I’ve always thought of Bjork as, above all, a poet. She has been a lyrical inspiration to me for countless years, from Debut to Biophilia. She was, and still is, a great part of my life as an artist, as a writer, as a woodland creature at heart, and as a human girl in flesh. If I have any one person to credit for the ambitious darkness quietly humming to every edge of my soul and the beating of my heart to a circadian rhythm unfamiliar to this planet, it would be her. She is nothing less than a divinity and the sculptor of my aesthetic expression.
Allen Ginsberg, however, is more literally a poet. His (what can be described as) “performance beat” piece Howl resonated with a certain beatnik generation of years past, and I personally believe it still resonates strongly within the minds of millennials today.
Which is exactly why it needs its own playlist, orchestrated by none other than Iceland’s own sugar plum fairy, with songs gracefully cherry-picked from her Greatest Hits album. In this playlist, Bjork plays the role of troubled, artistic youth attempting to express her creativity while simultaneously navigating the universe and swerving around the galactic dangers before her. These are symbols of capitalism and a consistently narrow-minded society, driven to rid the world of small fairies, such as her, who desire to brighten the earth with their whimsy and release the forest elves who have been trapped in the darkness by cogs and pencil pushers. Meanwhile, Allen Ginsberg is her equally whimsical, and slightly unreliable, narrator and navigator. Strap into your cosmic seat belts and keep all five of your arms, legs, and antennae in the vehicle at all times people, ‘cause this one is a doozy.
PART I
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
“dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
“angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,”
HYPERBALLAD
“It's early morning
No one is awake
I'm back at my cliff
Still throwing things off
I listen to the sounds they make
On their way down
I follow with my eyes 'til they crash
I imagine what my body would sound like
Slamming against those rocks
and when it lands
Will my eyes
Be closed, or open?”
“I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe again with you”
A story of loss, of weakness, of need for safety. Bjork, the voice of youth past, is in need for a blanket of comfort as she decides to blast off into the atmosphere. She is unsure of her trajectory, and is testing the waters with small objects around her. Her mind is beginning to feel the destructive thoughts described in the first stanzas of Howl. Soon, she will be devoured by them.
“a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,”
JOGA
“Emotional landscapes,
They puzzle me,
Then the riddle gets solved,
And you push me up to this...
State of emergency,
How beautiful to be,
State of emergency,
Is where I want to be.”
Bjork is succombing to the darkness, and since she is a troubled soul, she considers it very beautiful. Every ounce of pain is converted into an inch of inspiration. While she is becoming gradually more sympathetic towards her suit-wearing attackers, Ginsberg is describing her eventual death due to this mistake. Her downward spiral truly begins here.
“who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,”
PAGAN POETRY
“He offers
A handshake
Crooked
Five fingers
They form a pattern
Yet to be matched
On the surface simplicity
But the darkest pit in me
It's pagan poetry
Pagan poetry”
Bjork here is emotionally contemplating her impending doom, how all surrounding her feels crooked and evil, and how she is slowly starting to sense a growing umbra inside of her. It is festering into her body, her every lung and organ, and it is calling out her name in small whimpers and whispers, tumbling through her digestive system and keeping her awake in the early hours of the dawning. Ginsberg is announcing a curling of shadows around Bjork’s future actions. He is describing her every move, her self-destruction, and the destruction that others shall put onto her before she can even see that anything is happening.
PART II
“What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!”
BACHELORETTE
“I'm a fountain of blood
In the shape of a girl
You're the bird on the brim
Hypnotised by the Whirl
Drink me, make me feel real
Wet your beak in the stream
Game we're playing is life
Love is a two way dream
Leave me now, return tonight
Tide will show you sweet bliss
If you forget my name
You will go astray
Like a killer whale
Trapped in a bay
I'm a path of cinders
Burning under your feet
You're the one who walks me
I'm your one way street
I'm a whisper in water
Secret for you to hear
You are the one who grows distant
When I beckon you near
Leave me now, return tonight
The tide will show you the way
If you forget my name
You will go astray
Like a killer whale
Trapped in a bay
I'm a tree that grows hearts
One for each that you take
You're the intruder’s hand
I'm the branch that you break”
Here is where Ginsberg’s messages of incoming evil finally reach Bjork, as he speaks of the Lovecraftian horror Moloch. Bjork is attempting to hold her own, detailing her expertise as a fresh but fierce face of the space cadets. She is unleashing her majestic Neptunian lion’s roar, and not allowing anyone, or anything, get in her way.
“Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!”
