Touring partners Alanis Morissette and Tori Amos are clearly not content just to share a stage.

On the night before the launch of their co-headlining tour, the superstar performers sat down to chat with each other and fans about such topics as songwriting, God and premillennial tension.

Amos said she expects to take new insight into Morissette's work from the outing.

"I'm sure when I'm standing on the side of the stage watching your show that there are certain songs that I'll see in ways I hadn't before," she said, sitting next to her younger tour partner during Tuesday's "Twice as Nice" online chat. "That always excites me, being able to be near the essence of the person who wrote it."

Perched atop tall stools in front of a bank of computers, Amos and Morissette took questions from fans online. The impassioned rock singer/songwriters were set to launch their first joint outing, branded the 5 1/2 Weeks Tour, on Wednesday (Aug. 18) at National Car Rental Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The

webcast, sponsored by MTV and SonicNet, was staged from the same site.

During the hour-long talk, Morissette — casually dressed in a pink blouse and blue skirt — and Amos — who wore a light-blue top and black pants — delved briefly into the tour and touched on some lightweight topics. Amos, a self-described bad dancer, said she unwinds by salsa dancing in the aisle of her tour bus. Morissette revealed she finds nothing more attractive than men in skirts.

But the singer/songwriters reserved much of the conversation for heavier topics such as spirituality, Year 2000 Zeitgeist and evolving notions of deities. Morissette, who has a cameo role as God in the upcoming film "Dogma," said her impressions of a higher power have undergone broad transformations.

"I don't know if they changed as much as they became something," said the 25-year-old-singer best known for such songs as "You Oughta Know" and "Hand in My Pocket" (RealAudio excerpt).

"I see God now as someone or something that is everything, that is very compassionate, very open and not at all judgmental — thereby having me take responsibility for my own life, and feel like I'm in control of it and creating my own reality and world," she said. "And that I can't blame anyone else for it and for what is happening. It allows me to feel a lot more connected to other people."

Amos, 35, said spirituality means addressing life's dark regions as well as the passions, which she aims to do with the upcoming to venus and back (Sept. 21).

The album, a double-disc set of live and studio material, includes "Juarez," about a Mexican desert town across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. More than 100 women have been raped and murdered in and around the town in unsolved incidents since 1993, according to news reports.

Amos said the song named for Juarez is a corollary to "Me and a Gun" (RealAudio excerpt), her harrowing 1991 song about her own rape.

She wrote "Juarez" from the point of view of the desert because "the desert heard the last breath that the young women took," she said. "And the desert heard the breathing of the killer. ... There had to be a strange antithesis to 'Me and a Gun' because 'Me and a Gun' was very much about the girl's perspective that was going through that in her head. And this was coming from a perspective that saw both sides, not justifying the act at all."

Echoing comments she made in during a cybercast performance Monday, Amos said the United States lately has been plagued by "hate music," though she did not name specific bands.

A devout student of mythology, she said that kind of music has surfaced along with recent killings in schools and offices because Americans lack a clear vision of the land — in particular the mythology that existed here before European settlers arrived.

A premillennial angst has captivated the public, but it doesn't have much to do with the turning of the calendar in four months, Morissette said. Rather, she said, it's rooted in a new assessment of our society and our environment, and the recognition that they're in sorry shape.

People can change that by turning inward, she said.

"When I look at myself, my whole world changes," Morissette said. "When I'm driven by fear, and when I point the finger and say someone else is doing something, I judge them. I become part of the unconsciousness that is developing in what we read in the newspapers.

"As soon as I stop pointing the finger, and look at how I live my life and how I resolve my own conflicts or don't resolve them, or how my fear manifests itself, I feel like my attitudes toward the world and other people in general drastically change."