Why Björk aging disgracefully fills me with j o y !

There is video footage of me, at eight years of age, swirling around the living room in a kimono in response to Björks 'Venus as a Boy.' I would put it up here but it's trapped on a pre-digital tape that looks like a vhs but is the size of a cassette, that my mother would click into our camera before hitting record for my happy but strange childhood outbursts.

Here is the video that prompted this article which is in no small part a celebration but also a defense of Björk. I was sitting outside the skatepark with some friends and we got into a debate about her latest appearance on Jools Holland. They seemed dismayed by what they'd seen, it surprised me that they were A) alarmed by Björk doing something that sounded and looked unfamiliar. B) they were so unprepared to be open minded about it. I was determined to give Björks latest endeavours my ears, my mind and my heart.

I began to think about why it was so important to me that people didn't just dismiss what she's creating as something that's too far out of their comfort zone to listen to or watch. I told my Dad I was writing a piece about Björk and I'd done so many drafts that my point was getting lost slightly, he understood my problem instantly, commenting that "Björk is so many things," we agreed that it's possible to talk about her in such big terms, that it's easy to start writing about her in a way that transcends humanity until she becomes 'Björk.' Therefore I've done my best to keep the piece grounded in my own experiences but forgive me if at times we all float away from our earthly knowledge of what being an artist means and into an alien landscape where you're allowed to be as free as you want to be, I think she would forgive me.

I'm immensely thankful that she has played a part in shaping what being human means to me "I remember not wanting to get out of bed unless I could wear a duvet cover, which I wore with a hole cut in my head." This from 'Björkgraphy' by Martin Aston which I read at age fifteen (Björk, to my amusement, declined to be interviewed saying she was waiting until she was 80 for that sort of thing.) This is one of my all time favourite stories about her and one that comes to mind when I feel especially stuck in a routine. What I admire most is her ability to have complete faith in her spontaneous decisions or obsessions, she has this beautiful ability to have complete faith in her intuitiveness, in lots of ways there's no bigger freedom than that. Another story that always stayed with me was her bold claims that "she had been so independent that she left home when she was fourteen, Hildur (her mother) who should know, disputes that version, and says that when she did find a flat, she returned home after three months in order to attend a college. A case of Björk embellishing the truth again." Aston, although unable to interview the singer herself for his book, was able to amass an archive of all of Björks previous interviews and speak to her family and friends. One recurring theme he quickly picks up on is her habitual tendency to "exaggerate a little" which makes me love her spirit even more, even at the most basic level, she evades any rules that bore her to make space for creative freedom.

Photo:Santiago Felipe

"She knew what she wanted, and went for it, and that's her whole story."-Hildur

Björk aging disgracefully fills me with joy. I use this term not because I think she has done anything disgraceful or even that I think she is especially old but because media often uses the term 'aging gracefully' to describe women over the age of forty. I'm not just thinking about Dame Judi Dench, even female musicians generally acquire a more demure, respectable appearance and attitude later in life. I don't think there's anything wrong with that and knowing the high and unachievable standards women are held to at all stages of life I would never seek to dismiss anyone's way of being, whatever makes you happy is the right thing to do, not to oversimplify things. However, that being said, it is a joy to watch an older women grow, not more reserved, but exploring the limitations of what she can be. Björk is like an insect that was in her cocoon stage when she looked as plain as the rest of us and she's spent her whole life evolving and continues to do so.

Björk's fearless creation of new dimensions can humble our sense of what one human can do. Consider everything she has done, she's so powerful just by being herself in the truest form. She creates freedom with everything she does, I can't shake the feeling that at some point she's going to reach her final form and float off into the universe when earth has nothing more to offer her, so I'm just grateful I got to be alive when she was here.

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