Army of She Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Bjork

PREFATORY EPISODE: In which the narrator explains the whole "e-Bjork" concept, and falls in love with a sound Bjork Gudmundsdottir was about twenty years into her career before I liked her. This places me somewhere in between the two groups of people most likely to be reading these words: those of you who heard about the numerous awards and award nominations for her role in the film Dancer in the Dark promptly said to yourselves, "What is this thing called Bjork? And why is she wearing a swan?" and conducted the appropriate web searches; and those of you who are Bjorkophiles, collectors of her every white-label remix and guest vocal appearance, connoisseurs of all things Bjork-even e-books by comparative greenhorns. This is not a biography. No interviews were conducted especially for it, no new information worth bragging about is revealed, long blocks of time and pieces of work (those excruciatingly jaunty Sugarcubes tracks) are completely skipped over. An excellent, detailed, thoughtful overview of the artist's life up until 1996 has already been presented by English journalist Martin Aston in the book Bjorkgraphy. Although it is somewhat out of date and sadly out of print, if that's the kind of thing you're looking for, then this is another perfect illustration of why AmazonNoble.com will never replace the beautifully musty haven of used bookstores. Turn off the computer and dust off those dustjackets! This is something else: yes, a new hyped new media new technology with a cute marketing name that makes e-fficient, e-conomic use of that ubiquitous electronic-age, neologism-friendly, monosyllabic prefix-ladies and gentlemen, an e-book. I think of it as an endeavor as retro as techno (a very Bjorkian balance, by the way: see E-pisode 3), the resuscitation and revitalization of a genre that had become ghettoized as the sole province of (gasp) scholarly types, the return of the thumbsucker special: an e-ssay. My say, on why a woman-child from the island nation of Iceland is the most interesting, the most important, the most innovative, and the most engaging musical star of our precipitous, capricious times. If you don't know a thing about Bjork except her gutbucket performance in Dancer in the Dark, then hopefully this piece of writing will show you the wild landscape of her pop, fashion, and moving-image forest without knocking you out on the pesky trees of detail. If you know everything about Bjork, then maybe this will change your mind: put her into perspectives you hadn't thought of, make you reevaluate aspects of her life you had taken for granted, give you some arguments with which to justify your obsession to concerned parents-make you more crazy about her than ever. It may have taken me twenty years, but I'm a fan-a skeptical critic converted by music so spectacularly intimate, it feels like breath. I think of "Bachelorette," a love song from the 1997 album Homogenic that has a tango bassline and Puccini-worthy lyrics of passion (by Icelandic poet Sjon), and it instantly lodges in my throat, residing midway between pulmonary central and nerve headquarters, until I want to exhale it out or suck its oxygen in from scalp to toe. A song can inhabit you, until you expel it in voice or let it send you spinning-sing or dance along. In August 1997 I interviewed Bjork for a cover story for the music magazine Request, published when Homogenic was "released," as the saying goes (as if it had been held captive). I was at that point at least curious and respectful of her work, having gotten over my early annoyance at the bewitchingly pedophilic appeal of her childlike manner. And I was growing more in love with Homogenic with each headphones listen as my plane flew into Iceland. My advancMcDonnell, Evelyn is the author of 'Army of She Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Bjork', published 2001 under ISBN 9780812991505 and ISBN 0812991508.