Deconstructing Oceania
The following was a test paper I composed recently, which was an experiment in deconstructive sociological analysis. I decided to try something simple before attempting the larger end-of-term project required for my Methods class at university. I decided to analyze, or deconstruct the song Oceania by Björk. Enjoy.
Deconstructing Oceania
Richard Birch
Research Methods and Data Analysis STAS2127
March 2005
This work Copyright (C) 2005 Richard Birch
Oceania (lyric)
(Music composed by Björk Guðmundsdóttir, Lyrics composed by Sjón, Performed, Produced, and Recorded by Björk)
One breath away from Mother Oceania your nimble feet make prints in my sand. You have done good for yourselves since you left my wet embrace and crawled ashore. Every boy is a snake is a lily every pearl is a lynx is a girl. Sweet like harmony made into flesh. You dance by my side, children sublime. You show me continents- I see the islands; you count the centuries- I blink my eyes. Hawks and sparrows race in my waters; stingrays are floating across the sky. Little ones- my sons and my daughters your sweat is salty - I am why I am why I am why your sweat is salty - I am why I am why I am why
(Guðmundsdóttir, B. & Sjón, 2004)
In response to the exactness of life, the sands and waters of human animalistic existence, creative, insurmountable extremities are of the contextual implicitness of the lyrical text. “One breath” in its exactness – one blowing of life, ‘the breath of life’, the creative forces used to harness positive energy from oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and all elemental intricacies of breathing life into the everyday problematic. There is mastery in motherhood as implied in the lyric. There is female mastery in creation. It is mastery in effecting all elements to reorganize and integrate into physical life. It is from her breathing where she – the mother – the creator of the human animal – from which she gives birth and transports human existence to its clumsy beginnings. Clearly there may be an obsession with breath in this text. An obsession with all that is life giving. “One breath from Mother Oceania” is all there is in the world, all there is outside the womb. From the womb of Mother Nature all else must return and fall back onto itself for all goes back to nature, back to the first breath. “Your nimble feet make prints in my sands”, walking alone, with agency, but still grasped in the obsessiveness of mother’s breath and always linked to her in every step. The sands are her sands and thus her skin on which her children are cradled to, still sucking on her breast of connective powers and female creativity. The sands are what give us stability, but nevertheless, the sands connect us to Oceania. Oceania has water and sand dishevelled around her. Where we walk is the demarcation point on which Oceania’s breath and her children will always connect. It is on these sands from where the authors of this text suggest where social reality meets is death.
But there is consistency in this connectivity that can never be undone. Or can it be undone? She knows we have tried at times to undo our connection. “You have done good for yourselves since you left my wet embrace and crawled ashore” – she exclaims upon her awakening to see us, her human children. In all of our complexities, nuanced progression, and evolution she sees our attempt to break free from her sands. This is where the author shows humour in the text. One can arguably picture Oceania laughing lightly at us, as if to say – “Oh how cute and silly my children are – you think you want to leave the nest, but none of you are ready for such adventure.”
The industrialization of her sands, her waters, her breath, her energy, and her elemental generosity does not go unnoticed in her waking. She is a reminder that in her generosity there is a dualism to how she herself views texts in the world on which she is included in. “You show me continents - I see islands, you count the centuries - I blink my eyes.” She embodies the reality / fiction duality of her nature. Oceania approaches her mastery in a dialectical way in this quotation. This is her commentary and thus the author’s commentary on the social reality and social fictions of existence. Her criticism is of how regionalist ideals have marginalized our view of ourselves. We have departed from the mastery of Oceania’s organic translucent connectivity and have removed ourselves from breath. We make our existence as problematic as life can be. There is sadness to Oceania’s realization that we have constructed the notion of continentalism and regional entities. All we have are islands, that is all there is in all social construction, yet lyrically it is clear she is critical of our building up of islands to things more than what their own mastery can ever maintain. As we are all of the islands as we are also of her waters. We are also texts living, stumbling, growing, fucking, and dying on the islands, just as if we would if we were still in her oceans. We can be punished. Our punishment is that we are left to eat ourselves. Societal cannibalism – this is action equal to postmodern self-degradation and the erosion from within. Oceania – THE VAGINA DENTATA of which we will eventually return to on a wave of postmodern so-called progression we triumphantly claim to be all and omnipotent.
