Of Riddles

Someone asks (below) whether I take the term riddle seriously in Dark Ecology.

Yes. I reference mostly Inuit riddles and Old English riddles, for sure. I was talking with Björk about riddles. After we'd written our piece, I realized that this kind of riddling is exactly how she writes lyrics. Riddles preserve the withdrawnness of a thing. That's why “Hyperballad” is one of the greatest love songs of all time. Because it never says so.

This is my very very favorite version. I just can't stop hearing the mantra-like repetition of “closed, or open?” as the most colossal, spine chilling riddle, this perfect mix of relentlessness and curiosity...

And the way that enveloped sine wave riff sinuously snakes around it, inaudible, then crescendoing, taking you around and around the loop, like an artefact of the voice that has deliquesced into low resonance filtering, the other way, a chiasmic contrary motion.