BJÖRK in conversation with OCEAN VUONG
In celebration of Björk’s new album Fossora, the tenth of her era-defining career, she talks to writer Ocean Vuong about that artistic process, mothering, grief and self-preservation.
BJÖRK
Ocean, I read your wonderful book about your mother, Time Is a Mother. It’s so mind-blowing. I was crying over it.
OCEAN VUONG
Oh, thank you so much. I’ve been really enjoying immersing myself in your new album, Fossora. It’s also a pleasure to talk to you again after our serendipitous meeting in New York in 2019. I’ll never forget it – it was this 90F day in October. My mother was sick and it was one month before she passed and you were so generous with me – so mothering. What I realised with your music – and this album especially – is that we all have a mother, but we also have people, friends, family who mother us. Mothering is also an act without gender as well as a biological reality – it’s both. When we met, you had just lost your own mother. It was wonderful to have two artists see each other so clearly, so I just want to thank you again for that.
B Thank you. Did you know that I was in Mexico City two years ago and I listened to the audiobook of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I had food poisoning and I was stuck in this beautiful house, delirious among all these cacti and had you reading your book to me. So now I always connect the story of your mother in Vietnam with …
ov Food poisoning. [Laughter.]
B It’s all in a beautiful mix for me, the cacti inside the Vietnam jungle – thank you for holding my hand through that. It gave the experience a gorgeous purpose.
ov I finished that book, coincidentally, in The Pearl in Iceland, in Reykjavik. And you told me that was where your mother used to go to have meat soup.
B Yes, she always had a macchiato and Icelandic meat soup. We all went there for her wake and had macchiato and meat soup in her honour.
OV Oh, we should do that someday. I’m a vegetarian but in your mother’s memory I will eat the meat soup with you. I remember I got a little Airbnb in Reykjavik with noisy neighbours. I said, “I need to go somewhere I can’t escape. I’m going to go to that Pearl thing. I don’t know what it is, but it looks like I can trap myself in there and finish this book.” So I walked from downtown up to The Pearl. And I went all the way up to the cafe and I sat there for hours, and it worked, so there’s some good energy there.
B Yes, you get the 360-degree view, you see all the mountain range and you’re really connected with the weather, whatever the weather. It’s a good spot.
OV The mother haunts this new album in a very beautiful way. And there’s a lot of her and you, there’s a direct address, which I really relate to. And in one of the songs, you say, “I am her hope-keeper.” It’s such an incredible line. It just sums up everything that I think, at my best, I hope to do with my own mother. Can you talk about what that line means to you? It’s such an incredible act of agency.
Well, we just filmed the video for Ancestress