In our rationalistic ways she is critical of how we have exchanged her cool sands as demarcation for the delineation of socially stratified power. Social fiction directs to the notion that we are never more than what we are. Yet we always try to become more that what is socially real and in doing so we become fictitious in ourselves. That is the wisdom of Oceania. That is why we will always have her to answer to when we engage in war. That is why we will always answer to her when we create inequity in social milieu. She will always be there to pull us under her tide whenever the evolutionary narcotic of post-industrial objectivity shows its presence, and more so when we show our desire for it. The text shows criticism of how we regionalize our individual identities in social reality, thus constructing the notion that we embody that, which is choice, problematically unreal, built on the template of inequity and subordination and the need to discount what is connective to the mother of the social. The breakdown of individual phenomenological existence is sliced by the barriers dropped down akin to a knife in the constituted realm of gender. Oceania remarks on how we have created such a discourse of our bodies, our bodies of which she has never allowed agency to be provided. “Every boy is a snake is a lily every pearl is a lynx is a girl.” We were never allowed to create policies based on the controlling beliefs and ideologies of our bodies in her waters. It has never been written in her sands that gender differential was ever to be a phenomenon we should ever experience. Yet we do. It is a difficult aspect of our existence, of our humanity, which she does not understand, nor care for. Gendercentrism is outside the sands.
Nor is internationalism. The ‘islands’ of which she flows, are to her nothing more than dry human skin, fragmented and cracked by the lack of that which ties us to Oceania. “Little ones - my sons and my daughters your sweat is salty - I am why”. Our sweat, our liquidity, our fluidness, and all waters constantly tie us to Oceania. Her aim is to ultimately remind us of this. We are the “hawks and sparrows” racing in her waters, as well as the “stingrays” floating across her skies. That is all we are and will ever be to her. Yet we have become socially fragmented. In this quote she is commenting on the fragmentation of humanity into that which is cracked apart by the borders on our islands, on our continents, on our skins. In reality there are no islands or no borders, just as there are no distinctions between hawks, sparrows or stingrays. All are systemically diverse and homogenous at the same time. All creatures are the same to her as well as intrinsically unique to each other. All to her are one in the same held together by the same sweat that excretes from everyone’s pours, the same residue from Oceania’s salty waters.
That is all she sees. She pays no attention to the socially constructed notion of the nation or of the state, of race, of ethnicity, of gender or even of the embodied self. These are of no real purpose or substance, but are fabrications cultivated in our own discontinuity to her waters. All exists are islands, her human children and the islands. To her that is all there needs to be.
References;
Guðmundsdóttir, B. & Sjón (2004). Oceania. On Medúlla [Record]. London: Welhart Ltd./One Little Indian Ltd./Universal Music
Deconstructing Oceania
Richard Birch
Research Methods and Data Analysis STAS2127
March 2005
This work Copyright (C) 2005 Richard Birch
Oceania (lyric)
(Music composed by Björk Guðmundsdóttir, Lyrics composed by Sjón, Performed, Produced, and Recorded by Björk)
One breath away from Mother Oceania your nimble feet make prints in my sand. You have done good for yourselves since you left my wet embrace and crawled ashore. Every boy is a snake is a lily every pearl is a lynx is a girl. Sweet like harmony made into flesh. You dance by my side, children sublime. You show me continents- I see the islands; you count the centuries- I blink my eyes. Hawks and sparrows race in my waters; stingrays are floating across the sky. Little ones- my sons and my daughters your sweat is salty - I am why I am why I am why your sweat is salty - I am why I am why I am why
(Guðmundsdóttir, B. & Sjón, 2004)
In response to the exactness of life, the sands and waters of human animalistic existence, creative, insurmountable extremities are of the contextual implicitness of the lyrical text. “One breath” in its exactness – one blowing of life, ‘the breath of life’, the creative forces used to harness positive energy from oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and all elemental intricacies of breathing life into the everyday problematic. There is mastery in motherhood as implied in the lyric. There is female mastery in creation. It is mastery in effecting all elements to reorganize and integrate into physical life. It is from her breathing where she – the mother – the creator of the human animal – from which she gives birth and transports human existence to its clumsy beginnings. Clearly there may be an obsession with breath in this text. An obsession with all that is life giving. “One breath from Mother Oceania” is all there is in the world, all there is outside the womb. From the womb of Mother Nature all else must return and fall back onto itself for all goes back to nature, back to the first breath. “Your nimble feet make prints in my sands”, walking alone, with agency, but still grasped in the obsessiveness of mother’s breath and always linked to her in every step. The sands are her sands and thus her skin on which her children are cradled to, still sucking on her breast of connective powers and female creativity. The sands are what give us stability, but nevertheless, the sands connect us to Oceania. Oceania has water and sand dishevelled around her. Where we walk is the demarcation point on which Oceania’s breath and her children will always connect. It is on these sands from where the authors of this text suggest where social reality meets is death.
