Bjork’s Code of Life

I’m a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl.

I recorded my first album when I was eleven. There was a radio program in Iceland, and if you had any talent, you could perform there. If someone knew how to do magic tricks, they could come and show them. If someone could do backflips, they came and did their backflips. And I was singing. Even in the school bus. Everywhere. Always. This the only thing I knew how to do. Anyway, someone noticed this. They called my mom, promised money, and suggested to record my album. My mom thought about it, and said “yes”. No one asked me anything.

 

When I left Iceland I was 18. I was shocked. The Iceland that I left behind was like a rural parish. A tourist walking around the street would frighten the locals, as this was way before the touristic boom. I would walk around London, popping my eyes out, and everything felt so dirty and sticky that I washed my hands at least 5 times a day. Also there were strawberries there – something I was seeing for the first time in my life.

 

I think in Hollywood, if you don’t wear black Armani, you get executed immediately. But mostly, I’m surprised it’s still a big deal. I’m surprised journalists are still talking about it.

 

But I don’t like it when it’s too much of people being told what to do, and too much like … fascism, of magazines telling women to starve themselves, and they obey! Or they’re like “out of fashion”, which is the worst crime you could ever commit! So they get executed for it, publicly!

 

I get high, to be totally honest, in second-hand shops. My hunting instinct, I expect, really kicks in.

 

American journalists don’t understand me well. If I go out in a dress that I enjoy, they immediately write nasty things about me. They don’t get it. They actually thought that I was trying to look like Jennifer Aniston, but got it wrong.

 

I don’t like being famous. Popularity – is like something from the service sphere. Like being a janitor or something like this.

 

Oh! Being a musician is very easy. My house is full of musical instruments. There’s a lot of music, always. But… I don’t really go to premieres and hang out with Puff Daddy.

 

Music is like an irrefutable scientific fact. Like mathematics.

 

I mean, I do love one-upmanship sometimes, like when you see kids breakdancing and who can do the best tricks. It’s common, it’s in our nature as animals, like the birds of paradise who’ve got the best feathers and that sort of stuff. But it’s fun when it’s impulsive and it’s about fun. When it becomes clever, when it becomes more of a left-brain, who can mathematically out-do the other, it’s not so fun anymore.

 

But I definitely missed my rhythms. I mean, I love rhythms. I started an all-girl punk band when I was 14 and I was the drummer, not the singer. I’m very, very, very picky when it comes to rhythms. So it was fun to approach it from another angle on this one.

 

But now, it’s had enough: we need to finally admit that we are only a tribe, who has to live with the nature, forget its presumptions of civilization and cleanliness. We are fundamentally pagans and we’ll need to take that into account.

 

If I could change the world, I would start by getting rid of the religions. I think that would make a good start. We must accept that today religions don’t bring anything other than hatred and destruction.

 

I’m not well-versed in theology. But I can argue against Christianity as a woman. We all know that there are thirteen full moons. But Christianity doesn’t tolerate the 13th… By removing this number, it (Christianity) thought itself stronger than nature.

 

Football is a fertility festival. Eleven sperms trying to get into the egg. I feel sorry for the goalkeeper.

 

Be spontaneous, and don’t plan anything. That’s what I do.

 

I don’t think the way to deal with the September 11th is to sit down and write a song about it. I think you have to sit down and write a song about something else. Because there are more things in the world than Bush and Osama bin Laden. Thanks God!

 

In the past three years, I´ve been logging into news sites everyday to find out about what’s going on. And if I’m developing an interest in politics, then a lot of other people must be as well. Now, even supermodels are discussing international affairs between themselves.

 

The good thing about all this is that now people like me are learning more about Islam.

 

I will never make any political statements, because I don’t understand much about it. I can only represent those who are interested in politics as something running in the background.

 

I think that every person has a certain mission. My mission is doing everything very fast. I’ve tried 900 thousand different things, just to know that I tried them all.

 

I don’t like collaborations that much. I don’t have time for that. But even if I had 500 more years, I’d still not get involved with that. I make the 90% of my music, and I hope that ratio will only increase in the future.

 

I will never do hip-hop. After all, I’m from Iceland.

 

Iceland is like a stone in a bowl full of water. That stone can be either under the water, or on its surface, or make bubbles. But it isn’t aware of its actions. It’s doing whatever it is doing.

 

I’m not afraid of leaving my notebooks unattended. As long as I’m in possession of the code called the Icelandic, I’m not scared of anything.

 

I think many in Iceland don’t like me just because they don’t understand English.

 

As all Icelandic people, I love drinking. I don’t drink that often, but if I start, it always leads to an armageddon.

 

Yes. I think it’s called “binge drinking”. I don’t see the point of drinking unless you end up dancing and letting go.

 

I actually read somewhere that, if you look over a 40 years period, it’s better for your body because then you get rid of so much stress. Two glasses of wine, good for your heart? Yeah, whatever. I just wake up next day and I’m a bit like, black and white, not in colour. But lots of drink, a bit of dancing, a bit of slapstick is good! Thing is, you can’t do that, that often. Twice a month would be good, but I can’t wait, I think, fuck it!

 

I only dislike myself when I’m tired. For example, I’ve never told myself that I want to look beautiful today. I just don’t want to look tired. If you show me two photographs, in one of which I look ugly, and tired in the other, I will only get worried about the second one.

 

There is nothing worse than girls dressed up in pink tip to toe.

 

God bless the internet! You know, its ironic that just at the point the lawyers and the businessmen had calculated how to control music, the internet comes along and fucks everything up.

 

It’s strange to admit, but I’ve always wanted to become a farmer.