Violent & Delicious [Souls]


You will find once you choose truth and light, love and responsibility, then you are in command and control of your life. You still have a polarity when one of you chooses to still be a victim and allow other people to control and blame you. Or, you can choose to take control. To control what is going to happen now as far as if I'm not happy here... I can leave. If I'm not being respected here, I can leave, but I have to respect myself first. Only you can do that for yourself.


"I'd be quite happy, as an artist, if I knew that a verse, even a line in one of my songs could do for people what 'Thelma and Louise' did for me, liberate them in some way, particularly from a fear of the darker side of their own nature. What is any art form worth if it doesn't do that? Isn't that what all great art is all about?"


If we, as women, don't rebel against the way in which the Church and State have conspired to control our sexuality we'll never reach a point of self-evolvement. And evolution, in any sense, has nothing to do with enforcing guilt, with this horrific cross they have stuck between that girl's legs.

Jesus Christ has nothing to do with that and it has nothing to do with Jesus Christ and don't let anyone tell me that it has. The cross has been used as a weapon, as it has been used against all women throughout the ages. And that's the greatest evil of all."


"I do believe that we all are, fundamentally, divided creatures. Emotions split from intellect, spirit from flesh and far too often sexuality is disconnected from what we feel, and are, as total human beings. But how, for example, can anyone have an understanding of the virgin if they don't also have an understanding of the prostitute, the saint and sinner in one body? Attempting to reconcile these opposing forces in my own nature is my goal ..."


"... I waited a long time before giving up my virginity, because of this feeling: 'how can I be a nice, respectable girl and want to do this?' And more than anything I wanted respect from men, my father in particular. And even at that age I felt that Jesus was a real, living presence in my life. That can be a bit of a disadvantage. It's weird when you're giving a guy head at 15 and you're thinking 'Jesus is looking at me!'


"Doing it with a priest never got me off, they wash it so often! But doing it with Jesus, now that is something else! Most Christian women would be trained to think that even this thought is blasphemous. But I say that's a load of bollix! That's how women are paralyzed, disconnected from the source of their own power, by religion."


"I've nearly always believed that Jesus Christ really liked Mary Magdalen and and that if he was, as he claimed to be, a whole man, he had to have sexual relations with her. So in my deepest, most private moments I've wanted Christ to be the boyfriend I've been waiting for. And a lot of Christian girls have a crush on Jesus. I may have felt guilty at the thought of wanting to do it with Jesus but then I say why not? He *was* a man."


"I write about things that I hide from myself and to this place that doesn't get dealt with much. And in a certain point, um, you know, you have to write about it, or it just stays locked up inside. So writing about it, my songs becomes my teachers."


Mmmm.... Well, I trying to think of... I've been developing things for like over 25 years, so sometimes I can't even put them into words. It's more the tummy test. When I'm ready to throw up, I know a song isn't finished yet. And when I can eat, I know that I can. Sometimes it's that simple.

I mean as far as the structure of a tune, there are two things that have to be operating at all times. One is complete instinctive writing, and then the other is the sculptor. Now the sculptor is the one that goes, Ok, so we kinda have a verse here, but this line has to be gutted because it isn't saying what we need it to say. And then another part of you goes, yeah but this came to me, and I was having an experience, and I was eating a banana when I was walking down this dirt road, and it just really, really worked for me. And you're going, yeah, but honey, it sucks.

So, I mean, you have to have two things working at all times, which is your skill side and your instinctive side. And sometimes I don't really know, if what I've done, it might be really, really cool, but if it hasn't _nailed me in the gut_, if I don't have that little fishhook on my intestines, then it ain't happening.


I've really dealt with a lot of female journalists, believe it or not, that don't want to talk about healing from violence and working through ... certain things, they just say, "Who's interested in talking about Jesus, masturbation, and rape?" and it's like, "What else is there to talk about? Of course we're going to talk about these things." And I've found that the women are the ones that block these issues a lot of the times, not the men, and that's the betrayal, it's like, "You're not a woman. You're ... you're a lizard walking around with a stolen ... genital."


"I'm not into races or religions, you know, I'm into faeries."


"What has happened is there has been this real snobby judgement on what is considered art. Art is just expression. Sometimes there's a craft involved, sometimes there isn't. I have seen people do something that is so effecting and they're not aware of what they're doing. They just tap into that place that we were talking about. Then there are other people who know their craft really well, and they choke it to death. They can never get to that place of magic. Now, I try and work with both. You have access to both. We all deserve to be able to tap into it, it's not like a hierarchy here..."

I think there has to be a reverence... not respect, because that means a judgement. Reverence is just reverence. For creativity. We don't have to take ourselves so seriously, but at the same time it is very serious...... When you put your ego in the right place, and I have mine, believe me, I have to deal with not getting competitive and the whole bit, because you do get thrown into that. This is the message that you're been taught growing up: that there is only room for one person to read their composition in school...

. "That's right. And we're really, really taught that. And that keeps us from being a community, from supporting each other. There's not a lot of support among musicians. There is not, I don't know, we are really removed from cheering for each other, because everybody is protecting their territory. It saddens me, because we talk about having a unified planet, and we can't even be unified as a musical community.

I usually get along best with the metal guys... the real, real subversives. I don't know, maybe it's because our paths don't cross much, but I think there's a passion there. A lot of the guy bands that are dealing with rage energy, I understand that, and have a lot of respect for what they are doing. I am trying to deal with it as well as other things. Rage is just one aspect."


