Alarm Call

I was having difficulty deciding what the first track review would be for this blog (or more accurately, what would be the highlighted song when I officially launched the site). I wanted it to be “Human Behaviour” because it was my first introduction to Bjork, and that felt like an appropriate beginning. But once I started writing, I couldn’t stop – the song suddenly became the encapsulation of everything I wanted to say about Bjork. And that is what this blog is supposed to do, not that one particular song. So, I began casting around for a new beginning.

I eventually settled on “Alarm Call.” It’s an odd choice, but I think, once I explain what the song means to me, it will become clear.

(I’m including the video, but the original mix of the song is what I will refer to.)

I bought Homogenic – without having listened to it – in my first week of my second year of University. I quickly fell in love with the big tracks – “Bachelorette”, “Hunter” and, a little later, “Joga.” But although it has since become one of my favourites, “Alarm Call” meant nothing to me for a long time. It didn’t have the sweeping strings and vibrant melodies of the other songs. Worst of all, it initially felt like a tepid replay of “Hyperballad”: mountains, things on top of mountains, Bjork on the top of mountains, Bjork possibly throwing things off the top of mountains, WHATEV.

And then the winter came, and I became depressed.

It’s all very cliched. My school work was difficult and excessively time-consuming and I was gradually discovering I hated my major (Chemistry: whodathunkit!). I was still living in residence, but I was surrounded by strangers. Most of my friends had moved out, and those that hadn’t were too busy to hang out with me. Two of my closest friends were drifting away, for various reasons. And perhaps most importantly, I was slowly and very pathetically inching out of the closet.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that it was all cliched, it didn’t stop the cliches from hurting any less. The cliche was happening to me, after all. I had spent my teenage years yearning to get out of suburbia and to become an adult, and now my life was unfolding very differently and much more painfully than I expected. I was confused and isolated and fairly hopeless. I had made a mess of my life, I thought, and I was letting everyone down.

And then, one day, in the early spring, I replayed “Alarm Call.”

One of the things I most appreciate about Bjork is that she wants her listeners to be happy. Not just happy as a consumer – Bjork wants you to be transcendently, ecstatically happy and fearless. Bjork wants to change your life.

And that’s what “Alarm Call” is – it’s instructions on how to listen to Bjork’s music. You take it up to the top of a mountain and you play it as loud as you can, and you have a fucking good time, because we’re not philosopher-saints, we’re regular, normal people and the only thing that matters is allowing yourself to be happy and making sure that everyone else is happy too. That is enlightenment.

The music is pleasant enough, but the song is mainly, and most importantly, that beat that sounds like a giant dancing from foot to foot and Bjork’s singing and lyrics, which are some of her most unashamedly joyous (listen to her growl!). They are ridiculous and they sound like they were written by someone who can’t speak English very well, but they are so important and so so so true:

Today has never happened
And it doesn’t frighten me

It doesn’t scare me at all

You can’t say no to hope
You can’t say no to happiness

It doesn’t scare me at all

The song meant so much to me that spring: my problems were all cliches – and the answers were all cliches. That’s why I had initially ignored the song. I hadn’t had the right experiences to illuminate the meanings of the words.

As you get older, you realize that the reason why truisms kick around so long is because they are, in some ways, true. “You can’t so no to hope/You can’t say no to happiness” – it only sounds ludicrously optimistic and out of touch with the world when you haven’t been through some serious crap. When you have, it actually sounds like the only way to live, as one of the only bearable truths in life. “Today has never happened/and it doesn’t frighten me” – that sort of thought can only come from someone who was once frightened of what today would bring, and who no longer feels that fear. If you have been through that, you know the rush that comes when you realize you no longer feel that fear, when you no longer feel like you have to punish yourself.

That spring, I came out of my depression (in more ways than one), and learned the exhilarating joy of not fearing the next day. I have Bjork, and “Alarm Call” to thank (at least partially) for that.

An appropriate beginning, I think.