Backpack Demons

I almost feel like I'm cheating by choosing a song by Bjork- her lovable insanity and the fact that her lyrics are almost always non-sensical, Icelandic, or entirely figurative makes it pretty easy to choose a song out of a hat and call it poetry- but I am. You might justifiably call her a poet. One of my favorite quotes from her, "you shouldn't let poets lie to you" isn't even from a song, it's from an iconic and adorable interview where she describes what she believes is going on inside her TV. Her song "Wanderlust" from the album Volta is powerful, exciting, and a little haunting, not forgetting about the fever dream that accompanies it. While the assignment isn't about music videos, I think this is a really interesting one if you have time to watch it. The lyrics are about Bjork's constant hunger for something new, dissatisfaction with religion, and trying to connect more with nature. It was suggested in the comments on song meanings that the overall theme of the piece is her abhorrence of religion, and that at the end when she says "can you spot a pattern?" she is referring to suffering and problems religion has caused throughout history. I think this is a little bit of a reach, but it's an interesting theory to keep in mind.

Looking up the lyrics to Bjork's music is a much different experience to actually listening to it in the way that she puts words together and articulates them makes it a little surprising to see it on paper. I've always found it a little more interesting to hear music written by people who's first language isn't english and the way they interpret the language in new ways. I think it's ok to assume Bjork is the speaker, describing her experience of chasing something that she doesn't know exists, "I have lost my origin/ And I don't want to find it again/ Whether sailing into nature's laws/ And be held by ocean's paws". By personifying, or in this case animal-fying, nature, she can have a relationship with it. She spends all this time struggling with her inner demons (which can be observed literally in the video) but has a constant connection with nature and science. She is constantly growing, moving, and looking, but carries her inner turmoil with her. In the 5th stanza, "Lust for comfort/ Suffocates the soul/ Relentless restlessness/ Liberates me" she expresses how mankind's preference for those things that are comfortable, such as religious beliefs, is limiting to the soul. Even though her "relentless restlessness" could be viewed as tormenting or inconvenient, she finds that to be what frees her from getting caught up in these comforts. "I feel at home/ whenever the unknown surrounds me" this line is very contradictory, and illustrates how her only home is within herself, as she has no connection to feeble things. She shows that this feeling will stay with her forever in the line "Or will I want more?'. There is a tinge of self deprecating humor, as she knows she'll never find what she wants, which is kind of the definition of the word wanderlust.