Why I think Tori Amos is Psychic, and why her song Bells for Her was written for me and my old friend Starr.
This is the story of me and Starr. I'll warn you, it's long. It goes through my live over the past 5 or 6 years. Not the whole thing, but all the major points and some of the minor ones. It also goes into Tori, and why I think she had dreamt of Starr and I the night before she wrote this song. She told an interviewer that this song just came out, that she had to listen to it to find out what the lyrics were, and write them down. This was fate.
Bells For Her - by Tori Amos, from the album Under the Pink
And through the life force and there goes her friend on her
Nishiki it's out of time and through the portal they can make amends
hey would you say whatever we're blanket friends
can't stop what's coming can't stop what is on it's way
And through the walls they made their mudpies
I've got your mind I said she said
I've your voice I said you don't need my
voice girl you have your own but you never thought
it was enough so the went years and years
like sisters blanket friends
always there through that and this
there's nothing we cannot ever fix I said
can't stop what's coming can't stop what is on it's way
Bells and footfalls and soldiers and dolls
brothers and lovers she and I were now
she seems to be sand under his shoes
there's nothing I can do
can't stop what's coming can't stop what is on it's way
And now I speak to you are you in there
you have her face and her eyes but you are not her
and we go at each other like blank ettes who cannot
find their thread and their bare
can't stop loving can't stop what is on it's way
and I see it coming and it's on it's way
In a way, I thought she was my life force. I didn't think I could make it without her. When she was gone, I could almost feel it draining away, until I realized that she wasn't my life force, and watching her leave would not kill me, would not destroy me, would not ruin me. Not only was I a strong person, I had my love, Jim, to rely on. I'm not sure if I would have made it through this as well without him.
When we were no longer friends, there was the chance, the smallest chance, that we would be friends again. The night we talked on the computer could have gone a totally different way, and we could still be friends now.
But you can't stop fate, can you? It was never meant to be, I know that now.
This I think relates to the arts. I used to write a lot. A lot. It was all really bad. I admit that now. I did then, but only to myself. The only person that ever read any of my stories was Starr. She always told me they were good, but I could sort of tell that she was just saying it to be nice, but trying really hard not to let me know that she was just saying it to be nice. I always thought Starr was an awsome author. She could write these wonderful stories, or so I thought. Now, I realize that her stories were over metaphorized and trite. She could never use plain language, everything had to be snazzed up with fifty cent words and things that really didn't make sense. She tried to be creepy and fantasy and stuff like that, but it never worked. I realized this when I read the stories, but I thought it was me, that I wasn't smart enough to understand what she was writing. Now I know better.
This sort of carried over into art too. Starr was somewhat of an amature artist. She did a lot of ink drawings, really weird stuff, and a fairly good oil painting, and I was SO jealous. I can barely draw a straight line. Of course, I've since realized that while I'm not good at physcial arts, like drawing and painting and scuplting, I'm really good at digital arts. I'd rather be good at digital arts. I think I'm a fairly good author too, or so I've been told. I'm really working hard on writing more short stories. I think I'll do better at stories than at books, but you never know, maybe one day I'll expand one of my stories.
Starr was my best friend for a long time. We met when I was a sophmore and she was a juinor in high school, that would have been in the fall of 1993. The friendship lasted until the summer of 1997. Ok, saying it that way doesn't make it sound as long. That makes me feel a lot better. I knew writing this would be a good idea.
Starr and I always called each other sisters. Well, it was "Seester" We'd always close letters and emails with "Love you Seester, Meh!" And we always were there for each other, through everything, till the end.
I never thought we would be apart. I could not concieve of a time when we wouldn't be friends. We had all sorts of plans. When she went to Seattle for college, I planned on going there too, after I graduated. That didn't happen, but when she came back, we planned on moving to London together after we both had our degrees. We were going to live in england and live together and be happy. When we got older, I would be a famous physicist and she would be a famous marine biologist. I would have a mansion on an island off New Zeland, and she would have a huge boat she would travel around on, the only person she would see would be me when she came to visit my island.
