Getting Under the Pink

I went to college with heaps of CDs, and conviction that my collection of Barenaked Ladies music made me the coolest person around. Jenny, my first friend in college looked at my CDs approvingly. I looked at hers. Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, Dar Williams, Aimee Mann, Allison Krauss, Joni Mitchell . . . the list went on. The names of some of these women were familiar to me, but some of them were not. I didn’t know any of their music.

Jenny lent me Tori Amos’s "Under the Pink." I listened to it, prepared not to like it. I knew what kind of music I liked and whiny girls was not it. I liked music that I could relate to, and, for some reason, I never felt my feelings could match the passion and anger of these women. I also liked music that was fun and made me want to dance and that wasn’t weird.

Tori was a little weird. Her wailing voice, her highs and lows, the thunderous piano solos and tinkling bells, were different than anything I’d heard by the Barenaked Ladies or Blink 182. I didn’t know what to make of her, and I felt that she was speaking to women who weren’t me. Women who were more mature, women who had seen the world. What had I seen?

But then, sitting in my dorm room, I heard “Past the Mission.” I still don’t know what this song means, but the lyrics Past the mission, behind the prison tower . . . past the mission, I smell the roses created a vivid picture in my mind of a mission by the sea. It was reminiscent of the Spanish missions in my native California. This was a song that I could relate to. It was a song by a woman, for me.

Listening to “Past the Mission,” I understood for the first time that I could like, relate to, and become better by listening to music by other women. It vaulted me into the conversation of women listeners and women musicians. And it is a supremely beautiful song. I cannot listening to it without feeling connected to Tori, to my friend Jenny, and to all women, everywhere.