Björk – Pluto – Rage – Joy
I wrote some of this to someone who I met who asserted that Björk was her savior. It allowed me the opportunity to put some old thoughts into words. First, if you don’t know Björk’s pluto, watch this:
It’s an iffy recording of a good performance. If you already love this song you know everything about what I’m going to write here. If you don’t, but you want to, get the album Homogenic, put on some headphones, turn the volume way up, call up the pluto track, and listen with a vulnerable brain…
I can’t claim Björk as my savior – but I can say that there was a moment which I can still remember when her music became completely necessary for me. It’s not that I dismissed it earlier, it’s just that it was only music, sort of in the background, interesting in a kind of detached, intellectual way.
Then one night I was frustrated with some mess in life, and knocking about aimlessly in my apartment with Homogenic on a bit too loud, and pluto comes on. You know how that one goes. Few words, and much pained keening.
As it went on in that middle bit, where the ratcheting tense rhythm is cranking tighter, tighter, and her voice is just moaning in a grating key with more pressure, and more pressure… it might have been the mood I was in, or the music being too loud, or maybe both, but it was making me feel real rage. I really couldn’t think in actions, I was just irritated to the point of rage by the noise of the song and her voice and then, just when the whole thing was on the edge of unbearable, her anguished keen flips into this incredible squeak of delight.
It was like the back of my head flipped open at that squeak, and the fury I was feeling spread out into the space all around me as joy.
It seemed to me then that rage was just joy in a state of confinement, and you need to find a way to pop the pressure on it to let it out into the world. I was sort of ecstatic the rest of that night, due entirely to that one song.
I realized that Björk doesn’t actually make songs – she orchestrates emotional experience. I still turn to pluto for release when I can’t work myself out of an emotional corner alone.
Pluto is the god of death, and death is the conversion of flesh into ideal. Life is a ratchet of frustration, tightening only and never loosening unless you can find a way to just snap. That may seem horrible, but it isn’t. There are ways to snap beautifully, and spend all the energy stored in frustration in an explosion of joy. Snap the right way, and the explosion can be self sustaining, like nuclear fire. This song showed me how to die/change/be otherwise, when you need to, with a spastic blaze of grace.
What does it do to you?
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