January 20, 1996. I was 18 and (not yet) clinically diagnosed with major depression. Things weren't good in the ole head; not at all, to say the absolute least. It is hard for me to describe what my mindset was, and even harder for you to really understand unless you are there now, or have been in the past. Depression is (no words to describe it) awful, completely friggen awful. I went through about 10yrs of it before I was rescued.

Anyways, the night of Jan20/96 at 1:00am I was in Cornwall, staying at my grandparents in the Sunny King Motel. I was watching Saturday Night Live, wallowing in my misery, when the musical guest came on. I sat completely mesmerized for 4 minutes. Her name was Tori Amos, and the song was Caught A Lite Sneeze, off her (then) newest album Boys For Pele. It wasn't just her beauty that caught me; I don't know exactly what it was. I thought her music was hauntingly beautiful and it resonated deep within me. Up to this time I was a metal-head. And not just a metal-head but a death-metal-head. My favorite bands (apart from Metallica, Megadeth, and Nirvana, of course) were Deicide, Cannibal Corpse, and Carcass. This was completely random, for me to be so drawn to music like this. NBC replayed SNL a few hrs later every Saturday, so I actually stayed up to watch the replay too. For those brief 4 minutes, my spirit experienced this foreign feeling which I later identified as..........peace.

I remember a couple days later, when I tried to find out more info about her. This was in the days when searching Wikipedia was not an option. I asked my Mom to pick up a copy of Boys For Pele when she was out running around, and I will never forget when she returned home with that CD. It was such a guilty pleasure which I didn't know how to process it. I wanted to hide it from my friends so they wouldn't know what I was listening to. She replaced Deicide and Cannibal Corpse as my nightly go-to-sleep music. I was completely hooked, and started to track down her other albums.

What Tori did was quiet my soul. I was extremely unhappy with life in those days, and what I was putting into my body musically was contributing to a downward spiral of pain and anguish. Tori's music quieted me, and made me see life in different shades, not just black and grey. I can relate to Saul, when he was being tormented by evil spirits, in that David's music calmed him (1Samuel16:23).

I was a devoted fan for years. In 2002 I took the weekend off work and flew up to Toronto to see her in concert, by myself. In the end, the weekend cost over $1000 but I've no regrets. That's part of my personality, which can be beneficial, but destructive at times!

It's interesting though. I honestly believe God used Tori to buy me some time before my heart was softened enough to hear Him speak to me. At the time I had hated the concept of God. Glen Benton was the one who was shaping my theology, not the Church. Tori smashed down some walls Glen had constructed.

I don't listen to Tori's music as much as I did before, but she is (and always will be) one of my very, very favorites. I would love to meet her and thank her in person one day. I feel I owe her much.