But there is consistency in this connectivity that can never be undone. Or can it be undone? She knows we have tried at times to undo our connection. “You have done good for yourselves since you left my wet embrace and crawled ashore” – she exclaims upon her awakening to see us, her human children. In all of our complexities, nuanced progression, and evolution she sees our attempt to break free from her sands. This is where the author shows humour in the text. One can arguably picture Oceania laughing lightly at us, as if to say – “Oh how cute and silly my children are – you think you want to leave the nest, but none of you are ready for such adventure.”
The industrialization of her sands, her waters, her breath, her energy, and her elemental generosity does not go unnoticed in her waking. She is a reminder that in her generosity there is a dualism to how she herself views texts in the world on which she is included in. “You show me continents - I see islands, you count the centuries - I blink my eyes.” She embodies the reality / fiction duality of her nature. Oceania approaches her mastery in a dialectical way in this quotation. This is her commentary and thus the author’s commentary on the social reality and social fictions of existence. Her criticism is of how regionalist ideals have marginalized our view of ourselves. We have departed from the mastery of Oceania’s organic translucent connectivity and have removed ourselves from breath. We make our existence as problematic as life can be. There is sadness to Oceania’s realization that we have constructed the notion of continentalism and regional entities. All we have are islands, that is all there is in all social construction, yet lyrically it is clear she is critical of our building up of islands to things more than what their own mastery can ever maintain. As we are all of the islands as we are also of her waters. We are also texts living, stumbling, growing, fucking, and dying on the islands, just as if we would if we were still in her oceans. We can be punished. Our punishment is that we are left to eat ourselves. Societal cannibalism – this is action equal to postmodern self-degradation and the erosion from within. Oceania – THE VAGINA DENTATA of which we will eventually return to on a wave of postmodern so-called progression we triumphantly claim to be all and omnipotent.
In our rationalistic ways she is critical of how we have exchanged her cool sands as demarcation for the delineation of socially stratified power. Social fiction directs to the notion that we are never more than what we are. Yet we always try to become more that what is socially real and in doing so we become fictitious in ourselves. That is the wisdom of Oceania. That is why we will always have her to answer to when we engage in war. That is why we will always answer to her when we create inequity in social milieu. She will always be there to pull us under her tide whenever the evolutionary narcotic of post-industrial objectivity shows its presence, and more so when we show our desire for it. The text shows criticism of how we regionalize our individual identities in social reality, thus constructing the notion that we embody that, which is choice, problematically unreal, built on the template of inequity and subordination and the need to discount what is connective to the mother of the social. The breakdown of individual phenomenological existence is sliced by the barriers dropped down akin to a knife in the constituted realm of gender. Oceania remarks on how we have created such a discourse of our bodies, our bodies of which she has never allowed agency to be provided. “Every boy is a snake is a lily every pearl is a lynx is a girl.” We were never allowed to create policies based on the controlling beliefs and ideologies of our bodies in her waters. It has never been written in her sands that gender differential was ever to be a phenomenon we should ever experience. Yet we do. It is a difficult aspect of our existence, of our humanity, which she does not understand, nor care for. Gendercentrism is outside the sands.
Nor is internationalism. The ‘islands’ of which she flows, are to her nothing more than dry human skin, fragmented and cracked by the lack of that which ties us to Oceania. “Little ones - my sons and my daughters your sweat is salty - I am why”. Our sweat, our liquidity, our fluidness, and all waters constantly tie us to Oceania. Her aim is to ultimately remind us of this. We are the “hawks and sparrows” racing in her waters, as well as the “stingrays” floating across her skies. That is all we are and will ever be to her. Yet we have become socially fragmented. In this quote she is commenting on the fragmentation of humanity into that which is cracked apart by the borders on our islands, on our continents, on our skins. In reality there are no islands or no borders, just as there are no distinctions between hawks, sparrows or stingrays. All are systemically diverse and homogenous at the same time. All creatures are the same to her as well as intrinsically unique to each other. All to her are one in the same held together by the same sweat that excretes from everyone’s pours, the same residue from Oceania’s salty waters.
That is all she sees. She pays no attention to the socially constructed notion of the nation or of the state, of race, of ethnicity, of gender or even of the embodied self. These are of no real purpose or substance, but are fabrications cultivated in our own discontinuity to her waters. All exists are islands, her human children and the islands. To her that is all there needs to be.
References;
Guðmundsdóttir, B. & Sjón (2004). Oceania. On Medúlla [Record]. London: Welhart Ltd./One Little Indian Ltd./Universal Music
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