We never fought, really. Not until the end.
You really can't stop what's coming. I wonder if she ever really liked me. She told Jim, at the end, that she had never considered me a real friend. Sometimes I wonder if that was what she was thinking, in the years that we were friends. When she was in Seattle, she told me one of the reasons she was so miserable and friendless was that she was looking for me in other people, a friend as good as I was, and she never found me, so she never really made any friends out there. Now I wonder if that was true? What was true, that, or what she said at the end? Or were each true at their times? I don't know...
"Bells and footfalls and soldiers and dolls
brothers and lovers she and I were now
she seems to be sand under his shoes
there's nothing I can do"
Ok, a lot of background here. This will take a while.
The summer before my senior year in high school, I met the goths. Starr and I had been dressing in what we called the "Morbid" style for a while, but we had never heard of goths or the goth subculture or any of it. The most goth music we listened to was Depeche Mode (still a favorite). But, as I waited around at work (McDonalds, yuck), two really interesting people walked in. One was tall and skinny and a punk. The other was short and had wiggly eyes on the toes of her Docs. I tend not to be shy when I see something I like, so I asked her about them. We started talking, and later, after I was at work for a while, she came up and asked for my number, and gave me theirs (they were roomates). I was pretty happy, thought I had found some new freak freinds.
They came back later that night, with another roomate of theirs, Doug. He called himself "Grandpa Goth" because he was almost 30 and had a Master's degree in Chemistry. They were all very cool and nice, and invited me to go dancing at an after-hours goth club after I got off work. I called up Starr from work and invited her to come, but she said she was too tired and wanted to stay home. So, I went out, had a great time, got in a lot of trouble with my mom, and met a lot of new people. So started an Era in my life.
I finally got Starr to meet my new friends. Doug fell for her instantly. He was in love. She wasn't too keen on him at first, but they started going out. Meanwhile, I was going out with the tall punk guy, Boone, and Devon, the short one with the eyes on her boots, instantly became one of my close friends. This was July. In September, Starr went to college in Seattle (SU). She was still dating Doug, and they were going to try to keep their relationship going while she was at college. She told me she didn't have too high of hopes for it, but didn't want to tell him that, because she knew that he was really in love with her. (This should have been a big sign to me)
So, off she went, and both Doug and I were miserable. He called her very often. She was miserable there too. She had gone to a Christan school without knowing it, and she didn't like Christians. She had no friends and she thought it was cold all the time. She hated her dorm roomate and everyone thought she was weird because she wore black and wasn't perky. So, being lonely and miserable and depressed made her sort of blur the image of Doug. In reality, he was about 5'6" and very hairy. She remembered him as taller and more handsome and less hairy. Doug and I went out to visit Starr the first week in November of 1995. I had a great time, I got to see my Seester, whom I missed horribly. Doug proposed to Starr. She accepted. They were engaged to be married.
Ok, back home, I was missing Starr even more. Doug made the decision to move to Seattle with her at New Year's. She was going to fly out here to visit us and her parents, and they would drive a UHaul back together with all his stuff. By this time, I had moved out of my mom's house (I didn't get along with her boyfriend, whom we lived with), and in with Doug and Devon and this other guy Sean and this other girl Vanessa, and Devon's boyfriend Jeff. Boone and I had broken up before Starr had ever left for Seattle, and he had moved out of the apartment. At New Year's, when Starr came back, I was REALLY sick, I had a bad bad bad case of the flu. I was also going to school, working about 30 hours a week, and horribly malnourished. Some nights I wouldn't eat at all, or just eat candy at work (I worked in a candy store). I was also fighting a lot with Doug. When Starr came to visit, he wouldn't let me see her, he'd either drag her off to go do something or take her in the bedroom and lock the door. It was horrible. I didn't know it was all Doug, I thought she was mad at me too. So, it ended up that I didn't even get to say goodbye to my Seester as she left for Seattle again.
