Now You Can Read My Dialogue with Björk

Thanks to Ashleigh Kane at Dazed and Confused magazine. We both decided it would be awesome to share the emails.

When you read them, you get to see sentences that intertwine a bit like tendrils, putting out little experimental shoots. It was incredibly easy to work together, because I think we're both attuners rather than demagogues.

What I mean by “attuners” is like what Heidegger says when he argues that listening is the basis of rhetoric. Listening, “quietness” is also the basis of music. Writing is a mode of reading. Improvisation is kinda like reading too, more than just splurging out any old thing, out of yourself and yourself alone. You are attending to the others playing with you.

Unafraid of making mistakes and being vulnerable in front of others.

Maybe the key word to sum all that up is wonderment, which is the basic philosophical tuning (Plato, Theaetetus) and, to me, the basic flavor of Björk's art.

Exploring the Excluded Middle zone between categorical statements and just doodling. Between saying a lemon pie is a lemon pie, and saying a lemon pie is the Pope. I think that's great because Björk likes to explore Excluded Middle zones in her writing too. She likes to show you the wiring under the board of an emotion, sort of like how Kristeva talks about the semiotic versus the thetic. I feel x versus Every day I walk towards the edge and throw little things off like car parts, bottles and cutlery...I imagine what my body would sound like, slammin against those rocks, and when it lands will my eyes be closed or open?

And erring on the lemon pie = Pope side of the equation, hahaha. It also doesn't hurt that we have the same whimsical slightly out-of-control sense of humor.

Two introverts growing little shoots in the undergrowth of wonderment...and preserving them for others. The more I think about it the more I think that was a really really good idea.