Björk - Jóga

There are certain artists that I hold such respect for, that their music is almost a happy coincidence. These would be musicians that have longstanding and strong careers; a few miss albums here and there but mostly hits. With these artists, I have certain ‘rituals’ that I perform with new albums involving solitude and deep introspection. I have high expectations of new releases and assume the best until I hear otherwise. Certain artists require specific first-time listening sacraments. Some of these special artists include: U2 (obviously), Oasis, Elbow, Alanis Morissette, Erasure, Daft Punk, Björk… you know, the essentials... ;)

When Björk’s album Homogenic was released in 1997, I literally took the day off work, dragged a sketchbook and box of colored pencils off with me and spent several hours in the abandoned courtyard of a practically deserted strip mall and bonded on a deeply ethereal level with this album. From the first song, I knew I had found a special place to hide in my headphones with this one. I love Björk not only a musician, but as an artist on every possible level. My respect for her is through the roof, she is living art. So much I can’t hardly talk about it because it seems like I should say more than what I could ever possibly say about how much she inspires and enraptures me as a human being.


Some Björk albums, as I alluded to above, are more art for art’s sake with me (i.e. – Medúlla… yowza. What was that?!) But I own them all and I love them all, because it is her. It’s like if you were dating someone and they were in a band and you didn’t really like that band but you loved the guy and you went to every show regardless because you support him and love him… it’s like that with Medúlla for me. I own it, but I've barely listened to it… Homogenic, that was a special occasion. There isn’t a single song on that album, much like Post, to which I don’t have some deeply romantically/idyllic attachment. (And I mean romantic in the idealist sense, not the flowers and candy sense here.)

At the time of the first listening, I was working at the Courtyard in Cary. Spending most of my days with my best friend Summer, making thrift store runs, drinking coffee and making big plans for ‘zines that never happened. This was the era of all the paper journals that now line the shelves of my office at home. I could put my hands very easily on the journal and the few pages that came into creation as a direct result of homogenic, specifically from the simplistic beauty of Jóga.

From line one, (all the accidents that happen / follow the dot / coincidence makes sense only with you…) I got it, man. I knew what that feeling was. The chorus of this song is one of my top 5 most perfect love song lyrics. I have tried to explain the empathy I feel from this song to others when they are with me and it happens to come on the stereo. I always ask, "haven’t you ever felt that way? That 'state of emergency'? Have you ever loved someone so much that it sets you into a full scale panic? Didn’t you feel the most alive you’ve ever felt? Like your entire life rested on the precipice of this one simple little human being’s heart? The next words out of their mouth could change your whole life? Isn’t it terrifying? Isn’t it amazing?" I feel emotional landscapes. I really fucking understand this song on a level most people don’t let themselves feel. It can really be too much for the human heart sometimes to love like that.

There isn’t anyone in particular attached to me for this song. It mostly makes me think about the *idea* of love, as a lifestyle, as a choice, as a system of belief... Honestly it also really makes me think about Summer more than anyone else, no boys really, because it came out around the time we were hanging out the most. It was a really awesome and inspiring time in my life. I just think about being young and figuring out how to fall in love without dying, writing writing writing, notebook journals, prismacolor pencils, Waverly Place shopping center, mesh wire patio chairs, my Discman covered with Keroppi stickers, not ever seeing but fully believing in a love like that. Always. Once you figure it out, it never goes away. Once you know a love like that, in any capacity, for another person, for yourself, in theory or in practice… it never leaves you and you spend the rest of your life looking for it and defending it's honor like family.

Roxy Music - Remake/Remodel

When I think about Roxy Music, there is always this hesitation. It’s like, I really like them, but it took me a while to like them because I was prejudiced against them for some reason. I can remember a time when I knew the reason, but now I don’t. I do know it has a lot (everything) to do with some sort of jealousies involving my ex, Rob Roy. Whatever our relationship was, forever how long it lasted, for whatever aftermath remained, and whatever damage was done, one thing remains: Rob Roy was my musical soul mate. We spent the majority of our time playing, speaking of and buying/trading music. We both had a deep and abiding love for Britpop. I met him once briefly at a friend’s house, but then truly remember falling all over myself for him at my first Morrissey show here in Raleigh, Nov 16, 1997 at the Ritz. I then spent the next 3 or 4 years laying my soul to waste for him.

We were so off and on for so long, it’s hard to say when it all started, but we both know when it ended. We lived together so many different times and attempts, but it was the second to last time, in Cary, that we had our last big stand. It was the longest time we made it, but it was the hardest. The most damage was done then. However, I do remember one special occasion we had decided to drive all the way out to Carrboro to the Visart video store to rent music videos, because there was nowhere in Raleigh to find the kinds of concerts we wanted to see. On one occasion we rented Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live and Roxy Music’s Musikladen, live from Bremen, Germany.

By this point, I had overcome my unfounded prejudice against Roxy Music, (save one song, to this day I can barely tolerate to hear, “Virginia Plain”. This song is so awkwardly uncomfortably bad to me. The vibrato of his voice, the tempo, I don’t know what it is, but I just straight up dislike it as a song in general.) We made a special trip to my parents’ house, who had 2 VCR’s at the time and made our own copies of these two videos before returning them to Carrboro. We spent many times of the next few weeks and months watching Musikladen. This song always sticks out.

I cannot accurately tell you the myriad of things about this song and video that please me, but i can name a few. It may be the saxophonic hijinx and acrobatism of Andy MacKay, but then again, it may be his pants of extreme excitement, with codpiece of proportionate mystery. It might be the overall bewildering Riff-Raff-itude of Brian Eno. My god. How can you love someone so much but yet be so terrified of them? It seems weird to me that I didn’t like Roxy Music for a while there, when I have such a deep Eno connection with the whole U2 thing, and all.

But i think what does it for me, what REALLY does it for me is not so much the fact that i want to do Brian Ferry six ways to sunday, (i always have, and always will, no matter how old and crusty he gets,) it just has to be the reign of fire he lashes upon us with his Rockin' Piano Hands at about 5:00. Few things in life have truly seemed as cool to me. In fact, that became a kind of private joke between Rob and I, if you misbehaved, Bryan Ferry would shoot you would his ‘Rockin’ piano hands’. We would often replay this part and pretend to fall over dead from being shot.

We had some good times.



Side note, in more recent times, this song also makes me think of the first time i met Frank Black after a show (incidentally) also in Carrboro at the Cat's Cradle which, as my livejournal confirms, was Jan 30, 2001. He covered this song that night, and I remember being super-psyched to hear it. Forever coincidentally between us, this was the first time i officially met you, although neither of us can remember and it wasn't the first time we were 'together'!

(ps - did you piece together that at this show the pixies opened for U2 and the next time we were 'together' was when you opened for Frank Black? THEN we met again because of U2... how's that for fate, sucker?)