Dear Tori Amos

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Dear Tori Amos,

Hello. I'm not a fan. I know people don't usually write to say that, but I figured I'd get it out of the way. I kinda liked your stuff but I guess I never really got it the way many other people did.

Like my friend, Charlie. He got it, alright. He had everything you released, including any imports he could get his hands on. He collected magazine articles on you (pre-internet) and had your face on his walls many times over. He spoke eloquently of your strict religious upbringing and your thoughtful personality. He told me he'd sometimes cry when he listened to the songs. He bought all your music books and taught himself to play the complicated piano parts - albeit slower than you do. He sang along with you as if you were standing there, next to him.

Something about your music, your voice, your perspective fed him so deeply it was entrancing to watch. Even though I didn't care too much for the topic, seeing him so obviously in love with everything about you always brought a smile to my face, because I cared deeply for his own happiness.

I hope you aren't offended when I say that Charlie was always an odd guy. Just recently I reread my own writings on the strange things he did. I used to think he was just trying to impress me, to mess with my head, but now I know I was wrong.

I don't know where he is today. This person who was my everything for a period in my life has been missing for some time and I don't try to find him. I don't mean he transferred jobs or decided to move to another town, either. He's been living in various states of mental breakdown for years now. Last I heard, he was a homeless person, playing in the sand at the park, frightening parents by talking to children.

For years I tried to help him, to care and worry and hope. So did everyone else. But there is no helping him. His rebounds never lasted long. He had no appreciativeness for us. He didn't try.

I've tried to scrape plaster over that damaged wall in my head and repaint. This history is still there, though. You don't love someone that much for that long and then pretend they never existed. But part of my healing involved not listening to your music, Ms. Amos.

Charlie always called you Tori, Tori so intimately that I could almost believe you'd call him Charlie if you ever bumped into him.

I stopped listening to the CDs he burned for me. Today, however, I put on an old mix and tripped over a chunk of your best - God, Past the Mission, Pretty Good Year. It hurt, just cut and ripped, to hear your voice and in it, hear his low crooning, to hear your piano and in it, hear his stumbling renditions, to hear your views and in it, hear his embellishments. I listened and cried but not the way Charlie did.

I think of him sitting somewhere dirty, ugly and alone, still singing the songs he endlessly memorized.

Ms. Amos, I hate your beautiful music and all the awful mysteries it represents to me, all the lost minds and dead lives and those around them that hurt for eternity.

-j