HUNTER
“I'm going hunting
I'm the hunter
I'll bring back the goods
But I don't know when”
Here, our fearless crusader Bjork is focusing on her mission to destroy Moloch. She is planning out her traverse into the dark depths of Lovecraftian terror-tory. Albeit the details are slightly foggy, she is confident that she will be able to dismantle their oppressive system from the inside out. Just like how youth who attempt to rid the world of discrimination, she is determined to continue her mission, even if she does not know when it will come to fruition in entirety.
“They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!”
ARMY OF ME
“Stand up
You've got to manage
I won't sympathize
Anymore.
You're on your own now
We won't save you
Your rescue-squad
Is too exhausted”
Ginsberg is informing us of the happenings involving Moloch. Meanwhile, Bjork is having to deal with the loss of her galactic companions. They have decided to stop keeping her company and fighting alongside her, stating that the battle was a lost cause and that Moloch will never be defeated. She is losing faith in her ability to destroy him; however, she has something up her sleeve. Bjork begins assembling a mystery plan…
PART III
“Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland
where you’re madder than I am
I’m with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I’m with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I’m with you in Rockland
where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries
I’m with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I’m with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I’m with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio”
HIDDEN PLACE
“Now I have
Been slightly shy
And I can smell a pinch of hope
To almost have allowed one’s fingers
To stroke
The fingers I was given to touch with
But careful, careful
There lies my passion, hidden
There lies my love
I'll hide it under a blanket
Lull it to sleep
I'll keep it in a hidden place
I'll keep it in a hidden place
Keep it in a hidden place
Keep it in a hidden place”
Bjork begins to realize that she will no longer be able to drive her mission home, but she does not lose hope. She knows that, as long as she continues to keep her beliefs, and that she keeps them safe while simultaneously continuing the noble tradition of word of mouth to educate the next generation, that the universal ticking grandfather clock of justice will fall on the side of the heroic. Ginsberg details the gravity (heh) of the situation, and how the media is beginning to pick up on the everchanging belief system of youth.
“I’m with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
I’m with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx
I’m with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss
I’m with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse
I’m with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void”
ISOBEL
“My name’s Isobel
Married to myself
My love, Isobel
Living by herself
When she does, it she means to
Moth delivers her message
Unexplained on your collar
Crawling in silence
A simple excuse
In a tower of steel
Nature forges a deal
To raise wonderful hell
Like me, like me”
Our adventurer continues on her makeshift quest, gathering information on the enemy and being an independant soul. She marries herself, knowing that it will double her strength in these volatile times. She forges a tower of steel and converts it into a headquarters for her future missions, forsaking the space cadets and become the cosmic equivalent of a rogue cop on the run. She’s lost trust with her past co-cadets and their cause, so she’s decided to create her own legacy independently and is finding herself through her mission.
“I’m with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha
I’m with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb
I’m with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I’m with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep
I’m with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we’re free
I’m with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night”
IT’S IN OUR HANDS
“Well, now aren't we
Scaring ourselves
Unnecessarily?
Aren't we trying too hard?
'Cause it's in our hands
It's in our hands
It's all here
It's in our hands
Look no further
I look no further”
Our brave leader is attempting to rationalize with herself, shooing away any negative thoughts she has or had about her newfound cause. She knows it will all be difficult for her but she avoids having it get in her way. She takes matters into her own hands and into the hands of future generations, leaving them a plan of action that will ease their stress and allow them to work for their cause without a hitch in their tracks.
FOOTNOTE
“Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!
The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!”
ALL IS FULL OF LOVE
“You'll be given love
You'll be taken care of
You'll be given love
You have to trust it
Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at
Twist your head around
It's all around you
All is full of love
All around you
All is full of love
You just ain't receiving
All is full of love
Your phone is off the hook
All is full of love
Your doors are all shut
All is full of love!
be the little angel”
Bjork the courageous champion is receiving messages from Lord Ginsberg as he chants the holy mantra of Moloch through the intergalactic speakers. The silent roaring penetrates her eardrums, deafening her. She falls into a deep sleep. She worries at first but trusts that her work will be found in her hard metal ruins and that her work can be continued years from now. She will be fine, she knows, and the world will be just as fine as she is.
“Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middleclass! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria & Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!”
VENUS AS A BOY
“His wicked sense of humour
Suggests exciting sex
His fingers focus on her
Touches, he's venus as a boy.
He believes in beauty
He's venus as a boy
He believes in beauty
He believes in beauty
He's venus as a boy
He believes in beauty
He's exploring
The taste of her
Arousal
So accurate
He sets off
The beauty in her
He's venus as a boy”
In her hypnotization-induced comatose state, our dear Bjork begins to detail a strong devotion she feels towards her navigator Ginsberg. She is now a subject of corruption in this grave state of capitalism and inhumanity. All holy, all dark and disastrous. Bjork has fallen, but there is no reason this should mean that all minds kin to hers have fallen. Her legacy will continue in her name.
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