Personally, I think a lot of these animal rights causes smell a bit. Of course people should treat animals with respect. They shouldn’t be used to test cosmetics or used to make music videos. But I don’t get the difference between eating some carrots and eating a rabbit. How much difference is there between cutting down trees to make a book and cooking up a lamb chop ?
Don’t misunderstand - I think groups like Greenpeace have done many brilliant things. But there are also problems with Greenpeace. When the orginization began, many of its members were from Germany. For them to march into Greenland and tell the indigenous people to stop killing seals is completly ridiculous.
What right have these people, from big industrial cities like Frankfurt, which contribute a lot of pollution, to tell people who live in harmony with nature not to eat seals ? What are they supposed to eat ? Snow ?
It’s just so beautiful that 100,000 people would die in an earthquake. It’s something, maybe because I’m distant, but I wouldn’t mind dying in an earthquake, it’s just so ...
I would like to be eaten by tigers. Something like that...
A few days before flying into cyclone-torn Brisbane, she’d been in Los Angeles - just in time for the big quake.
It was brilliant, she says, jumping up from her seat.
I always thought it would be a really nervous thing ! But it was this really deep, big bass in your guts. I thought : `Yes ! This is what I’ve wanted to feel ever since I was born !’ It’s funny, it’s like your body is thirsty for it and it satisfies you in a strange way.
Björk is in L.A. to play a one-off concert. The last time she was here the earthquake struck. She was staying at the Sunset Marquis Hotel. When the quake started she rode her bed like a bumper car around the room, screaming, "Yes ! Yes !" It was such a great feeling. The quake made such a wonderful noise.
It was the deepest bass sound. It was like you’ve waited for this all your life.
The only sour note came when she went outside afterward. The Black Crowes were there with an acoustic guitar, singing "It’s the End of the World as We Know It."
How did you become involved with the Náttúra Campaign ? What is the organization’s mission ?
I kind of founded it. In a way, it’s just me and four other people who share a Google group. [laughs] The other people include Andri [Snaer Magnason], who has written this book [Dreamland : A Self-Help Manual to a Frightened Nation] and Magga Vilhjálms, who has been my friend since I was 11. She’s an actress, and she organized a concert called Hætta !, which means "stop," two years ago.
When I did the gig in the summer [the Náttúra concert] with Sigur Rós and 30,000 people came— which is 10% of the [population of Iceland]— we wanted to raise awareness for the environment. We did that and it was amazing. Then for six weeks, I was in hotel rooms and dressing rooms thinking fuck, that’s not going to do shit. I’m gonna have to have one more whack at it, and try to be functionalist and not just ideological. As much as I don’t want to get my hands dirty— I would rather just do music— I have to follow this up, or it was totally pointless.
