I may or may not be late to this party, but ever since I saw this video last week I’ve become obsessed with Karin Driejer Andersson:
How come writers don’t do shit like this?
Is it because pop music and performance art is all about getting as far away from being human as possible and writing is about getting to the core of being human? Is it because writers are trying to stimulate your brains and not your eyes?
Maybe that’s not true though, the stuff about performance artists moving away from being human. I see Driejer Andersson going so other-worldly that she circles back around, getting closer to a more primitive and spiritual part of being a human.
Nevertheless, what’s her counterpart in the writing world? Only person I can think of is JT LeRoy. Or possibly Tim Jones-Yelvington.
Favorite tracks:
…and this (dicks won’t let me embed).
Oh whoa, I was about to say, “Hey, I do kinda try to do this,” and then BANG, my name.
Seriously though, your linking of that photo just made my day a little… I was feeling a tiny bit down (not too down, just a tiny bit) over what I assume is Annalemma’s exclusion from a certain set of announcements that’s been going around this morning.
Also, Karin Driejer Andersson is def. awesome, I recommend her records as both The Knife and Fever Ray. Not sure anybody has worked the vocoder (or whatever voice-distortion equipment she uses) so beautifully since Laurie Anderson.
Haha, I was wondering when this one would show on your radar. Glad I could put you in good company.
I came late to the Fever Ray–Karin Driejer Andersson party myself, after growing completely obsessed with her music and videos last month. I like that you connected her music to writing, as that was something I tried to work through in a blog post in December. I became intrigued with the idea that the Fever Ray videos in particular (which of course are almost inextricable from the songs themself–but do exist too as their own entities) capture a sort of “congested subtext” that I would kill to be able to to do as a writer. “When I Grow Up” is a particularly vivid example of that underlying bubbling subtext that all interesting characters should have.
I totally agree about the subtext in the videos. She (or whomever is directing them) is totally nailing it. Confusing and ridiculous on the surface, maybe even a little bit scary. But get past the spectacle of it and there’s something really compelling lying beneath: an animalistic girl summoning some sort of water demon from the diving board of her pool while her button down father watches, perhaps seeing her power for the first time. Or an androgynous pop singer seductively, suggestively casting a spell on a crowd of football fans. It’d be interesting to try and apply this idea to a story.