Apropos of Everything · 10 April 2008

It looks like Laurie Anderson is making all the connections. In Melbourne, they called her show the concert of the year. Tonight she’s at Royce Hall, so I’m cutting out early from Thursday faculty cocktails (where the cognac is free but one strange bird drinks only tea).

How amazing is she? Here’s an except from her talk with Wire and a piece from Homeland complete with wicked Oprah jokes, WMD riffs (at 3:45) and open talk on preemptive war (5:50).

There is no country called Terror that you can invade their borders or protect their borders or cross their borders. It's a war of phantoms and it will never go away…. And that is used to create a situation of control - and that combined with the absolute maniacal excess of late capitalism is very scary.

Our army is run by private companies who run it for a profit. The same with jails. Twenty years ago, there were 300,000 people in jail; now it is a privatised industry there are almost 3 million in jail. They're customers, unique customers - and you need customers for your war, which is waged as a business, as is healthcare…

…I became very interested in why you dream and no one really knows. There are so many theories. Is it the brain in idle mode? Is it processing material? Nobody knows. It is unbelievable how much we don't know about how your mind works…. I'm really interested in this book by Tibetan author, Mingyur Rinpoche, the Joy of Living, where he links meditation and brain states to neuroscience in a way that's thrilling. Mingyur and a lot of Tibetans study minutely what happens as thoughts and sensations travel through your body.

It makes you remember that people literally don't know how their minds, how their brains work. 'Things are always going through my head.' But they don't know, they don't have a clue what they're doing or what they've been influenced by as well, so they are perfect targets for people coming along to tell them what to be afraid of or what to love or what to go for, how to be famous. For what? To what end? It's just like demagoguery was invented here and you watch it in motion when there is a lot of corporate heft behind it and it's powerful. And it can hypnotise people in poisonous ways, because people don't know how to use their minds. They don't know what they're doing. This is supposed to be the age of information!

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: markets-networks-society , morality

Comment

1. write in for president?

   Posted by: cranky housefrau · Apr 10, 04:21 PM · #

2. Our next Chomsky, with nicer shirts! Hallelujah!

   Posted by: Gregor · Apr 10, 06:23 PM · #

3. Laurie’s just gotten more and more hardcore since the 80s, eh?

   Posted by: patrick · Apr 11, 04:30 AM · #

4. I love her.

   Posted by: katie · Apr 11, 06:47 AM · #

5. Yes she is wonderful. Write-in for pres and well dressed for sure. Last night she was amazing in presence: sharp, intense, light, and that voice that is STILL perfect for avant-garde.

   The show was hardcore, Patrick. Some very specific calling out: After some specific references to Guantanamo, she sang: “Now you, who can be silent in four languages… Your silence will be noted. Your complicity will be noted.” Nice!!!!

   The show was about the fetishism of commodities and loss of relationship if not reason in the highly mediated environment in which that is happening. A lot of war and, especially, weaponry images to bring home the insanity of that. She ended with this perfect anecdote of Tex Gov Anne Richards saying “Now I’m no sexist, but not a single woman in Texas could even find a gun in her handbag.” And there was this brilliant moment where she imagined “the underwear gods” from the billboards on Houston coming down from the walls and walking, perfect, giant, and underwear clad, through the streets of New York. Because the underwear gods are the only one who can really fit the city.

   That said, the show was uneven. The second third was musically and lyrically, well… I felt like it was filler and I checked out. My friends said the same.

   The Editor said she should have edited. :) He also said, I think rightly, that it’s harder for a poet. She works in this form in which she has to be exacting and judicious. Every rhythm, every rhyme. If every single element is not strongly contributing to the whole, the construction will break down.

   She’s brilliance and the show contains a lot that is amazing, but because it didn’t hang together for us, a lot of the audience seemed to walk out saying Uhhh… what just happened?

   Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 11, 07:07 AM · #

6. She needs an Editor! We all need an Editor! But some people need to just rewrite, and some people should should just always use pink end of the pencil.
   Do we expect brilliance for our money always? I think I avoid many cultural things now because I have somehow gotten higher wants? aack! Where did my innocence go!

   Posted by: Gregor · Apr 11, 01:09 PM · #

7. I like your question, G. I felt like my expectations of last night were ridiculous—I wanted to be given a whole packaged experience. Though really: my initial intent had just been to see her. Hear her play for a couple of hours. Enough. Why demand to be fully entertained?

   We treat everyone like service people. Professors, yoga teacher, artists, service people.

   Anyway, get yoru innocence back! The life of the senses— and especially of rhythm and music— is too rich yet! Don’t let it make you boring, man!

   Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 11, 08:31 PM · #

8. I am looking forward to my soccer, running around after a ball brings out my latent hunter/gatherer! :) I just need to get back to my roots, man.

   Posted by: Gregor · Apr 12, 02:29 AM · #

Commenting is closed for this article.