"And again, it's really working through being a victim. 'Counting the tears from ten thousand men, and gathered them all, but my feel are slipping.' You can't blame the men anymore; there's always you. It comes back to us; it comes back to me.

But once again, it's essential to go I can stay here dry for the rest of my life, and angry, and maybe that anger keeps me alive. But maybe I'm angry because I don't have love in my life but I am the one who won't allow love in! There's almost a part of me that was addicted to being a victim. Those words are funny, addicted to being a victim ...

There's a funny thing that happens coming out of violent situations... you either become warrior-like, and tough, or you keep turning it over, and pulling more people into your life to abuse you in funny ways. You make them not respect you. And you blame everybody else."


... for me, the piano is a living thing. This thing they call the piano has an energy that... how should I say it? It's more than just three-dimensional matter, it's something four-dimensional. It has a body that surrounds it and at the same time it has its own life that transcends the material plane. Sometimes it's male, sometimes it's female, sometimes it's both. Sometimes when I play it has something sexual, sometimes not, and sometimes the relationship between us is so close, that... (long pause) Well, sometimes I think it's courting me and wants me in bed. And then there are moments when I really have the feeling it fucks with me in bed. But we respect each other. It's like that with the fairies ... I believe in fairies and that they exist. I mean, they talk to me.


I wrap my arms around the piano and embrace it. I see the piano as a living being. When I went back to it - after having my little explorations through the swamps and forests, and picking up a few bug bites along the way - I brought back new things.

I brought back a new rhythmic sensibility and an overall sense of awareness. Playing all those Gershwin tunes in lobbies taught me what not to do. It really freed me up. I feel like the piano hasn't been explored to its full potential. I'm not talking about synthesizers either. I mean really working with the acoustic instrument. I started to approach it as something that has its own consciousness. It thinks. We collaborate together.

It's not like master and servant.At times - and we're all guilty of this - you start whipping your instrument. Domination. Not that I don't like domination. But when it comes to the piano, it's not going to work unless there's give and take.


When I sit at the piano and the fifths start coming images from the highlands and the moors go through my head, and I feel like I've gone back a thousand years. Because I understand the message that lies in these sounds.

You know, all music contains a code, in every sound and in every sequence of notes there's a DNA, genes, specific memories of our own lifetime. That's why music talks to people on the subconscious level. Things resonate there that come from early cultures, from the original music of the North American Indians or from the folklore of the Celts. A lot of what I play goes back to these traditions. I mean, even if the musicians from these cultures played it on different instruments, say on drums, I can still take it over for my piano.

It's another medium, but the DNA is the same.


"I never talk about this and it helps the healing process to do so. Because people out there must be told about the self-loathing that follows rape and how it's the greatest breakage in divine law to mutilate themselves, as I have done. emotionally, I mutilated myself by feeling I'm not worthy of being loved and fucked, and being able to love and fuck at the same time. I was straining toward the reconciliation the last time we talked but the last frontier was crossed when I got the illness. At that point I had to deal with so much trauma in that part of my bodym and psyche. I do believe repression of that nature can cause the disease."


"I told you before that seeing the movie "Thelma and Lousie", years after the rape, finally made me feel like I wanted to kill that man but, instead, I now realise that what I did was kill a part of myself. i already had the hatred that women feel for themselves in the Christian Church in terms of their sexual response: that tyranny of believing that love is one thing and lust another, instead of being able to join them together. That was where I first began to be segregated, within myself.

"On top of that I took from the rape that man's hatred of women, so much so that I couldn't access parts of myself. It's as though a computer chip has been put in , to cut out contact with your core self, your central energy source. And that hatred ran so deep that I just numbed myself to survive. Even sexually, after the rape, I became the vampire, I drank but would not let the men drink. And I had to be a hooker to have sex. having felt I let myself, and all women, down because of my total vulnerability the night I was raped. I then had to continually tell myself I was in complete control, so I had to feel like I was gettin paid."


"I just can't accept it when the blanket resoponse of my women friends is simply 'all men are bastards, let's just cut them out of our lives, be rid of that male energy completely.' And it's really dissappointing on a personal level because my friends were not cornflake girls, not closed-mindedm rigid creatures, but raisin girls, who claimed to be open-minded and liberated. But they're the ones that have turned out to be the most reactionary, the most disappointing in terms of feminism. They are facists. And I don't want fascists in my life. I've had this idyllic view of the siterhood that has been shattered over the past year, that they would never betray each other. But I was wrong ..."


"Women must understand that simply attacking or hating all men is just another form of disempowerment. A woman has to realise that when she makes a man crawl it doesn't give her power. All it will do is make her puke, eventually. Rather than say 'all men are bastards' let's say 'all men are infants, until they decide to be men'. Calling them bastards is boring at this stage. It's kindergarden stuff, in terms of feminism. Let's hope we've moved on from that, from name calling, and making men crawl. That's kiddie behaviour.


"It's not something where you just go: 'Well, get over it.' Or: 'Believe in love and peace, my child, and it'll all be over.' Well, fuck you-That isn't the answer. It's a great thought, OK, but you can go and stick the crystals up your butt and lets get on with it. I'm all for love and peace, but that's not the side I work on. I work on the part before you get into the kitchen, right, before you make a blueberry pie, sit down and drink a herbal tea and watch the Sunset. First of all, you've got to pass me in the basement with the rats."




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