Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(21)

Ge

As

Br

Kr

Rb

Sr

Y

Z

When I ask, he names each of them, following my finger as I go down the list. He interrupts himself at one point: “They like to be remembered and recited like this.”

“They?”

O nods.

He could not look more delighted, and it’s not because of the alcohol.

Listed separately, under the heading, “No or infinitesimal,” are the exceptions. He goes on to explain the difference between organic and nonorganic chemistry. I do not—and expect I never will—understand half of what he is saying.

_____________________

8-28-12:

Bj?rk invited us to her home in Reykjavik for lunch—a remarkable afternoon; O said it best: “Everything was unexpected.”

The two met a couple of years ago when Bj?rk asked Oliver to appear in a BBC documentary about music, but they had never spent time together socially. And in fact, O knew very little about her work up until shortly before we made this trip. I got a DVD compilation of her music videos and conducted a crash course in Bj?rk for him. O sat on the edge of his bed, inches from the TV screen, as he needs to in order to hear properly, and watched without stirring, mesmerized especially by the visuals, for ninety minutes. Because of his face-blindness, which makes it difficult for O to recognize people not only on the street but also in movies and on TV, he’d sometimes ask, “Is that Bj?rk?” Or, “Which one is Bj?rk?” A swan dress one minute, robotic gear the next, her constant changing of costumes and hairstyles utterly confounded him, but he was deeply impressed by her artistry.

We pulled into the driveway at the back of Bj?rk’s home and I saw her through the kitchen window. She looked to be in the middle of a task, concentrating. A simple hedge fenced the house. There was a child-sized table and chairs in the front yard, the setting for a tea party. We didn’t see a path, so we parted a hedge awkwardly and made our way to the front door. She answered. In my memory, she curtsied on greeting us. Of course she didn’t, but her air of modesty and respect in greeting O had that feeling. She ushered us into the dining room, where a table was set. Bj?rk introduced us to two friends: James, who’s English, and Margarit, Icelandic, both of whom had striking red hair.

Bj?rk’s hair was up, held by a barrette with blue feathers. She wore a simple tunic made from several different kinds of colored and patterned fabric; she may have made it herself. She wore white pants under the tunic and wedge sandals. Her face: unlined, no makeup, pretty; eyes the color of jade; lush, jet-black eyebrows, shaped like two feathers.

I walked into the kitchen, where she was preparing lunch. The wallpaper was a photo print of different women’s elaborately braided hair—the hair of goddesses. She was completely at ease, unpretentious; more than anything she seemed eager to be a good host—wanting to make us feel comfortable and, like a mama, get us fed. We chatted for a little bit. But I was too nervous to say what I would have liked to say—how much her music had meant to me, especially after Steve died.

Bj?rk urged us to sit and eat. The chairs were carved from tree stumps. The tablecloth was embroidered with seashells. On the table: warm, salted mixed nuts in tiny dishes. Almost immediately, she brought out a steaming pan of baked trout, a salad, and a bowl of boiled potatoes—“I like it with the skins left on,” she said, almost apologetically, “don’t you?” O and I nodded.

Conversation was lively. We talked about Iceland, about Oliver’s new book, Hallucinations; about her CD, Biophilia, and her new projects. She told us that she’d recorded Biophilia (its name inspired by Oliver’s Musicophilia) in the lighthouse I’d spotted the night before when I was chasing down the sunset. Bj?rk said she had a calendar in the kitchen with the time for the tide going in and out, so they would know when they could get to the lighthouse—and how long they would be “stuck” there while the tide was in. She laughed. “It was really, really good, because it forced me to work; I couldn’t leave if I wanted to.” She mentioned that she’d inquired about buying the lighthouse. That didn’t work out, but she thought this was for the best. “A lighthouse is for everyone.”

After eating, Bj?rk led us from the table, through a little door, and to the stairs. These were not stairs in any conventional way. Oliver—ever the naturalist—knew exactly: “Why, these are basalt stones! This looks like a stairway carved out of a wall of basalt!” Bj?rk nodded. Adding to this remarkable sight: The railing in the winding stairway was made of whale rib bones.

Bj?rk smiled and helped Oliver up. “And this”—she pointed to the shimmering lamp hanging overhead, dropping into the stairwell, “actually my daughter and I made it out of mussel shells. It wasn’t supposed to be permanent, but … we like it.”

She wandered into an upper room, and we followed. There, she showed us two custom-made instruments, a celeste and what looked like a harpsichord. Both had been modified somehow through instructions from a program on her Mac. I could tell that O was completely lost as she explained how this worked. Yet it was then, right then, that I realized how much she and O were alike—fellow geniuses, incredibly, intuitively brilliant—while being at the same time such an unlikely pair of friends.

Back downstairs, Bj?rk brought out a gooseberry pie, with berries picked from her own trees. She’d made it with her daughter the night before. “As she was the cook, of course she had to have the first piece,” she said, pointing out the missing wedge. She served it up in a nice slop—topped with fresh, plain Skyr, which has a sour bite to it—along with coffee and tea. The tea set was out of Alice in Wonderland—each cup literally half a cup, sliced in half. “I’ve learned that these are for right-handed people, these teacups,” she says, “or I learn who is left-handed by watching them try to drink from them.” She giggled.