Do you remember those segments on Mister Roger’s Neighborhood where people would come on and talk about their jobs? And you’d be sitting there, five years old, bored off your head and waiting for the puppet part to come on? (Okay, maybe that was just me.) This little heartwarming video that Gene just sent me is like one of those segments, except this “expert” learned all her facts from reading it “in a Danish book this morning,” and also she is Bjork.
My god, my god, there are SO MANY THINGS I love about this video.
1. I like in the beginning when she talks about all the TV she’s been watching lately, which seems to be exclusively about how Icelandic people are handling the holidays, mixed with a little Icelandic standup. Is Bjork a good representation of the way Icelandic people are funny? Are the standup routines just the comic sort of wandering around the club, talking to himself? God I hope so.
2. Watch around the minute mark when she stands up. The TV she is opening up is from the past, but those silver spaceman tights are definitely from the future.
3. I love the surprise ending, where you think she’s making a point about how TV is taking over our brains, but it turns out to be poets! Bjork remembers “being very scared to it” (of it, she means, “it” being TV), because an Icelandic poet apparently told her how TV works, which is that it uses its electric light to take over your brain. But then (this morning) she “read the truth, and that’s the scientifical truth, which is much better. You shouldn’t let poets lie to you.” The more you know, eh, Bjork?
4. I think what I love most about this video is how at first I was desperate to know why she made this video, and then I quickly stopped caring and just loved her with all the brain parts of me. She is so great.
Edited to add more stuff, because I watched it again.
5. Where is she filming this? The industrial formica table, the sad little maps taped to the wall…is this an office park in Pleasanton?
6. She’s wearing two wristwatches. On any other woman I would assume it was a fashion statement, but on Bjork I assume it’s because she checks one watch against the other constantly, because maybe a poet once told her that time can be sneaky and try to trick you unless you really pin it down.