Bjork's type

[Littlelostnf]

I'm thinking that while she may present as a p that Bjork is an INFJ. I think this because I feel that her Ni is very strong...such strong Ni induced lyrics.

I feel most strongly that she is definately an I (only until recently (in her late 30's/early 40's) did her interviews come close to telling you a bit about her in an outright fashion. She always seemed to have a privacy issue but she opened up in the form of her "poetry" I think that she uses her art to express herself. The way she writes allows people to take it for themselves and relate it to themselves and she is still able to express how she feels. I also think that even tho she was a punk she still was always more J in her lifestyle. It always seemed to me as if she had a need for order in chaos. The N..well that's pretty obvious.

[toonia]

Originally Posted by Littlelostnf

I'm thinking that while she may present as a p that Bjork is an INFJ. I think this because I feel that her Ni is very strong...such strong Ni induced lyrics.

I feel most strongly that she is definately an I (only until recently (in her late 30's/early 40's) did her interviews come close to telling you a bit about her in an outright fashion. She always seemed to have a privacy issue but she opened up in the form of her "poetry" I think that she uses her art to express herself. The way she writes allows people to take it for themselves and relate it to themselves and she is still able to express how she feels. I also think that even tho she was a punk she still was always more J in her lifestyle. It always seemed to me as if she had a need for order in chaos. The N..well that's pretty obvious.

How are her lyrics Ni?

I wouldn't peg her as an INFJ personally. She approaches her art almost completely without analysis. It fascinates me in that way. She expresses directly from that inner self that is unbridled and unmoderated. This also results in her being technically weak in a variety of ways. (apologies to Bjork fans, but it's true). I see her approach to art as intensely personal and emotional without any filters of analysis or perspective. That is her strength. She could possibly be an INFP, but that high level performance life-style would be too much for most true introverts. I would have guessed either ENFP or ESFP. She could be an ISFP? I hear her art as intensely Fi and Se. It is also entirely possible that she has some issues like bipolar that blurs some of these distinctions.

edit: Also, extroverts can actually be very private people. They just need the comfort of having other people around, but it doesn't imply that those people are allowed into their private selves. Actually, an extrovert can be even more resistant to letting people in because their modus operandi is to use superficial social interaction as a backdrop for their lives. Their close, private friends can be as rare as any introvert's.

Just remember that since INTJs and INFJs share a dominant Ni, they can appear somewhat similar on the surface. They share the same mental processes, but with different content and communication style. The INTJ hides feelings and communicates with Te, while the INFJ tends to hide their thoughts and communicates with Fe. The difference can be subtle at times as both have a very contained quality. Does Bjork come even close to resembling an INTJ?

[Littlelostnf]

Originally Posted by toonia

How are her lyrics Ni?

Without analysis?....I think that most people tend to take her lyrics at face value (if they can even understand them) and they personalize them into being about relationships and such. This interesting description of Ni can really be seen in so many of her lyrics.

Introverted iNtuiting involves synthesizing the seemingly paradoxical or contradictory, which takes understanding to a new level. Using this process, we can have moments when completely new, unimagined realizations come to us. A disengagement from interactions in the room occurs, followed by a sudden “Aha!” or “That’s it!” The sense of the future and the realizations that come from introverted iNtuiting have a sureness and an imperative quality that seem to demand action and help us stay focused on fulfilling our vision or dream of how things will be in the future. Using this process, we might rely on a focal device or symbolic action to predict, enlighten, or transform. We could find ourselves laying out how the future will unfold based on unseen trends and telling signs. This process can involve working out complex concepts or systems of thinking or conceiving of symbolic or novel ways to understand things that are universal. It can lead to creating transcendent experiences or solutions.

In what ways do you think she is technically weak? I am always quite amazed at just how much she puts in to her music. While it sounds chaotic it is very thought out.

I agree that is is intensely personal and emotional however she absolutely uses analysis when composing her music/lyrics.

High level performance life-style? Have you ever seen Bjork perform? Her performances are intensely personal and very low key. She usually performs in a smaller venue than most artists of her caliber. As for her life style it is very inline with an introverts way of living.

What makes you think bipolar? She is generally known to be very private (unlike an ENFP or ESFP who will generally talk their feelings out to friends) about her life and like most INFJ's I've known her rare displays of temper are quite shocking in their intensity.

I absolutely agree with you on this point as I am just that type of extrovert. I agree in my case...not in hers.

I think Bjork has absolutely communicated (thru her lyrics) with Fe. This new cd Volta is actually her most personal cd as she is really sharing her thoughts about the world and her reactions and thoughts about it. Her other cds have done the same but used Fe which makes people react to them in a personal way. It seems that most people aren't really understanding her last two cd's because she has been (in both) allowing more of herself to come thru.