Fast foward a few months to late March/early April. After Doug left, we didn't have the money to keep up the nice apartment. Devon and I moved out and lived out of my truck for awhile, then got an apartment (with a LOT of help from my mom). As the spring came, I really started missing Starr. I hadn't heard from her at all, not even a phone call. I was so upset. So, finally, one day I wrote her a letter. I didn't know what was going on, if Doug was in complete control of her, if she would even get the letter. I started the letter with a line from Tori, who had been our favorite singer. "Bells and footfalls and soldiers and dolls, brothers and lovers she and I were." This line was for everything that had been. No, we weren't brothers, but we were Seesters. And no, we weren't lovers, but Doug for a while had been dead set on getting us to both get into bed with him...needless to say, he never succeeded. "Now she seems to be sand under his shoes. There's nothing I can do." This line was how I felt. I felt like she had become sand under his shoes, just something he had walked all over and picked up and carried with him. I didn't think there was anything I could do. I felt well and truly helpless.
Believe it or not, I got a responce to my letter. She had hated living with Doug even more than I had. He was gross and hairy and repellent, and also rather emotionally abusive. She had broken off their relationship totally in January, and had just moved back into the dorms as she was writing the letter. I was so happy...she might even be moving back to Albuquerque, leaving school in Seattle to go to school out here.
A bit more background. Starr did move back, over the summer. She took the fall off school and worked in a health food store at the Deli. She hated the job, but the money was pretty good. I was going to school in Socorro, about an hour away. I tried to come up every weekend, and every holiday. When I was up, we would drink coffee and stay up all night playing cards and playing on her computer. We were both lonely and depressed, but we were lonely and depressed together, so it didn't feel lonely, somehow. I look back on that time and realize that I've never been so miserable in my entire life.
Christmas came and went, and with it, my 19th birthday. We started 1997 just like we ended 1996, depressed. I was taking hard classes at school, and Starr was starting up at UNM, taking her two favorite subjects, creative writing and microbiology. I was starting working at the school in Socorro, a great job developing flim. It was easy and I got to read a lot.
Fast foward to spring. I meet Jim. The love of my life. He still is : ) He lived next door to me in Socorro, and we started talking and hanging out. I really liked him, but he was a really clean cut militant type. I loved talking to him, but I never thought he'd like someone as weird as me. He moved up to Albuquerque in May. For the first few weeks, I really really missed him. Another neighbor of ours gave me his new phone number, so I gave him a call. We talked for something like 3 hours. It was great. At the end, he found out that I hadn't seen Grosse Point Blank, one of his favorite movies. He offered to take me to it the next time I was in Albuquerque, which would be in a few days. Our first date! It wasn't considered a date at the time, but it was. :)
So, I was in love, happy, had a wonderful boyfriend. Starr spent time hanging out with him when I was in Socorro, going out and having coffee with him, talking to him about me and religion and philosopy and stuff. I didn't know it, but she wasn't being entirely true about me to him. She said that I had been through a ton of boyfriends, and that I was sorta slutty (totally untrue!). He didn't believe her, but he didn't say anything about it to me, because he knew she was my absolute best friend and didn't want to start a fight between us, on the chance that I would blame him if our friendship broke up. I wouldn't, even then I loved him far more than I ever loved her.
On July 21st, Jim and I got in a massive car accident. We should have both died. It was a total mircale that we lived, much less that we both came through pretty much undamaged. We were both in the hospital the next day, which was the day that Starr was due to go to California for three weeks to visit an ex boyfriend of hers. I had my mom give her a call and tell her what happened, so she wouldn't worry about me.
About two weeks later, I called her in California, and I tried to tell her what happened. You'd think she'd be concerned that her Seester had nearly died, right? Nope. She kept interuptting me to tell me inane things about her vacation. Now, I know an accident story can be boring or upsetting, but I had barely said anything about it, and I was just telling her because I thought she would be concerned. I wasn't droning on for hours and hours. It really upset me that she wasn't concerned, but I ignored it at the time.
A week later, she came back from california. It was about the same time that I finally got a phone down in Socorro, so I emailed her my number and a long "welcome back how was your vacation email."
I never got an answer.
