you for a while

Music and Lyrics by: Tori Amos

Instrumentation: Acoustic Piano, Vocals (Tori and Trent Reznor), Vox Organ, Bass, Drums, Percussion, Guitars

Brief Summary: There is a general consensus that “Past the Mission” is some kind of allegory with “she” being Tori’s heroine Mary Magdalene and the “he” being Jesus. For instance, Mary Magdalene is telling the rest of the nouveau Christians, “Hey, you think you know him, but you haven’t taken the time to get to know him the way I do…so you don’t really know what you’re talking about.” There is some historical belief that Mary Madgalene (often represented with a rose, i.e. “I smell the roses”) knows what happened to Jesus after he died…that they had an arrangement of sorts. Anyway, Past the Mission is best understood along a Da Vinci Code sort of vein.

Tori’s Comments: (from the Under the Pink songbook) “Directions were always interesting. ‘O.k. honey what you gotta do is …ou know the Wal-Mart? Well keep going soon you’ll see a road across from the Chevron, take a left and follow that road ’til you see a bright turquoisey painted bird house–it’s right after the creek at the bird house, but it’s not the first dirt road but the second go on down past the mission and you wanna take a right and you can’t miss it.’”

Fan Comments/Interpretations: Ha! Being as how I always had a hard time interpreting Past the Mission, I totally relied on fan theory to write the above paragraph…so “see above.”

China2Ny’s Comments: Sometimes I listen to Past the Mission over and over again just to hear that funny little instrument that plays just before the bridge. For some reason I just love that.