christianity, The Blitzkrieg of Blasphemy, The Salvo of Sin. It's about being under attack and opting for an offensive stance rather than defensive. To hell with the best offense being a good defense, I think... I know that allowing something as caustic and toxic as this specific form of perversion to let fly and unchecked is what the enemy would prefer; they would prefer that we not respond in kind. And I don't mean to... advocate a violent or... all I'm speaking of is fostering and owning your anger and outrage rather than dismissing or burying it. You keep it in your heart, you don't let it die, you foster it so that if you ever find yourself in a situation when it's called upon you you can come from a place of strength and clarity.

Of the many crimes perpetrated by The Great Perversion, the one I find most foul and reprehensible is the notion that Nature is fallen and sinful. So much of that philosophy speaks of strength and spirit from without rather than within; It speaks of shame. Everything I know and was raised on speaks of the exact opposite. I've known people who are damaged by it. I've seen it... this disconnection between body and soul. That Nature, the body, sex and sexuality could become points of shame and disgrace... well, I just don't understand how people could buy into that bullshit. To view sex as anything other than a Holy Communion is... it's just so foreign to me. To have a divinity that excludes, degrades or minimizes sexuality is counterfeit. That the natural and the spiritual could exist in two separate spheres is insane to me; natural is spiritual; Nature is Divine. And I don't know where you would look in this day and age and hope to argue the point. You've generations crippled by this castration and infibulation of the mind; that whole sphere of dysfunction. You've barren lands and polluted waters, all a result of this Great Perversion. You see the shame, the impotence, the pollution, the schizophrenia, the excess, the filth, the entitlement, the extinction, the perversion... is that Divine, is that Holy? It all comes to bear from an ideology that views Nature as fallen. That religion is not my religion... that world is not the world I want.

Give me peace / Love / And a hard cock is about union. To speak as a fully realized person would mean uttering and internalizing those words. It's an equal balance... or maybe no balance because there's no discrimination. The heavenly and the divine is not... it's not just the white doves. All of these elements are dependent on one another. The Holy Trinity is mind, body and soul. But it's always the body that gets left out of the picture. The body takes a backseat. The body is devalued. But we need the body if we want to taste the bliss of being. The hard cock is merely a reference to that idea, it also exists as the wet pussy or exists as whatever you need it to exist as to fully embrace every part of your being (both physical and metaphysical) and honor yourself and others for exactly what we are, The Divine.


It's really something to see Tori Amos perform live, and never more so than when she performs a song like Professional Widow that expresses this dialogue on sexuality as divinity. It's really something to see a woman with a Christian upbringing totally embracing her sexuality and playing with your idea of propriety; she'll straddle and grind that piano bench, she'll spread her legs and claw her inner thighs, she'll growl, holler and moan, she'll caress her breasts and clench her crotch, and as you'll see in the final seconds of this performance she'll wrench and slurp her microphone as a phallic object. She's so... words don't do her justice. *swooning* ;) :D





Professional Widow (album lyrics)

slag pit
stag shit
honey bring it close to my lips
yes
don't blow those brains yet
we gotta be big boy
we gotta be big
starfucker just like my daddy
just like my daddy selling his baby
just like my daddy
gonna strike a deal make him feel like a congressman
it runs in the family

rest your shoulders peaches and cream
everywhere a judas as far as you can see
beautiful angel
calling "we got every re-run of muhammed ali"

prism perfect
honey bring it close to your lips
yes
what is termed a landslide of principle
proportion boy it better be big boy
starfucker just like my daddy
just like my daddy selling his baby
just like my daddy
gonna strike a deal make him feel
like a congressman
it runs in the family

mother mary
china white
brown may be sweeter
she will supply
mother mary
china white
brown may be sweeter
she will supply
she will supply
she will supply
she will supply

give me peace
love
and a hard cock


DS333, hard.