[toonia]

It's not my point to insult Bjork. She is an interesting artist. She doesn't have a great deal of technical control over her voice, but it is beautiful and deeply personal nonetheless. That raw connection to the inner self is deeply important to art. Every artist has strength and weaknesses, so understand that a critique is not the same thing as dismissal. As far as the structure in her music and so forth, i haven't studied her extensively, but I do compare it from a little different perspective than most because of my profession, training, and first hand experience with it. I don't see a useful reason to get into it too much. We can keep it with what you say about it.

It's possible what you said about Ni, but that does add quite a layer to confusion since that is the dominant function for both INTJs and INFJs and if Bjork is indeed an INFJ, then there is something profoundly different in how she uses Ni than most. I think in order to synthesize the paradoxical, it requires an enormous pool of observations and analysis into how various dichotomies relate. Those "aha" moments don't actually come from nowhere, but from an enormous ocean of analysis. It also requires a letting go of self so that multiple perspectives can be embraced. It is nearly impossible to see those relationships unless you are dissolved into that sea of shifting currents. It requires that you detach and observe. In a strange way it is quite the opposite of the thinking involved with Fi, which is personal, experiential, subjective. A great deal of art combines random elements and/or the paradoxical, but i don't think most artists are INFJs. Many consider it an SP thing - especially if the combinations create a sensory effect. I get what you are saying, but if the conflicting imagery creates a primarily emotional and sensory response it is a little different than if it has relationships on multiple deeper levels. Also there is the issue of subtlety. Very dramatic, obvious paradoxes are different than the ones that play out in subtle ways. Possibly hers does. I've been reading more of it just now, and will read a few more times to look for subtle relationships with the ideas. Like I said I haven't engaged in any deep analysis of it, but perhaps it would be interesting to do that now? I guess what I am saying is that there is more than one type of paradox and use of seemingly random images in art. The heavy use of mixed metaphor and such is one example of a more sensory approach. Finding a paradox or irony that remains consistent on multiple levels for a greater duration is a stronger Ni "aha" moment. Does that make any useful sense?


It would be great for you to post some of her lyrics that especially strike you as Ni based.

[toonia]

"Violently Happy"

since i met you
this small town hasn't got room
for my big feelings

violently happy
'cause i love you

violently happy
but you're not here

violently happy
come calm me down
before i get into trouble

i tip-toe down to the shore
stand by the ocean
make it roar at me
and i roar back

violently happy
'cause i love you

violently happy
but you're not here

violently happy
overemotional

violently happy
i'll get into trouble
real soon
if you don't get here
baby

violently happy
'cause i love you

violently happy
i'm aiming too high

violently happy
it will get me into trouble
violently happy
i'm driving my car
too fast
with ecstatic music on

violently happy
i'm getting too drunk

violently happy
i'm daring people
to jump off roofs with me

only you
can calm me down
i'm aiming too high

soothe me

***************

"Big Time Sensuality"

i can sense it
something important
is about to happen
it's coming up

it takes courage to enjoy it
the hardcore and the gentle
big time sensuality

we just met
and i know i'm a bit too intimate
but something is coming up
and we're both included

it takes courage ti enjoy ut
the hardcore and the gentle
big time sensuality

i don't know my future after this weekend
and i don't want to

it takes courage to enjoy it
the hardcore and the gentle
big time sensuality

************************

[toonia]

"Earth Intruders"

We are the earth intruders
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches

Turmoil! Carnage!

Here come the earth intruders
We are the paratroopers
The beat of sharp shooters
Come straight from voodoo

With our feet thumping
With our feet marching
Grinding skeptics
Into the soil

Shower of goodness coming to
End the doubt pouring over
Shower of goodness coming to end

We are the earth intruders
We are the sharp shooters
Flock of parachuters
Necessary voodoo

I have guided my bones through some voltage
And love them still
And love them too

Metallic! Carnage! Furiocity! Feel the speed!

We are the earth intruders
We are the sharp shooters
Flock of parachuters
Necessary voodoo

There is turmoil out there
Carnage, rambling
What is to do but dig
Dig bones out of earth

Mud graves! Timber! Morbid trenches!

Here come the earth intruders
There'll be no resistance
We are the canoneerers
Necessary voodoo

And the beast
With many heads
And the arms rolling
Steamroller!

