Our cultural sense of "permanent emergency" (as seen in pop culture)

Can we escape the never-ending election mode now that the US elections are over? I'll try, nonetheless. Exploring pop culture’s relation with alienation and belonging in an era of perpetual crisis.

I was in college when Björk released Homogenic, her third studio album, in 1997. I remember watching the video clip of the album’s first single, Jóga, and thinking about its lyrics.

Those dramatic natural landscapes had little to do with the highly urbanized suburban environment outside Barcelona that I called home. However, they resonated in me as a med…