björkism

Obviously you can make music for so many different reasons. One of my favourite artists is Madonna and she's not doing it for musical reasons, she wants to change the world! And fair enough. I think if music existed as a person, music would be proud that Madonna actually uses music to do that.

Q: You're so positive! You always seem cheerful and bubbly. So you're never depressed? You never feel unhappy? A: Happiness is a natural state. It's sadness that isn't natural, fear, anger: these things undermine us, we have to fight them… I have an obsession in life: making others happy. My son, my friends, the people I work with, I want to see them all fulfilled, cheerful, open. It's a battle, a tremendous motivation. As a result, I'm aware that I only let a succession of positive character traits show, that I only highlight the aspects of my personality that can make others happy. The rest, I hide—out of modesty and respect. What would be the point of displaying my anxieties? So what right would I have to complain? There are so many people who would dream of being in my shoes. I have never known deeper happiness than I feel right now. Everything I've experienced since becoming successful is so glamorous.

Q: Why do you give such a prominent place to computers? Why don't you, with such a formidable voice, trust organic, natural sounds more? A: I've always trusted organic sounds, I've always loved them—the sound of the harp on Debut, for example. For years, I even felt the need to use exclusively natural instruments, acoustic or electric. With the Sugarcubes, we adored those wooden marvels: guitars, flutes, vintage drum kits. We found them comforting, close to us, close to the Earth. But over time—and by frequenting nightclubs regularly—I developed a new relationship with everything related to technology. Samplers, drum machines, sequencers began to intrigue me. At the same time, I felt I was reaching the end of a road; I thought acoustic instruments wouldn't take me very far anymore, even if they retained their infinite beauty. For me, strings, percussion, and wind instruments were connected to the external world, to the elements. In contrast, computers seemed to me to be more connected to our inner lives, our imagination. There's a difference here similar to that between reality and dreams, real life and fantasies. Computer music is pure imagination, extreme creativity, without guidelines, without a safety net. And if music based on technology lacks soul, it's certainly not because of the computer, but rather because the person programming the machine lacks soul. For the past three years, I've been working with a fantastic programmer. Marius De Vries—he's a bit like the executor of my fantasies, the one whose hands materialize the work of my brain. When I recruited him, I gave him this challenge: "I want you to reproduce the sound of the wind at the top of a coconut tree." Ten minutes later, I had my wind sound on the computer. I took Marius in my arms and we started working…

“Polly and Tricky. And Ren and Stimpy. Those are my four favourites.” then she stops to think about how that quote will look in print. “That’s very ‘Björk,’ huh?” She sighs and shrugs. And speaking very, very quietly, she continues, “Look, I’m not gonna fight this. I think that everybody has a side that’s more private and a side that’s more social—you know, people that are very calm and warm and slow-mo, and then in social situations have to entertain people with silly jokes ? Well, I’m like that—and that’s a present from me. And they can do whatever they want with it. And it’s a friendly creature and it means well, so,” and now Björk is smiling again, “it might as well exist.”

Björk has named this 1928 fetish book by Georges Bataille several times in the 90s. You can read it here, it's not very long. Please inform yourself about the content prior to reading; don't say you haven't been warned.

940702 (02 July 1994) | "Details" magazine interview (28 years old at the time of interview)

"I might just make it my mission to make everyone in the world read this book," Björk declares. "It says you do whatever you want, even if it's morally incorrect." [...] "There's no such freedom in the world," she says, "that you can pick anything you want and put it in your butt." [...] Björk read the story of the eye when she was seventeen [1982]. [...] Her boyfriend [maybe Þór Eldon] gave her the book. "It was one of these books that proved to me that I was not insane." [...] "[The book is] not to be taken literally," Björk tells me. "It's a mind thing." [...] "It's about all the things that you think about, even though they don't happen in real life. With that sort of freedom, you can play games with your mind and feel quite healthy about it. It was very good for a seventeen-year-old to read that book."

In 1984, when she was 19, Björk's band K.U.K.L released "The Eye" album "named after Björk's favourite book" [source: björk's own website] As far as I can recall from other interviews, Björk has always written her own lyrics and the lyrics of "The Eye" do seem like you can find some references to the book in those.

(Cont. "Details" magazine inteview)

She reads the book once in a while and gives it to new people she really likes. I ask her about the video Venus as a Boy, in which she suggestively fondles an egg while singing explicitly about copulation. In the video the egg is eventually fried. This touches off a slightly sore spot for Björk. She gave Sophie Muller, the video director, a copy of Story of the Eye a couple of days before they filmed the but didn't insist that she read it. Muller didn't have the time. "She kept going on about it being fried," sighs Björk with exasperation. "I was saying, `No way is that book about a fried egg! I'm sorry. Poached? Okay. Boiled? Okay. Raw? Okay. But not fried. [...] it's too hard. It's rough and it's greasy, It should be about being sort of liquidy and wet and soft and open....." After the video was finished, Sophie called Björk. She had read the book. Now she agreed with Björk: Fried was the wrong egg.

And then there's this mention, from a conversation about being an object of lust in pop culture & having celebrity crushes, at the time of the interview as well as in her youth; she mentioned lusting after David Attenborough)

940529 (29 May 1994) | "Q magazine" interview with PJ Harvey, Björk and Tori Amos

I sing best without anything. I know this sounds really hippy, but being on top of a mountain in the middle of the day would be best for me. But to be able to socialise with all these people, because I’m quite an introverted sort of person, I’ll have a cognac before I go on stage. But even that’s more of a ritual than anything. And maybe a bottle of wine afterwards to chill down.

It’s an addiction, but it’s not just that. [...] You sacrifice yourself. And you lose everything—like the fact that I’m this big and an Icelandic female and all that. I think this is the reason music and sex are so often compared to each other. The most common way of feeling this is probably in sex. Because when you’re having sex you don’t think, I’m now going to move my left arm 30 centimetres. You just have to do something and you follow your instincts. In that sense, although I’m not saying I’m thinking about sex all the time when I’m on stage, it’s a very similar feeling to having very good sex with someone.