All Is Full of Love

I never really understood this song, even though I knew Bjork for what felt like most of my life. And then recently, I fell for this guy (who, funny enough, liked Bjork as much as I did). And one day we were sitting down listening to music and this song starts playing, and he's singing along and I'm sitting there... My heart is paralyzed... And I tell him like, a week later that I like him. And he didn't like me the same way. But we're friends, you know, whatever.

And this song just bothered me after that whole thing. I totally hated it. And then I realized what it means. Some of us spend so much time focused on a love that will never happen. It's like staring at a single flower in a meadow. You kinda block yourself. You're so preoccupied with someone that you don't realize that love is all around you. Maybe not from where you wanted it to be, but it's there. Maybe you haven't found it yet, but it's there. Anyway, that's what I keep telling myself. :D Haha~ But I still like that guy.

Oh well. Maybe I'll learn sooner or later.

I've been recently depressed and one of the things that helped me get through was this song. To me it's simply about waking up to all of the beauty and the love in the world, nothing else. I just feel so alive when I listen to it. =)

I remember listening to this song on my MP3 player in about 1999 at Southampton Central train station (that's in the south of England). I was at university there, and I was waiting on the platform for my train to come home.

I'd been fixated on this girl, puppy love type stuff, but it mean's a lot when you're 18, and this was the end of another semester where I hadn't had the nerve to tell her how much I liked her, and I was feeling lowdown and miserable, in that glorious way you do when you're eighteen. This song came on at the end of the album, and it wasn't the first time I'd heard it, but it was the first time I properly listened to the lyrics, and it was as if Bjork was sitting inside my head, singing directly to me. I started to cry. 'You'll be given love, you'll be taken care of'. 'Maybe not from the sources You have poured yours Maybe not from the directions You are staring at.

It meant so much to my situation, and made me feel so much better, to just 'twist your head around' (I always thought it was 'trust') - 'it's all around you,

A beautiful song, that's my little story about it. I never did receive love from the girl I was staring at, but ten years later I'm married to the love of my life, and with three gorgeous kids, so I guess ol' Bjork was right!

To me, this song illustrates the principle in Dao De Jing known as "wu wei" or "empty action", "nonaction". between the extremely simplistic chord progressions and the seemingly straightforward lyrics, "All Is Full Of Love" should be nothing special. But it IS—it is because everyone who listens to it is able to internalize the meaning of the song and see themselves reflected in it. To some, that means that, quite literally, love is everywhere and the world is a beautiful place. To others, it seems, that this is a juxtaposition of incongruities: "If love is everywhere, why aren't we feeling it?" To them, this song is delicately cynical.

If that were not enough, the one thing that actually does seem to color this song—the increasing passion in Björk's own voice as the song reaches its crescendo—evokes pure passion itself, but refrains from imposing specific imagery or past experiences of the artist herself upon the mind of the listener. The result: we feel passion, and we are allowed to make it our own.

That's the true beauty of "All Is Full Of Love" . . . Björk managed to capture the entire range of human experience through subtle and fragile minimalism.

"That song's from a moment when I'd had a pretty rough winter and then it was a spring morning and I walked outside and the birds were singing: Spring is here! I wrote the song and recorded in half a day. It just clicked - you know: you're being too stubborn, don't be so silly, there is love everywhere. The feeling, the emotion of the song was like completely melting and loving everything and feeling like everything loved you, after a long time of not having that. The song, in essence, is actually about believing in love. Love isn't just about two persons, it's everywhere around you. Even if you're not getting love from Person A, it doesn't mean there's not love there. Obviously, it's taking the piss too - it's the most sugary song ever. 'All Is Full Of Love' was written after the rest of Homogenic, which I'd wanted to be an aggressive, macho album. In Icelandic mythology, you have this saga where the Gods get aggressive and the world explodes and everything dies and then the sun comes up and everything starts all over again. It's the last track on Homogenic after 'Pluto' which stands for death. 'All Is Full Of Love' is like the birds coming out after a thunderstorm. In a way, in my head, 'All Is Full Of Love' is the first song on Vespertine."

• Bjork

  "I guess waking up after having been in Spain for six months in the mountains...with few people. It was kind of solitary. And it was April, and I had to walk in the morning...around the mountains. And spring just kicked in. It was definitely nature-inspired. On a more personal level. It's about when you have been too stubborn about giving love to one particular direction... you expect it back ...like it's a bank or something. And kind of realizing that it's up to you what you give, but it's not up to you what you are given and where from." -Bjork.com webchat, 22 june 2000

Agnamaracs: It's gibberish. Bjork makes up her own words quite often in her songs. In fact, the song "Amphibian" is nothing but gibberish.

this song is so good. one of my favorite bjork songs. it makes me want to hug someone.

Wow... I have not listened to much of Bjork's music, but these lyrics are amazing. I think what she is trying to say, that on a metaphysical level- love is all around us, it is the very essence of all creation, so everything contains light and love. All physical matter, in its molecular density, contains seeds of love, the white light quintessence of the universe. We look for love in relationships, the physical world... all very superficial places. But the main place we find love, is in spiritual enlightenment, and the realization that we are all pieces of God, all interconnected. This is not strictly a religious belief... but more new-age(d), metaphysical.

To twist the head around would be an act of magic, a supernatural feat. Prehaps there are supernatural forces at work when we are considering the divine nature of true love. something that is not of this world, but whose origins lie in other (more enlightened) dimensions.

i always thought this song was about a girl who loved someone who didnt love them back. and bjork is just saying that she'll find love eventualy...but "maybe not from the sources you have poured yours"...meaning that the one she poured all of her love into may not return it. but eventually...someone else will.

To me, the song's meaning seem simple: there people to fall in love with everywhere around you, but it is important that you aren't so narrowminded about where to find it. You musn't close yourself off to the onslaught of different kinds of love that are continually coming your way.

About the video,

to me it demonstrates that all is full of love, even the coldest most calculating thing we can think of... machines...