#elf pee

[oderbenzinschlucken]

The Knife split up!! How sad, but I am sure there will be new stuff coming very soon. With their words:

“A handfull elf pee That’s my soul Spray it allover Fill the bowl Legs astride An axe to grind Generous actions with the speed of light Without you my life would be boring”

Last shows announced here on their page:

http://theknife.net/

[53lps]

Week 53, Day 5: A Handful of Elf Pee

“Without You My Life Would Be Boring” is one of the catchiest songs on Shaking the Habitual—its titular refrain has been on loop in my brain pretty much constantly this week, and was the only phrase I could definitely discern, Karin Deijer Andersson’s voice bending and mauling words into indefiniteness.

So, wanting to be able to sing along more, I read the lyrics. I barely got past the first verse. I mean, there’s nothing disgusting or offensive here, just strange: “A handful of elf pee/That’s my soul/Spray it all over/Fill the bowl.” What? So many questions: Elf pee? Why would anyone be holding elf pee in her hand? If the pee is a soul, and an elf is a mystical creature, does that make the soul mystical, or simply smelly and of small amount? Why would a person, save Voldemort, whose humanness we might question, want to spray her soul all over the place? And if the pee/soul is being sprayed all over, what’s filling the bowl? Why is elf pee green?

Yes, elf pee is supposedly green, I learned on the interwebs. I also learned about Nosh, a rebellious, skateboarding Keebler elf who, in a fit of intoxicated midnight cookie baking, perished in a vat full of boiling fudge and elf piss. The piss, I’m guessing, his own. Then there is the Elfshot, the name given to the act of spraying or flinging urine at that person you really really dislike.

Are elves known for spraying pee all over the place? Are they like dogs, constantly marking their territory?

The last line of the song claims that “the piss is territorial,” so maybe so, maybe the soul is territorial, maybe we want to draw boundaries around our tenderest expanses, keep those who want to enter at bay, but that border dispute also excites, territory is conceded, territory is reclaimed, we are shaken from our ruts, time dissolves into a present that is infinite and transient, elves in the garden, elves in the attic.

I pray to avoid the dreaded Elfshot. I pray my soul green enough to fill the bowl.