All Inclusive: Bjork as a Renaissance Man
"I am the fountain of blood in the form of a girl ", - a miniature Icelander with a short haircut sings, standing on the stage in a pink dress: it is only in front of it and the dress is cropped from waist to toe. Under the dress are wearing jeans and coarse shoes: to the audience in front, to yourself - like In 1997, Bjork sublimated her parting into her most famous song about an unmarried girl in a panic, which broke even into the rotation of the Europe Plus radio station and Russian women's magazines under the heading “In.” In “Out”, then Madonna was listed, which broke off the air for five years before this erotic and here's the m here is everything, but have not yet invented a black hair and a Doberman in the desert.
Björk entered pop culture in a flurry at a time when, instead of YouTube, there was still MTV, and instead of the bored viral fun, there were charts of long-playing hits. Somehow, from the very beginning, she had the quality of endless renewal, which eventually leads to museums and the history of culture on the main pages. The exhibition at Tate (before that, they showed and analyzed the person of another master of updates - David Bowie there), a speech at the opening of the Olympic Games, friendship with David Attenborough, boyfriend Goldie, two children, a choir from hundreds of the best and most unusual vocalists of the world , the flight from London to Iceland and back, the ex-husband Cremaster and nine albums, each of which stuns and begins a new countdown - all this does not happen out of the blue or by coincidence. In Björk, there is too much of everything just because it threatens the immense and seeks patterns where others manage by indifferent observation.
How many children exist in the world who, by the age of 11, will try to play a few instruments and bring their parents by the hand to the music school to start studying? What was a childhood nightmare for those whose parents dreamed of diversifying, for Björk, was the main occupation since the age of three. And as always happens with those who do some things for too long, if you do one thing for several decades in a row, this business opens hundreds of faces that touch the whole world on a tangent - from biology and particle physics to Ancient Greece, Fedor Tyutchev and robots that can kiss.
Bjork's texts are better not to read with a bit of skepticism: the word "love" is found in them more often than in the manifestations on the disarmament of the 60s
Bjork's texts are better not to read with skepticism: the word "love" is found more often in them than in the manifestations on the disarmament of the 60s, and in the first song of the new album, which the press has already called the best for many years, there is a phrase "Show that you respect my feelings, I have my own emotional needs. " It is not known whether this phrase is addressed to the former husband, the great contemporary artist Matthew Barney, to a certain hypothetical man or to each listener, but this persistent request to respect and love her essence is heard in Björk from the first song of the debut album. It is not peculiar to the directness of statements in the spirit of "If you like it, then you should have put a ring on it", but it means something about the same: stay or go, do not listen, do not look in my direction, not criticize not loving, do not torture yourself if you are not interested. Go past, I do not need you, I wonder with myself.
Since 1993, only the most faithful could stay with Björk during all her mutations - through all her records and experiments, the listeners were led by a voice leading into a half-trance state from which it is so difficult to get out if you once gave in to it. Many who were interested in Bjork in principle were paralyzed or annoyed by the same timbre - in general, they were touched by the wrong strings that are required for love. So, her albums passed by packs for all who are not hooked on the needle of this uncompromising vocal.
Whimpers and flashes, of which there were especially many in her later albums, will affect everyone who has a heart that is not in place, and don’t wait here - especially if thorny bits, aggressive voices or other heavy artillery are selected for nervous voice tremor. So, from the album "Volta" could easily reduce the jaws, and from "Medulla" - start a panic attack from feeling claustrophobic: Björk and other musicians, who created almost the entire sound series only by the power of their voices, completely removed the distance from the audience. Here they stand, breathe, get sick, suffer in your ear - and not get out.
In this case, Bjork remains interesting, even if you turn off the volume and do not know her songs. Yesterday she is an Eastern European girl Selma, who has already seen and understood everything about this world and wants to die, tomorrow she is a funny pop diva on the red carpet in a swan dress and next to von Trier. Then the journalists joked and snorted - now it seems that the dress-swan is the wildest and coolest idea if you played the frightened Cinderella in a chintz dress in the hands of the best manipulator of modern cinema.
Map of territories Bjork extends far beyond those 9 faces that we saw on the covers of her albums. Björk is not only a girl in a fluffy sweater that dances on a truck traveling downtown. And not a girl with fright in the eyes on the cover of the album "Post" - probably the best title for the second album, which is not clear how to compose, or how to call after a deafening debut. She gave the best description of the fear of a clean sheet and herself in general in a clip with Michel Gondry: Bjork is a best-selling book that writes itself while you read it, and then for some reason stops doing it, closes it and turns into tightly woven white sheets.
Bjork managed to implement the approach that many eminent people recommended: you can be yourself only by completely dissolving in the process around
It was an amazing time when Bjork opened the Olympic Games ceremony, which was done at various times by almost all for various reasons top performers here and now - from Jennifer Lopez to DJ Tiësto. 2004, the centenary of the Olympics, Athens. Least of all this anthem was like "Come on! Come on! Forward!" and more - to the very essence of the ancient games and competition as a way to understand the connection with the opponent and to know the pure will to win, and not a reason to measure flags at the stadium. The whole stadium was covered with something blue and transparent, like her dress, everyone was stunned, they swallowed and nobody understood anything.
Bjork managed to intuitively implement the seemingly contradictory approach, which was recommended by many prominent people, from Eric Fromm to Steve Jobs: you can be yourself only by completely dissolving in the process around. A unique documentary of this process is the documentary “How Bjork met Attenborough,” where ethics and logic, a composer and a naturalist, an eccentric singer and the voice of a leisurely and precise BBC meet on the field of experiments.
Their conversation sounds like a dialogue from "Nymphomaniac": it’s about orgasm, and it’s about fishing - but both agree with each other and essentially speak about the same thing: about each artist’s attempt to absorb the whole world without rest and calculate that general pattern, on which the stave is arranged, the color of the grass and the starry sky above us. Exactly this was done by artists of the Renaissance, who invented multidisciplinarity in a new European culture and always neglected the tried and tested technology before the opportunity to invent an airplane to fly to the skies. Da Vinci and his contemporaries are frescoes that have fallen off due to experiments with the composition of the paint, and drawings of airships that have not flown.
In different ways, David Attenborough and Björk Gudmundsdottir talk about how chaos taxis and for some reason always taxi in the direction of order, even if it seems that the world is out of control. At some point in the documentary film appears the owner of the largest musical instrument on earth, which is carried by several planes and collected in days. And then - a couple of dozen vocalists who imitate any natural sound with tongue and larynx: from a drop of rain to a roar of trot before an attack. And all together they learn the notes, improvise, shout and howl, starting only from the instincts and the ready-made patterns of music that we shouldn’t fight. A cry after a whisper, a march after a lullaby - and all without tension, go with the flow.
Dying and reborn in albums, their covers, clips, children and husbands, Bjork can wonderfully be at arm's length and even closer. And for some reason it is her impossible, collective, overturning great work that seems so selfish, authoring, embodied and simple - despite the fact that it is falling apart into our eyes. And it comes out exactly because Bjork wants to hunt, and not to take from the floor. After all, if you are a fountain of blood in the form of a girl, do not pretend to be just a girl.