Expert: Nancy - 10/12/2006

Question
Hello,
What mean this part of text in "Muhammad my Friend" :
"...And what aobut the deal on the flying
Trapeze got a peanut butter hand
But honey do drop in at the
Dew Drop Inn..."
Thanks.  

Answer
Hi There!

Great question! It's really hard to say what exactly she is talking about here. She uses SO many metaphors in her music to descsribe things and situations.

Here is a piece from an interview done back in '96 where Tori talks about why it's The Dew Drop Inn:

I: Why name your tour “Dew Drop Inn”? Isn’t it a line from one of your songs?

Tori: It’s originally a name for some very old jazz clubs. Do you know the show “The Waltons”?

I: Yes. It’s that old TV series from the 70s.

Tori: Jason would go and play in the Dew Drop Inn.

I: So, it’s like you’re inviting everyone to come to your pub to listen to you.

Tori: Yeah. But I hope they have good drinks there. I don’t know if my concert would look like a pub, but we could pretend.
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And here are some quotes from Tori regarding the song as a whole. Maybe it can help to paint a brighter picture for you and how you hear it next time...

Tori talks about

Muhammad My Friend



“Muhammad My Friend surprised me too. I was singing in Christmas services [in ‘94]; I was with my parents. I was watching the Nativity, and after a while I said to myself, ‘Wait a minute. There’s something wrong here.’ We were singing Away in the Manger [sings the first two bars of Away in the Manger, and then sings the opening line to Muhammad My Friend, with the identical first three notes.] I kept getting more and more into the perfect little love with the lullaby of Away in the Manger. I started to get husky in the throat. I started to wonder who, with everybody speaking of the baby Jesus, should come up to the cradle. And I found that, of all people, I wanted to have a chat about it with Muhammad, because the Prophet is the one who supposedly knows the Law. So I decided that they needed to talk about the Law - the Law of the Feminine that had been castrated with the birth of Christ. I believe that Magdalene was the Savior’s bride, the High Priestess. And that Magdalene was not a blueprint for women - meaning that this was a woman who was honored as the sacred bride, not a virgin. We’re talking about a Woman. We have a Virgin matrix, but they needed the Woman blueprint: the compassion/passion, wisdom, wholeness. But this blueprint was not a structure that one could relate to Woman - until now. Think about it. It’s just been uncovered in the past twenty-some years. Even though women have been given power to be heads of corporations, we’re talking about not just power within the hierarchy but access to the different fragments that make up the whole of Woman.” [Musician – May 1996]

“And then when you are so sure it’s with the boys, we both know ‘it was a girl back in Bethlehem...’ what am I doing? You are beginning to remember the blueprint, you are beginning to remember that this is not just because boys laughed at you when you were 13, this is a program that is going back very far.” [B-Side – May/June 1996]

“I was having a cup of tea with Muhammad and saying that there are as many belief systems as there are people; to not acknowledge that means chaos, really. Of course, I had to bring Gladys Knight into it. She’s a bit of a goddess.” [Details – March 1996]

“I sat there and started to think, ‘Alright, I’ve heard all this backwards and forwards from every angle, and fine, I’m into this love your neighbor as yourself, that’s great, but where does all this fear come from about dancing the primitive dance, the concept of woman, their sensuality, their connection with all aspects of the self? I read a bit of mythology, with Isis, etcetera, and said, OK, where did all of this go? Where’s the balance? Where’s the female aspect of God? The fragmentation of the feminine is something that really started to perk my interest. That’s what ‘Muhammad My Friend’ is about, trying to find the female part of God that’s been circumcised.” [The Shepherd Express – June 6, 1996]

“I was working with the dark goddesses during and after making Boys for Pele. Pele herself, and the Sumerian goddess Inanna (also known as Isthar/Astarte), whose name I cry out singing on the song "Caught a Lite Sneeze." Then, naturally, Lilith, niece of Inanna, as well as Demeter, because of the loss of a child with my frist miscarriage. I had gone to the underworld to try to claim my daughter back. I went to the edges, the parameters of what I know about consciousness on this plane, to try to make deals with the Christian God, with the Islamic God--a relationship I explore in "Muhammad My Friend." I was willing to do whatever it took to bring her back, anything, anywhere. I was negotiating. Just saying, If you will, give me my daughter, thinking I would get pregnant again and her spirit would come back. Not accepting that she'd moved on and picked another mommy, which is very hard to come to terms with.” [The Shepherd Express – June 6, 1996]
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This are taken from an AWESOME tori site called Toriphoria. Here is the link http://www.yessaid.com/toriamos.html

It's simply one of the best sites on the web about Tori with everything available for each album: quotes, lyrics, pictures - the works!!

Hope this helps. Thanks for asking :)

~ Nancy