All Is Full of Love, Which Doesn’t Mean It Doesn’t Hurt

The Chris Cunningham video for Björk’s All Is Full of Love got inside me before I had language for what it was doing—two white robotic Björks being assembled, their faces still incomplete, kissing anyway, or being kissed by the machine itself, depending on how you read it. The mechanics were explicit and tender at the same time in a way that felt genuinely new. Cunningham understood that her music operates at the frequency where the erotic and the spiritual are the same signal, and he built something that proved it visually.

The song itself is an act of difficult reassurance. You will be loved. The universe is full of it. The argument isn’t that pain doesn’t exist—it’s that love runs deeper and wider than the pain does. I’m not sure I believe that on most days. But I believe it during the three minutes and fifty-six seconds of this song, and that seems like enough of a reason to keep coming back.