http://www.thenewmusic.net/nmtranscripts/NM13-859.htm NewMusic 2001 By Larissa Gulka "Interview transcript" [ Caption: The NewMusic ] [ Caption: George Stroumboulopoulos, The NewMusic ] George: Hey, what's going on and welcome to another edition of The New Music. I'm your friend, George Stroumboulopoulos. We have a very busy show for you. We have indie gods, we have metal gods, we have techno gods, we'll start with the ice queen, and we mean that in a good way. Her name is Bjork, she's got a new record, a movie, she's got, obviously, a performance at the Oscars and she has a new address as Bjork has moved herself to New York and our own Larissa Gulka went to catch up. Bjork: One day I found a big book buried deep in the ground. I opened it but all the pages were blank and, to my surprise, it started writing itself. Larissa: You seem to be so sensitive and I'm just wondering, do you get different energies from different places that you've lived does that ultimately effect the way that you are and the music that you're making? [ Caption: Bjork ] Bjork: Yeah, I'm quite flattered you noticed that about me. I'm very sensitive. I actually, since I moved to Manhattan, I have a lot of walks and walk over the bridges, I really like the bridges -- Larissa: Why do you like the bridges so much? Bjork: The bridges between Brooklyn and Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridge there's sort of something quite human. I have to walk a few times a week and sing at the top of my lungs just to make sense. And it's no fancy singing. It's just a physical release. And I can do that here. If I do that in London they call an ambulance pretty quick. But you walk on the West Side where all the gay people are on the rollerblades and you can sing as much as you want. No one's going to arrest you. And they actually all do it anyway, right? They're doing routines from musicals and they're fierce. [ Caption: Bjork moved to New York City in 2000. She built a studio and recorded her upcoming album Vespertine there. ] / [ DISSONANT DRUM AND BASS ] / [ LYRICS UNCLEAR ] There seems to be a lot of room for eccentrics in this town. Iceland's a very different place, obviously, because it's a very big island and there's only 280,000 people there. You know, I love it to pieces, I'm made of it, every cell of me I've got 1200 years back not one foreigner. And maybe I had enough of that. And, I feel like -- I mean, I always thought I would always live there in a lighthouse, you know, with a pipe organ and just be spoiled rotten. What more could a girl want, you know? But it seems to me just a little bit before I die and stuff, it's important to communicate a little bit with the rest of the humans, you know, and that's sort of why I'm over here. [ Caption: Bjork has recorded five albums, including Selma Songs: The Soundtrack To The Motion Picture Dancer In The Dark, in which she starred. ] So the lyrics to I've Seen Your All were not written by me but it was a project that took three years and I actually enjoyed to leave me and be obsessed with this lady called Selma and I sort of fell in love with her, to be honest. I felt honoured to be the one who was expressing her heart. [ VARIOUS AUDIO CLIPS ] [ Caption: In Dancer In The Dark, Bjork plays Selma, a musical loving factory worker who is losing her sight. She won the Best Actress award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. ] / [ DRAMATIC ORCHESTRAL THEME ] The only way I could become Selma was just to leave all of me behind and slowly become her. So I sort of was her for a year or two, I guess. And I decided not to bother so much about the similarities between me and her because you could look at it in a way that that was something I didn't have to worry about then because I was already okay. Like, I know what it's like to be a single mom. I know what it's like to have a son, you know. I know a lot of things, you know. [ Caption: Bjork has characterized her experience working on Dancer In The dark as one of "profound cruelty". ] [ SET DIN ] Bjork: He looks happy, doesn't he? Man: He does look happy. Bjork: Okay. Woman: Did you hear what she said? Boy: Did you say okay? Man: Did you say okay? [ LAUGHING ] Larissa: What would be the worst thing for you: losing your sight or losing your hearing or losing your voice? Bjork: I have lost my voice and it's the most scary thing I can imagine. I guess, biologically, I have exceptionally large lungs. / [ VARIOUS MUSICAL CLIPS ] Apparently people who have big lungs, they get obsessed with oxygen so they celebrate it when they sing. To sing, for me, is inhaling the most oxygen and let it go in and out and in and out as much as you can per minute. So I guess, biologically, that's sort of my prime, what I'm about. My ears come up pretty close though out of the three things you mentioned. I'm probably least upset about losing my sight, second my hearing and number one my voice.