Je n’ai pas de problème avec l’idée du genre, je crois que nous sommes tout à la fois féminin et masculin. Je me suis souvent sentie queer, et on dit que ma musique est queer. Dès les années 1990, je mettais en scène mes séances photo avec humour, pour éviter les clichés de l’image de la femme sexy. L’Islande est un pays froid, donc nous n’exprimons pas notre énergie érotique avec des porte-jarretelles au beau milieu des tempêtes de neige. Il nous faut trouver d’autres moyens d’exprimer notre sensualité [rires] ! J’aime l’idée que la sexualité s’exprime différemment dans le monde. Au Japon, par exemple, l’endroit le plus érotique du corps est la nuque. Les Islandais sont très sexuels, et les femmes peuvent exprimer leur désir, initier le sexe, de manière totalement égalitaire. Je n’ai jamais rejeté le masculin, seulement le patriarcat.
I just wasn’t interested in boys until a few years ago. I thought they were shit. You can’t talk to them, especially as a teenager. You could play with them in a band but as people they were so limited. You can’t get properly drunk with them, like, all-the-way drunk.
When I was 14 I thought boys were only good for being in bands with. I thought one of the most horrible things that could happen to me would be to get a boyfriend, as all my girlfriends had just lost the plot when they got one. Then I met Thor (Eldon, a budding guitarist) when I was 16 and it was love at first sight. I moved into his house the same evening.
I was born to be in love. I think it’s more important for me to love than to actually be loved. It’s such a head thing. It has to be with someone who can turn you on with your imagination and the body usually follows. When you’re a teenager you meet someone and you always have a laugh together and you want to marry him and always be with him. Then you meet another person and you’ve got great sex together so you just want to marry him and love him and be with him forever. But to get all those things in one person, you have to know yourself really, really well. I’m learning. It isn’t calculated. That’s one thing love isn’t. But I want to meet someone. Who doesn’t ?
My mind is very demanding, and I get very easily bored. For me, falling in love is such a head thing. It has to be someone who can turn you on with your imagination, and the body usually follows.
And as far as love, and the falling out if it...
It all just tumbles, doesn’t it ? In one week. Even less. You end up saying, `What was it we did the last three years ? I forgot.’
I hope those weren’t your exact words.
No, I’m being cruel.
She thinks a moment, realizing that words which were supposed to be free-floating and emblematic suddenly seem horrible and specific.
She has had many boyfriends and, although in no rush to talk about it, for a year has been going out with the noted American artist Matthew Barney, who left his wife for her. I put to her something that the interviewer Lynn Barber once wrote, that falling in love is not her problem : staying in love is. She can’t settle down.
But I have my home. I have my songs. I have always had that. I think it depends what people want. If people want boyfriends or relationships for the habit thing, the routine thing, and the security, that is OK.
But what about her ? What does she want ? In Poetry, another song on Vespertine, she repeats "I love him" seven times and then promises : "I am going to keep him this time."
What I really like when you fall in love, is that it is completely out of your hands. It is like the weather, and every time it happens you just go with it. I have been with boys for many, many years and I have been with boys for a few weeks. I like it because it is out of my hands.
So the question of whether a brilliant creative person such as herself can live permanently with someone else remains unanswered ?
It is not black and white. You cannot say one thing is good and another is bad. It is like a formula and I don’t like formulas.
I had a huge red shirt and big boots - quite punky, I have to say it - and I went on a mission with this boy. We actually went to his friend’s house. It was dark and I remember thinking I wasn’t sure if that was it or not. But I thought it was ever so exciting.
Having sex would not always be so convenient.
In Iceland teenagers don’t have anywhere to go. So you just put on ski overalls and if it’s a blizzard you just drink one vodka bottle each and then you just fuck between the houses.
I feel odd asking you this, but what makes a man sexy ? I’m a bit off the map when it comes to sexiness.
[Giggles] I can find men sexy, women sexy, plants sexy, the ocean, fish. If we’re talking something physical, the back of necks. Necks on people and animals.
You must really like giraffes.
[Laughs] It’s not about length !
Well, at least when it comes to necks. So, what lady would you switch for ?
Too many. That’sa bit slippery. If you want a specific, I’d have to pick an animal. [Pauses] A panda. I’d switch for a sexy panda.
Let’s put it this way, I don’t meet a lot of people other than the people I work with. You know, it’s not like I hang out with shoe salesmen. Or gymnasts. Not in my line of work.
