Unfettered and Alive: Hanging with the Raisin Girls (and Boys) at Night of Hunters: Tori Amos Night 2013

Tori Amos will forever be my goddess, my music icon.

No, not in a fan girl way. Tori Amos is this entity of musicality, spirituality, sexuality, beauty, creativity, and consciousness... yet still so real. I love her in a way that I resonate with the drumming of her soul, something that I simply cannot explain. A bliss of another kind.

I was lucky enough to be part of Night of Hunters: The Annual Tori Amos Night at Conspiracy Garden Cafe, Visayas Avenue, which is held every August of the year to celebrate Tori dearie's birthday.

Can't believe my name is here. I'm still dazed.

The goddess turned 50 this year.

She's 50, yes! Unbelievable? Partly botox of course. But still...

I remember being 19 and simply dreaming of even just attending Tori Night. I'd read about it in the Internet. I knew there was a bunch of toriphiles (people who avidly listen to Tori Amos--okay, her "fanbase") in Manila, but I didn't know how to reach them. That time, everything was limited to Yahoo Groups and exclusive online communities. Thanks to Facebook, last year (2012), I was able to contact the organizers, Ms. Charms and Mr. Alden, and I gathered my carabao skin and, ahem, volunteered to perform for Tori Night. I don't normally present myself in such a thick-faced and shameless kinda way, but for Tori, I would!

Imagine the bliss I felt when I got to meet people who loved Tori the way I did; imagine a room packed with people jamming to her songs! Tori isn't very well-known in the mainstream, and as much as I would like everyone to like her, I only know a handful of people who genuinely do. (call me weird)

This is me performing during last year's Tori Amos Night at Conspiracy Garden Cafe:

Sleeps with Butterflies

I was in an unexplainable form of ecstasy that night, more than that blissful feeling of eating ice cream, seriously. Better than any addicting drug. This was the weed of music. The weed of TORI.

For this year's Tori Night, I was even more ecstatic to find out that a bunch of artists I look up to would be performing as well! Wawi Navarroza, Kate Torralba, & Tao Aves (who performed last year too). I was starstruck. My love for Tori and her piano-playing has led me to share a piano/stage with those artists. You are cosmic, Tori.