We are the earth intruders
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches

Forgive us, tribe

We are the earth intruders
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches
Marching
*********

"Dull Flame Of Desire"
(feat. Antony Hegarty)

I love your eyes, my dear
Their splendid sparkling fire

When suddenly you raise them so
To cast a swift embracing glance

Like lightning flashing in the sky
But there's a charm that is greater still

When my love's eyes are lowered
When all is fired by passion's kiss

And through the downcast lashes
I see the dull flame of desire

***************

"I See Who You Are"
(feat. Min Xiao-Fen)

I see who you are
Behind the skin
And the muscles

I see who you are, now
And when you get older later

I will see the same girl
The same soul
Lioness, fireheart
Passionate lover

And afterwards
Later this century
When you and I have become corpes

Let's celebrate now all this flesh on our bones
Let me push you up against me tightly
And enjoy every bit of you

I see who you are
*************

"Vertebrae By Vertebrae"

Up on the toe
There is a view
Up on the toe
And the spine

Straight and erect
Hungry and curious
Up on the toe
Looking forward to

The air is thinner here

She came here
To lose face
Got down on her knees
The beast is back!

On four legs
Set her clock to the moon
Raises her spine

Vertebrae by vertebrae
Up on the toe
Looking

I have been filled with steam for months, for years
Same old cloud, claustrophobic me
Let it burst like old train sounds
Make them leave me nature

Vertebrae by vertebrae by vertebrae

My arms squeeze out of my shoulders!

And the arms squeeze out of my shoulders
I curl my tail in words
I set my clock on the moon
Vertebrae by vertebrae

[x3] Please release this pressure of me

Let off some steam

******************

"Hope"

[x3] Here's my version of it, eternal whirlwind

What's the lesser of two evils:
If a suicide bomber
Made to look pregnant
Manages to kill her target
Or not?

What's the lesser of two evils?

What's the lesser of two evils:
If she kills them
Or dies in vain?

Nature has fixed no limits on our hopes

What's the lesser of two evils?

What's the lesser of two evils:
If the bomb was fake
Or if it was real?

Here's my version of it
Eternal whirlwind
I have fostered since childhood

Well I don't care
Love is all
I dare to drown
To be proven wrong

***************

"Pneumonia"

Get over the sorrow, girl
The world is always going to be made of this

You can trust in it
Unless you breathe in
Bravely

I adore how you simply surrender to high

And your lungs
They're mourning
Teepee-style

All the still-born love that could've happened
All the moments you should have embraced
All the moments you should have not locked up

Understand
So clearly
To shut yourself up
Is the hugest crime of them all
You're just crying after all
To not want them humans around
Anymore

Get over the sorrow, girl

***********************

Those are a few worth looking at more closely.

[toonia]

The poems on that last album have an especially raw, earthy tone. Many references to the physical body along with a certain questioning of morality using irony. She's an interesting one because her content and presentation of herself is very dramatic, sensual, earthy, exploring opposites. She seems to prefer images that reach out and grab. The poem titled "Hope" has the strongest INFJ feel as it explores the ironies of morality. The others may explore dichotomies, but they also revel in raw sensory images. I would never have pegged them as INFJ without a suggestion. They don't seem especially so, but I could be wrong.

Edit: one thing to keep in mind is that not every opposite or irony produces a profound or deeper meaning. Sometimes they are just jarring concepts juxatopsed to shake up the brain and senses. "Aha" moments wouldn't mean much if you just smash any old arbitrary ideas together. There's a helluva lot of that arbitrary association going on in coffee houses around the world.

[dissolved girl]

Okay, this is going to be pretty long, and a bit of a mess

Bjork seems very close to her family. She describes herself as introverted and often says how shy she is in interviews. She describes writing in her diarys as a 'private friendship' that she uses when 'everything collapses'. She says she feels she had a lot to do before she dies but also describes her life so far as 'going with the flow'. She speaks of things just happening to her unplanned a lot. She describes falling in love, as if it creeps up on her, and says each time she falls in love it's very different and they all stand for different things in her.
YouTube - Bjork Interview British CH5

From what I've read before Bjork felt she grew up very quickly and had to develop a strong maturity in her childhood. She said how she always kept a bit of herself inside as a child so in that way she still feels very child like. She seems to work very intensely on her music whilst she's developing it. Each album seems to come from a very deep part of her guided by her feelings about how it should be. It's a natural growth related to who she is.

She describes her sampling process as being a bit like a librarian, Looking for flavours, collecting and classifying. Part of her is the opposite of that, being ready to record when something happens. She generally sees how her music should be before she makes it but says how a lot happens that isn't planned. She says she likes to get people involved in her music as she likes surprises.

She describes talking, communicating through language as 'like putting an ocean through a straw', as she finds it difficult to communicate how she feels and that music does this for her like a 'warm embrace'.

Next quotes taken from:

'Maybe I'll be a feminist in my old age' | Review | The Observer

On her dress sense:'It's like music. So long as it's a form of self-expression, I'm quite into it, but not when it becomes about power status. I do try and wear stuff by unknown designers, and I make sure I pay because if nothing else I have money.'

