"Ancestress" lyrics

"Ancestress"
(feat. Sindri Eldon)

My skull, it is my cathedral
Where this matrimort takes place
When I was a girl she sang for me
In falsetto lullabies with sincerity
I thank her for her integrity

My ancestress' clock is ticking
Her once vibrant rebellion is fading
I am her hope keeper
Assure hope is there
At at all times

My ancestress has left all manners
Her pulsating skin rebelling
The doctors she despised
Placed a pacemaker inside her

When you're out of time
Oh, how you look back changes
Did you punish us for leaving?
Are you sure we hurt you?
Was it just not "living"?

She had idiosyncratic sense of rhythm
Dyslexia, the ultimate freeform
She invents words and adds syllables
Hand-writing, language all her own

I don't have that story in my mouth
When you die, you bring with you what you've given

The machine of her breathed all night
While she rested
Revealed her resilience
And then it, it didn't

You see with your own eyes
But hear with your mother's
There's fear of being absorbed
By the other

By now, we share the same flesh
As much as I tried to escape it
This is no mediocre debris
My ancestress this is

The odour of our final parting
Those have been
The perfumes of separation for centuries
The perfumes of separation for centuries
Ancestress

Nature wrote this psalm
It expands this realm
Translucent skin let go of
A cold palm embalmed


"Ancestress" is dedicated to Björk's mother who died in 2018. Björk explained Uncut Magazine in September of 2022, "Having avoided funerals for 30 years, I had to think about it critically. My subconscious went to work and 'Ancestress' come out. It looks like a very simple lyric. But every single word in it was like I had given birth to an ostrich egg, because it had to be right. It couldn't be too sad, but it couldn't be too happy. It couldn't be sensational or melodramatic. It still had to have her severity or gravity."
Sharing a video snippet of this song on Instagram on the 22nd of September, 2022, Björk revealed, "This song is a letter to my mother, her story seen from my point of view. It is written in chronological order, the first verse is my childhood and so on." Björk's son is featured on the backing vocals on the track. She commented on it, "I am very grateful to my son, Sindri Eldon, to arrange and sing vocals in the choruses as he has a sublime voice and was very close to her."
album: "Fossora" (2022)
Björk - Fossora album cover
Mycelia
(Instrumental)
Trölla-Gabba
(Instrumental)
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