Guilt By Association

Hey All,

Music is a powerful recall device. Statistically it is supposedly not as intense as your sense of smell, but it must run a close second, no? Music can have the power to draw up strong positive or negative associations for all of us. The music may very well have been something you once adored, but thanks to a lengthy courtship between yourself and a bottle of mescal, you can no longer stomach Synchronicity, or thanks to that little girl who crushed your heart into pÉtÇ, you cannot bear to hear, say; I'll Stop The World And Melt With You, Roxanne, The Ghost In You, Hello, Broken Arrow, Tunnel of Love, Jeepster, Once in a Lifetime, Norwegian Wood, Hey Jude, Stormy Weather, Pennies from Heaven, Barracuda, Suffragette City, She Blinded Me With Science, Georgia On My Mind, Rhapsody In Blue, Drive, or Penny Lane...

Perhaps I am too free in revealing my interior life.

Those who know me and my musical tastes, know full well why I despise certain bands and artists, its seldom due to lack of talent or the hallow catchiness of a song. It is usually because I have a deeply negative association with said artist or performer.

For example...I hate Tori Amos.

Granted, many a male of fragile ego and deeply steeped machismo finds something threatening about Tori Amos. Perhaps it is the casual freedom with which she writes about her history of sexual abuse, perhaps it is the wave of female spiritual empowerment that crested with her popularity, or how she became popular music's spokesperson for the female disenfranchised, or perhaps it was that image in the liner notes of Boys For Pele in which she suckles that cute little piglet with such puckish glee. Perhaps. But, none are solid reasons for my hating the music of Tori Amos. In fact, I will honestly say that I really don't dislike her work due to anything she has done, personally.

We're talking association here.

In the spring of 1990 I moved to the bustling "liberal academic" environment of Madison, Wisconsin to attend graduate school. Before leaving the Pacific Northwest, I stocked up on some new music. One album I picked up with a certain degree of anticipation was Amos' Little Earthquakes. I liked her sound. Her lyrics had a particular bite. I loved her voice, she reminded me of Kate Bush, and I'd been pining for new work from Kate Bush something awful. When I arrived in the muggy climes of Madison, I heard Little Earthquakes everywhere-in bars, restaurants and markets. I felt that twinge I usually feel when I have unknowingly bought into a fad, but didn't let it bother me.

I didn't let it bother me that my two new housemates would play the album simultaneously from their respective bedrooms, frequently oblivious to their waves of dueling female angst that seemed to form a cataract around me. Yes, I said angst.

No, I didn't let any those assaults of the spring of 1990 perturb me. But the negative association did begin with that particular housing situation. Not only did I share a house with these people, but all of my graduate classes as well. I could never escape them (nor they me for that matter). The worse of the pair was a troll-like little man from Boston who suffered from an advanced case of Adult Onset ADD and progressive acne. He prided himself on being an open minded and progressive liberal, carried on and on about the rights of women and the marginalized, but when he saw the mini skirt our housemate chose to wear for that evening's party, advised her to go and change out of it is as it was so revealing she would simply be "asking" for trouble.

He also muttered to me in confidence how relieved he was to discover I was heterosexual, as I had given him the opposite impression during our first telephone conversation. This didn't surprise me much at all, as I well recalled the tone of our first conversation. He said to me, "I think we're going to have a good time in Madison, I hear there are a lot of cute chicks there..."

"Uh. Yeah."

He couldn't have been more obvious in his homophobia if he'd spritzed himself from an atomizer of testosterone.

Within several weeks, he advised us all with great pride he had joined a campus interest group called MSR: Men Stopping Rape.

God, that name still makes me flinch.

MSR's mission statement reads thus: "Men join MSR for a variety of reasons: many of us have known someone in our lives who has been assaulted; some of us have come to question our own behavior and the role violence has played in our 'initiation' into modern masculine culture, and we desire to learn how to avoid perpetrating assault; all of us benefit from an atmosphere of support and understanding."

All well and good, beautiful, in fact, I say.

Yet when asked about his reasoning for joining this particular organization he told us he did so in order to meet people, i.e., women. To my knowledge, and that of my colleagues, he did not join because of an association with a rape survivor or victim of violence.

From there on my desire to pith this smarmy, self-important twerp only grew as he made it more than clear on several occasions that he genuinely believed women were objects meant for pedestals, artifacts, pieces of property to be coveted and protected. And the only suitable protector for the modern woman was an enlightened man like himself.

But the deepest negative association came when Mr. MSR believed himself to hold the wherewithal to direct Timberlake Wertenbaker's play Love Of the Nightingale, a feminist deconstruction of the greek myth of the Rape of Philomela.

The set was minimalist and simple, a black box playing space with benches and black blocks. The actors dressed simply. But it was the walls and floors of the set that made me anxious; they were papered with enlarged newspaper headlines screaming about rape, rape statistics, and male violence against women. To say the set dressing was heavy-handed would be an understatement. And what should come jangling out of the air about the dimly lit space but Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes. My gorge rose. Something in my head snapped though I could not articulate it at the time, there was murder in my heart.

Graduate school taught me few things that I could use outside its ivory towers. But one valuable lesson learned was to never speak with any authority for the marginalized unless you are one. It's just going to get you kicked in the kiwis...or, it should, in this case.

In embellishing his production of Love of the Nightingale, with Amos' signature song, he simply demonstrated his own ignorance of what it means to be marginalized. He knew nothing of the issues presented within the play-- female empowerment, lesbianism, feminism, female spirituality, or bonding. Amos' song was a pop-totem signifying his own ignorance. But told himself he did and not only that, was an authority on the subject.

The Clue Phone was ringing off the hook, but Mr. MSR just refused to answer. You see, he understood women, he understood the marginalized, and he had the authority to speak on the subject through this play. The problem was, this play was not solely about rape. It was about a lot of things, but not just rape. Rape was a vital element of the story, but not the entirety of the story.

This poor clown couldn't grasp this, and further demonstrated his own ignorance by using that fucking Tori Amos song.

After three years of graduate school and a lengthy relationship with a feminist academic, I learned several key things about feminist culture.

A) They have no sense of humor.
Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: That's not funny.

B)If you have a penis, its best not to make yourself out to be an authority on things feminist, see, frequently a feminist will take this as being a tad oppressive.

C)When in doubt, refer to letter A.

Ignorant and self-important people are frequently well meaning, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions to be sure. But this clown had his cruise control set, and Tori Amos on the FM.

And that's why I hate Tori Amos. As I said, really isn't her fault, it's just a nasty association