She says that she resolutely avoids celebrity parties but one day might like to run a music school for children. '

On Britain:You are very good at skimming corruption off the top and revealing the integrity inside. In Britain things have to be pure,'.

From here:[url=http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1708479,00.html]The Emma Brockes interview: Bj

[dissolved girl]

From here:The Emma Brockes interview: Björk | | Guardian Unlimited Arts

Before her involvement with Unicef, Björk was suspicious of organised fund-raising in the same way that she disdained organised politics, or organised anything which required more people than could fit in one room.
"I'm really weird like that. I blame it on the punk background. We were so ... what's the right word for it? I guess a bad word for it would be 'holistic'. You know, this idea that you make your own poster and you glue it up and you carry your equipment. And even though it's a long time since I put a poster on the wall, I have to tell you, I have that background, and I'm still working with the same people I've been working with since I was 16. I have a feeling for the whole picture."
Björk's eccentricity is, despite its eye-rolling silliness, generally perceived as a sign of her sincerity rather than the grim "wackiness" contrived by duller musicians. At the Oscars five years ago she wore a dress, a costume really, designed by Marjan Pejoski in the shape of a swan, and left eggs all down the red carpet. She wasn't rebelling; she just liked the dress.

On emotions and "You've got happy, sad, angry, confused, and then all the 50,000 other colours that a human feels. And if one song is just about turquoise blue - that can mean a lot of things; that [can mean the way] you feel about apples, and your brother, and your wooden bed from your childhood. And you would sing about that in one song, and people might say, 'Oh, it's about her boyfriend.' But that's OK. It doesn't matter. What's important is that I capture that turquoise-blue thing. If I do my job right. I guess I look at it more like that. As kind of ... abstract".

I conclude I'm pretty certain Bjork is an Introvert, I'm also very certain she is of Feeling preference. I think she is possibly an N and a P. She seems to use metaphor a lot, and she seems to make lots of big connections. She's focused on the general feel of her music. She talks about liking surprise and how her life just seems to go with the flow. She is also seemingly quite against organisations as a whole, feeling quite suspicious of them. She seems to operate very strongly from her emotions and values which seem to be linked to family, purity, integrity, lack of corruption. There is a seriousness but also a free spirited child-like ness that just for some reason makes me think she is most likely infp. She also reminds me of Johnny Depp in the way she presents herself.

Being that I'm infp I think it's important to note that I'm probably somewhat biased...ahem

[Littlelostnf]

=toonia;37687]It's not my point to insult Bjork. She is an interesting artist. She doesn't have a great deal of technical control over her voice, but it is beautiful and deeply personal nonetheless. That raw connection to the inner self is deeply important to art. Every artist has strength and weaknesses, so understand that a critique is not the same thing as dismissal. As far as the structure in her music and so forth, i haven't studied her extensively, but I do compare it from a little different perspective than most because of my profession, training, and first hand experience with it. I don't see a useful reason to get into it too much. We can keep it with what you say about it.

Yes I really get that you were not insulting her or dismissing her. I'd actually like to hear more about what you think. If you think a pm is better we could do that.

It's possible what you said about Ni, but that does add quite a layer to confusion since that is the dominant function for both INTJs and INFJs and if Bjork is indeed an INFJ, then there is something profoundly different in how she uses Ni than most. I think in order to synthesize the paradoxical, it requires an enormous pool of observations and analysis into how various dichotomies relate. Those "aha" moments don't actually come from nowhere, but from an enormous ocean of analysis. It also requires a letting go of self so that multiple perspectives can be embraced. It is nearly impossible to see those relationships unless you are dissolved into that sea of shifting currents. It requires that you detach and observe. In a strange way it is quite the opposite of the thinking involved with Fi, which is personal, experiential, subjective. A great deal of art combines random elements and/or the paradoxical, but i don't think most artists are INFJs. Many consider it an SP thing - especially if the combinations create a sensory effect. I get what you are saying, but if the conflicting imagery creates a primarily emotional and sensory response it is a little different than if it has relationships on multiple deeper levels. Also there is the issue of subtlety. Very dramatic, obvious paradoxes are different than the ones that play out in subtle ways. Possibly hers does. I've been reading more of it just now, and will read a few more times to look for subtle relationships with the ideas. Like I said I haven't engaged in any deep analysis of it, but perhaps it would be interesting to do that now? I guess what I am saying is that there is more than one type of paradox and use of seemingly random images in art. The heavy use of mixed metaphor and such is one example of a more sensory approach. Finding a paradox or irony that remains consistent on multiple levels for a greater duration is a stronger Ni "aha" moment. Does that make any useful sense?

Yes it did and again would love to hear more of your thoughts about this.


It would be great for you to post some of her lyrics that especially strike you as Ni based. [/quote]