A few days went by, and I thought it was weird, but not really upsetting. Maybe she was just busy, or having computer problems or something. But after a week, I emailed her again...still no answer. A week turned into month. During this time, Jim was in California. He had gone to stay with his parents there after the accident to recooperate. He had broken a lot of bones in his left hand, and had also messed up his neck and had a pretty bad concussion. He needed the rest. I went and visited him in September, still having heard nothing from Starr. A few days after I got back, we were talking on the phone. He told me he had talked to Starr online, on Instant Messages (they both had AOL).
She told him I was weak, stupid, and shallow. She told him I would be unfaithful. She told him that I had been unfaithful to every other boyfriend that I had ever had, and that I probably had already cheated on him. She told him I was a slut. She told him I was never a true friend, that in the years we had been friends she had never considered me a real friend.
Jim had waited until I had taken my visit out there, because he knew what my reaction would be. I was devestated. She was my Seester, my other self, and here she never thought I was a real friend? What? What?!?! I couldn't take it. I couldn't comprehend it. I never did, nor will I ever blame Jim. He is my true love. If I had to choose between them, there would be no contest whatsoever. He is always number one in my heart. So, I gave up Starr. She cut me out of her life, so I cut her out of mine. My Seester was gone.
We talked to each other one more time. Jim was on AOL one night, and saw her signed on. He imed her, just for the heck of it. I was over at his place and half asleep on the couch (this was pretty late at night, maybe 2am). He chatted with her a bit, then started saying "hey, brandy's here, but she's asleep. Do you want me to wake her up so you can talk to her?" She was all "I don't know, I don't know, if you want too" yadda yadda. So I came over and took over the computer (I had woken up totally after he started IMing her, but I didn't really want to talk to her). We chatted for a bit, just general stuff, school and haircuts and things like that.
The conversation moved on to her mom. Her mom had just started taking Prozac. I actually thought it was a good idea, even though I'm not too keen on the idea of Prozac, just because I knew her mom fairly well. She was very depressed and anorexic, and was married to a man that had a problem controlling his temper. I told Starr that I thought it would help her mom, and she got all upset, saying it wasn't her mom anymore. That her mom kept trying to make her go to a shrink. Then the conversation took a weird swing. Starr started going on and on, saying that she had Multiple Personality Disorder, that her doctor had told her she had it, that she had alternate personalities, but she knew them and knew when one was taking over and that she talked to them all the time. Ok, Jim is a Psychology major. He's taken a mess of psych classes, amongst them several that dealt with Abnormal stuff. He was laughing like he was going to die. I had just taken two psychology classes myself, the intro one and an Abnormal one, so I saw right through it too. Not only did her story smack of "little rich girl trying to get attention", but everything we had read and been taugh told us that her doctor was leading her on to get her money, and she was going with it to get the attention. I told her this flat out. This lead into a major fight, and I told her she was full of it. Finally she signed off, and Jim called her. She had a few books of his, and of mine, and a pair of my shoes. It was time to get the stuff back. She also had some of my furniture in her garage. We told her we'd be over at 6am to get it on the next weekend.
We went over, dead early in the morning. I was SO tired, but I didn't care, I wanted this over with. She met us at the door, looking strung out and nasty. She handed me a bag of stuff, and said "Make sure that's everything, because I never want to see you again." I surprised her when I rattled off a list of things she had forgotten to give back. And that was it. We left. I say this line in Bells for Her relates to us because she looked the same, "you have her face, and her eyes", but she wasn't the same "but you are not her". There was nothing left of my Seester in her. "And we go at each other like, Blanke ettes, Blanke ettes who can't find there, there thread and they're bare."
This goes back to it was inevitable. It was going to happen. I never could have stopped it, it was meant to be. Starr and I were not meant to be friends.
I can't stop loving her. She was my Seester, and I love her memory. But that's all there is left, memories.
Tori saw this. She wrote this song. This album with this song came out when we were just becoming friends. Little by little, I associated more and more of it with her. I may sound like a ninny, but this is something that I do believe.