What Tricky Learned From Bjork: Let Weird Win

March 27, 2024

The relationship was bad. In the way celebrity-of-the-moment relationships can be. Tricky said it wasn’t because of Bjork, because, it was definitely all because of him. It took him a while to come around to it. It took him a while to come around to the advice she gave him too. It was advice he’d love to thank her for in person, but since he couldn’t do that, he’d have to do his best in the form of a song. 

Sometimes you have to learn a lesson from a teacher. 

Sometimes you have to learn a lesson from yourself. 

Sometimes you have to learn a lesson about yourself after being shown a new perspective approach from a teacher. Notice this one isn’t a learned lesson in the form of an answer. This one’s a learned lesson in an approach, in a way to ask a question. 

I think that’s as true about therapy as I think it’s true about understanding school. 

Or, probably parenting, middle school music lessons, and friendship too. 

Sometimes you have to learn, and there are layers to how the lessons and questions show up. 

In a 180 Facts interview, Tricky spends a minute framing how he’d made his relationship with Bjork a bad relationship for her. But, she said something he couldn’t understand and couldn’t forget. It was a perspective reframe that all the paths to fame could never teach him to ask:

I learned a lot from Bjork…She said to me once, “Never learn to sing. Never take a singing lesson.” And I said why? She goes, “Because, you’ve got weird melodies, and you write weird melodies for your songs, and if you learn – it will change it.” And she always used to say that to me. And she knew me better than I knew myself. 

It may not occur to you how wonderfully weird you are. 

Hmm. 

It may not occur to you how little you actually need a teacher to nurture your weirdness. 

Even when the potentials above seem to be calling you, inviting to teach you how to reach them, and to show you their ways.

You might deliberately need to refuse to be taught.  

Which might require a different sort of teacher to help you frame yourself. 

Not in a limiting way, in a boundary way. 

Between yourself and all the possibility. 

From a person who understands how to do it their way, and that it’s ok. 

He didn’t really listen. He didn’t really get it, at the time at least. Life is tricky (puns intended and unintended). 

Tricky’s indirect thank you to Bjork is in the form of the song, “Valentine.” It’s got a dose of Chet Baker’s “My Funny Valentine” in it, which he says Bjork first played for him. Kind of amazing that a song about loving someone else’s peculiarities in a way you know they can’t appreciate it themselves is the vessel here. 

Kind of amazing, kind of perfect. 

Here’s the interview and the song. 

Stay weird. 

Take your teachers advice accordingly. It’s ok if there’s no lesson and only questions. Sometimes, it’s even better. 

You’ll figure it out eventually too.