tankt

I have been thinking of and wanting to listen to Bjork’s Homogenic collaboration with Mark Bell for quite some time, but I didn’t have it on my Mac; it wasn’t on Abby’s Mac even though she had everything else from Bjork, and it wasn’t on our “Big Love” backup drive either. As luck would have it, I found it last night in one our last remaining stashes of cds (most are boxed up in storage — no room in our 1,000 sq ft apartment for such luxuries). I ripped it, skipped through the tracks, and immediately settled on “Alarm Call.”

As if that weren’t serendipitous enough, I popped into my favorite neighborhood samich shop this afternoon and they were playing Homogenic there too, had I lingered a bit longer I would have heard “Alarm Call” all over again.

This track just vibrates with euphoria, much like today’s events in Washington DC. But beyond the raw emotion, it shares many of the same themes that Barack Obama stressed in his first day in office: the idea that hope can defeat fear; the notion that all of us on earth are one, our differences are few, and our orientation to each other needs to reflect that in our hearts; the belief that what made this all possible is a genuine willingness to listen and learn, to rise above the patterns and practices of old, and to embrace a new way of seeing the world and ourselves with in it.

But what it really comes down to is this: “You can’t say no to hope. Can’t say no to happiness.”

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Here’s a little more of her beautiful lyrics:

I have walked this earth
And watched people

It doesn’t scare me at all

I can be sincere
And say I like them

It doesn’t scare me at all

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

I want to go on a mountain-top
With a radio and good batteries
And play a joyous tune and
Free the human race
From suffering

It doesn’t scare me at all

I’m no fucking buddhist
But this is enlightenment

It’s a fitting end to such a spectacular day. But as Wendell Berry once said, the real work begins tomorrow.