Heroes Not Zombies

“This relentless restlessness liberates me,” Bjork sings in “Wanderlust,” which she calls the album’s manifesto. “I feel at home whenever the unknown surrounds me.”

These lines leapt out at me as I read this interview with Bjork in today’s International Herald and Tribune (no, I don’t read this paper every day but I’m in Tokyo this week and the hotel pops a copy under my door every morning). She’s being interviewed about her new album, Volta.

What strikes me are two statements here. “This relentless restlessness liberates me”. I so identify with that. I know it’s good to rest and it’s good to be still at times but I have this passion for life and an insatiable curiosity and wonder about the world. I know what that relentless restlessness feels like – and it IS liberating! We hear a lot about balance these days but we grow by pushing at the edge of things, accepting challenges, moving out of our comfort zones. The second statement is a really interesting one about creativity – “I feel at home whenever the unknown surrounds me.” Now, a lot of people are scared these days, and they are particularly afraid of the unknown. There’s an incredible drive for certainty and control in our society today. But creativity doesn’t thrive in controlled conditions. The biological concept of emergence is about the unexpected happening – the unknown and unknowable – until it happens – its the Black Swan.

Creativity is a basic human condition. It comes out of exploring, out of a movement from the known to the unknown.