K Recommends: “Innocence is Kinky” by Jenny Hval
I really like this song so here we go. Much of this is likely NSFW. The video and lyrics have some sexuality elements that may be perceived as inappropriate. But this is also why I absolutely crave this song’s points of view.
Listening to this track makes me feel like I am sitting with my jaw dropped and one shoe dangling from one toe just like my first encounter with it. I was on edge, verging on something beyond music. The video emphasizes certain sensual aspects of the lyrics. It challenges a viewer/listener to experience the human body in raw forms.
Visually we see one person’s body in nature, inside, clean, dirty, unshaven, shaving, intimate, exercising, sexual, needing, alluring, hesitant. We are challenged to discover what is sexy, distasteful, or fascinating about the body in varied contexts. Beauty and ugliness aren’t necessarily what we might typically perceive.
The video and song made me thrilled about freedom of bodily expression and how — as just one example — clothes can be cute, comfortable, but also show off cellulite or smeared makeup. As the actress in the video runs, she runs to OR from something; this is more than exercise. In another scene, she stares at the camera and smacks her bubblegum lips for more than sexual attention. She is all the forms her humanness allows her. She is in a dress in dingy shoes, a bathtub, a creek, touched, grasping earth…
The main phrase for me in this seductive, and adventurous song is: “like sex without the body.” We interact with ourselves and our surroundings in ways that defy obvious, spelled-out roles and connections. We can become intimate without flirtatious glances just as much as with them. We can have fantasies, explore, fall, fail, stand… we find throughout life that we have unique interests and relationships with our bodies as much as we do with others.
It’s an exciting vocal and execution of certain words that fumble strikingly through moments of finding ourselves, of trial and error, of living and learning.
https://vimeo.com/69222038(Song recommendation by K Weber)