Space Dog is amazing because I think it connects us with a deep, innate need to see ourselves as more than just this flesh. A need for meaning and value in our lives, to manifest dreams, and to not waste our time here. The symbolism and myth in the song is so strong that it’s hard to understand with the logical part of our brains… but to the right side, it makes complete sense.
I create the occasional not-that-good-or-bad song with MTV Music Generator’s premade riffs. I’ve made a couple of gems. one of them, I’m convinced, is a song entity that visited me (sometime in 2002) before it visited Tori to inspire Drive All Night. I swear, up and down, that it had to be the same song creature because both her song and my song, while they sound nothing alike musically, have that same “energy”.
You be the judge: http://ciararavenblaze.tumblr.com/post/1113567059/i-made-this-song-about-damn-seven-years-ago
I absolutely believe it when Tori says she tries to achieve a certain sonic architectural sound in her songs. I don’t know if it was what she had in mind with Liquid Diamonds, but when I listen to it, I “hear” an empty, cold, barren cave with a very slow-moving body of water going through it.
(yes, I’m obsessed with Black Dove.)
for me personally, I feel like there’s a thread—especially in the PBS Soundstage version—in Black Dove that is a lullaby to Tori’s lost babies. there’s just that quality to it for me. I certainly wouldn’t mind being sung to sleep to it, and frequently play it before I head off to bed, in fact.
I’ve said this before elsewhere, but Fast Horse seems to say to me, “SLOW… DOWN. life is not a race.” I tend to rush through life, and every time the “you’ve got you a fast horse darlin’” part of the song comes on, I feel like Tori’s poking me hard in the chest as if to say “pay attention, you.”
I get this weird feeling about Bliss (and the whole TVAB album in general) that not only is it about everything else that Tori’s said it was about in interviews, but that she also can’t resist bragging JUST a bit about the awesome newlywed sex she had while on tour in ‘98. it just has that energy to me of “perform and rock the place one night, get laid the next. hell yeah.”
and seriously—think about it. keep some of the lines (“supernova juice” anybody?) in mind with this theory.
and what’s more, I think she’d cackle and grin at this if she were to read it. she certainly isn’t afraid of bringing sex into an interpretation of some of her songs—in fact, she seems to embrace it, which is pretty cool if you ask me.
continuing the Black Dove discussion…
I can definitely buy that it came from a dream—a nightmare, even. but keep in mind that not all nightmares are scary. some can be sad, too. I also think, though, that Spark came to her at least in part from the same dream(s) that inspired Black Dove.
Horses are your dreams. They faded and disappeared in Winter yet awoke again during Pele. These dreams take us away from the Beauty Queen. We look at the horses, the ones we hid from ourselves or forget and then we see the truth.
Tori almost always mentions friends from her past and present, like “Marianne” and “Beenie”…A song that has always made me wonder is “Twinkle” where an unnamed friend says “I killed a man, T. I gotta stay hidden in this abbey”. The nature of the song is so sad and quiet, but so captivating. What is it about?
Can someone deciper “Space Dog?” It’s always kind of been my favorite Tori song.
