10 Stories of Women. (10) Tori Amos Me and a Gun (2015 Remaster)
for @[Taddi]
Tori Amos is certainly well-known to many, and it’s not her story that I want to tell (although the girl has quite a past), but a very specific story that concerns her.
In fact, I don’t want to tell anything because – as a man – I feel ashamed to recount that story, and because – as a man – I know that on certain topics, like rape, we men would do better to remain silent.
So I’ll let her tell the story through the words of her song, “Me and a Gun,” in which she herself recounts the violence she endured after one of her concerts.
I revive the title of an old list of mine, "to translate is always to betray," because here, more than ever, I found myself forced to betray and excessively distort the letter of the text. I’m increasingly convinced that translation is impossible (perhaps one day the revived @[Flo] will tell me off), but that one can only reinterpret and rewrite. Here – for example – I didn’t want to translate "gun" as "pistola," but as "randello" so as not to lose the violent implication present in the text, and "man on my back" didn’t seem right to translate with the usual "un uomo alle mie spalle."
I hope I haven't done any damage to such a strong, lucid, and demanding text (those who read, if they wish, will decide).
I would just add that it was extraordinary for Amos to record the piece a cappella. In that lone voice lies the entire fragility of the body.
It's a bare voice.