Expert: Nancy - 3/22/2011

Question
Please as this is one of my favorite songs of my beloved Tori...The Belle On New Orleans??? who is she?

Answer
Hi Glen!

That's a good question, and not one that I have ever given much thought to. The song itself is really about her expereince with being raped, the violence of such a crime.

I've always heard "the belle of New Orleans" line as a piece of her random expereince thrown into the song. Something that just came to her while she was playing, writing it. Perhaps it was her thinking about a time when someone tried to teach her something - one of the "graces" in her life -  and now she's feeling so far from something as simple as a dance lesson. There's no documentation of a connection to New Orleans during that time - It occured in Los Angeles, She didn't know the man very well, etc. So all we can really do at this point is create our own interpretation :)

Here's a great quote from her about the song:

“You know, when she says, ‘I think you’re a queer, well, I think you’re a queer and I’ve shaved every place where you’ve been, boy, God knows I know I’ve thrown away those graces’... it’s very clear that the war has begun. You’ve just walked into the record and the war has begun. The blades are out. And she’s become a piece of meat in her mind, she’s willing to cut out her voice, she’s willing to ‘cut out the flute from the throat of the loon, at least when you cry now he can’t even hear you.’ It doesn’t matter who the people are, you know, and if you resonate with letting yourself go that far to be needed or to keep something going, well, do you need another pound of flesh? What do you need, what more do you want? And that’s the point when I say, ‘he likes killing you after you’re dead.’ So from the beginning of the record on it’s really obvious that you’re walking into not what is going on on top of the table, the conversation with the rose at the dinner of the couple, but what’s really going on in the couple. Sometimes the man changes, but it’s her story. It’s her, who she pulls in to work this out with, and the men that defecate, the men who can’t be enough, the men who aren’t ready to embrace themselves so no matter how much you like them you can’t go there because ...[they’re not yet whole]” [B-Side – May/June 1996]

Thanks for asking! While I couldn't give you a concrete answer, here's hoping that it will mean a little something different to you now when you hear it :)

~ Nancy