Chapter One Corn Mother: Genealogies Ann: Our mother is the ground we stand on, and the earth itself is our mother. How many people have believed this, over the centuries? Society itself began with kinship, lineages marked by blood and love, while civilizations took root in relationship to the places where people settled and learned the land. The idea that the world was born of a woman is common in myth, across continents: in Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean, northern Europe, and the Americas, such stories abound. The Genesis story of a lone male God making life with a lift of the finger has achieved cultural dominance, but beyond that bragging tale of six days' labor are others that present Creation as an ongoing process, undertaken by a matriarchal force nourished by her family's respect and love. Throughout the ages, people have chosen gods to suit their apparent needs; similarly, an artist can view her personal acts of creation in light of various sources. She can thank her ego alone, but that is dangerousthe limits of an individual's personality can quickly turn genius into a dry spring. She can acknowledge her peers as inspiration, cite the demands of the marketplace and the influence of various schools, but influences not so carefully chosen also cannot be avoided. Every artist is born in a place, within a family, and though she may leave those sources far behind, they remain within her.
The achievement comes in acknowledging those origins without being devoured by them. The Cherokee have a story that relates to the need to find balance between personal ambition and accepting life's offerings: Selu, the Corn Mother, lives with her grandsons in the mountains. The young men are hunters, and Corn Mother provides the staples that round out their meals. The men want to hunt and hunt, and this greed for meat makes Corn Mother sad, yet she loves her descendants and does not challenge them. One morning her grandsons spy on Corn Mother as she makes the corn, which falls from her body whenever she slaps her sides. This terrifies the men, and they reject her. She withers, but before dying instructs them to bury her in the earth and tells them she will arise again as a plant that will need to be cultivated. Corn Mother does as she promises, but in her new form she cannot be blithely generous.
People must learn to cultivate her; they must earn her fruitfulness. With this lesson Corn Mother teaches humankind the need for balance and the love of nature's gifts. Tori Amos heard the story of Corn Mother from her grandfather as a girl, during summers spent with him in North Carolina. The love of the earth was ingrained in her, along with an awareness that her own talents were a blessing she could not take for granted. Her Cherokee blood is one element in the complex weave of influences that created Amos as she grew toward the moment when she could begin, respectfully, to create herself. Tori: "The grass. The rocks. The trees.
Don't care nothin' about who ya are or who ya think ya are or who ya pretendin' to be." Poppa would be in fits of tickles by that saying. "And Shug . [what Poppa called meshort for Sugar Cane and Shush all mixed up], Shug, when ya think yer mighty like a mountain ya might wanta think of being a Rock Nurse. You didn't hear yer Poppa say Rock Star. Or Night Nurse. I'm sayin' Rock Nurse, Shug. Ya know what that is? That's somebody who's needin' to take care of a rock for a year before they go and hurt themselves tryin' to move a mountain.
And after a year of being humbled by how much more a rock knows than Jack's Ass, then they'll be seein'.