Sky flying birds. Flying over cities.. Flying over mountains,. Sky flying moon. Sailing over wide plains.. Pulling on the oceans.. . Snow flies around. Snow flies around..
In 1974, I went to Mexico to visit my brother who was working as an anthropologist with Tsutsil Indians, the last surviving Mayan tribe. And the Tsutsil speak a lovely birdlike language and are quite tiny physically; I towered over them. Mostly, I spent my days following the women around since my brother wasn't really allowed to do this. We got up at 3am and began to separate the corn into three colors. And we boiled it, ran to the mill and back, and finally started to make the tortillas. Now all the other women's tortillas were 360, perfectly toasted, perfectly round; and after a lot of practice mine were still lobe-sided and charred. And when they thought I wasn't looking they threw them to the dogs..
In 1984, as part of the press for the tour I was doing in Japan, I was asked to go to Bali and speak about the future with the prince of Ouboud. Now the idea was that I would represent the Western world, the prince the Southern world, and the Japanese press representative would represent whatever was left. The conversations would be published in a large book, scheduled for release one year after the concert tour. Now as press this didn't really seem like a great way to advertise concerts but it sounded like fun anyway..
Now the book is called Stories from the Nerve Bible and what I mean by the Nerve Bible is the body. And parts of the body appear and disappear throughout the book, adding up to a kind of self-portrait although not a very naturalistic one. And I used the word Bible in the title of this book because the first really strange stories I remember hearing were Bible stories. And these stories were completely amazing: about parting oceans, and talking snakes. And people really seemed to believe these stories. And I'm talking about adults. Adults, who mainly just did the most mundane things imaginable: mowing their lawns and throwing potluck parties; they all believed in these wild stories. And they would sit around and discuss them in the most matter-of-fact way. So in a way I was introduced to a special local form of surrealism at an early age and so there was always a question in my mind about what's actually true and what is just another art form. Now I've always been intere! sted in trying to define what makes up the late twentieth century American for example and so, as an artist, I've always thought my main job was to be a spy, to use my eyes and ears, and find some of the answers. For example, I like to hang around the banks of phones in airports, one of my favorite listening posts and eavesdrop on conversations. Now I usually travel on the same schedule as salesmen and after lunch these guys call into the main office and I just stand there at the phones, listening in and taking notes for my portrait of the American salesmen..
Around 1978, I met a comedian, Andy Kaufmann. And he was performing his avant-garde Elise act in a club in Queens. The performance started with Andy playing the bongos, and for some unknown reason, sobbing. We became friends and I acted as Andy's straight man in clubs and field trips. At the Improv in New York Andy would begin his show by insulting women and saying, "I won't respect them until one of them comes up here and wrestles me down." This was supposed to be my job. I sat in the club drinking whiskies trying to get up the nerve. In the meantime I was also supposed to be heckling him. And after three whiskies I managed to get pretty abusive. Wrestling him down though was really hard because Andy really fought. On our field trips we would go to Coney Island to try out some of Andy's theories on cutting-edge comedy..
I live on the highway near the puppet motel I log in every day I know the neighborhood well. no about the residents of the puppet motel they're more than a little spooky and most of them are mea.
In 1978, I spent some time in California in the fall, looking for a quiet place to live. I finally found what seemed to be the perfect apartment. But the night after I moved in I heard a tremendous pounding sound. As it turned out, I had moved in right above a Hawaiian hallow log drum school. Every other night, it was converted into a hula school with a live band of six Hawaiian guitars..
It was the night flight from Houston. Almost perfect visibility. You could see the lights from all the little Texas towns far below. And I was sitting next to a fifty-year old woman who had never been on a plane before. And her son had sent her a ticket and said:.
In the book there are several chapters about women talking and women writing. Now it seems likely that men invented writing and wrote what? Maybe ninety, maybe ninety-five percent of everything that's ever been written. Oh there's the recent theory that a woman, the mysterious "J", wrote much of the Old Testament, but only because God was portrayed in this book as patriarchal, tyrannical and inconsistent, the way presumably only a woman would write about a man. But I think I can picture this "J" scribbling away and laughing although the first time I saw the Bible re-enacted was sometime in the 70s and there was a cable TV show in the Midwest and Bible study groups would act out parts of the Bible. But these were pretty low budget productions and shot in a church basement or somebody's ###160109 and all the prophets had towels wrapped around their heads for turbans, but you could see the tags, the ones with the washing instructions, sort of sticking out and back. There were ver! y few women on these tapes. They tended to be the odd shepherdess sort dancing girl bit part..
I walk accompanied by ghosts.. I walk accompanied by ghosts.. . My father with his diamond eyes. His voice life size.. He says follow me. Follow me.. .
Let me tell you a story about Kokovoko. The island where I come from. The beaches are littered with rotten coconuts. And there are pieces of old skulls lying all around.
I was living out in West Hollywood when a Hollywood strangler was strangling women. Every night there was a panel discussion on TV about the strangler, speculations about his habits, his motives, his methods. One thing was clear about him: he only strangled women when they were alone, or with other women. And the panel members would always end the show by saying:.
One by one the guests arrive. The guests are coming through. The open-hearted many. The broken-hearted few. . And no one knows where the night is going.
The summer of 1974 was brutally hot in New York and I kept thinking about how nice and icy it must be at the North Pole. And then I though, "Wait a second, why not go?" You know, like in cartoons where they hang going to the North Pole on their door knobs and they just take off..
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to London Laurie Anderson.. Ooooaaaah!. Ooooaaaah!. Hi. This evening I'll be reading from a book I just finished and since a lot of it is about the future, I'm going to start more or less on the last page, and tell you about my grandmother. Now she was a Southern Baptist Holy Ruler and she had a very clear idea about the future, and of how the world would end..
Hansel and gretel are alive and well and they're living in berlin she is a cocktail waitress he had a part in a fassbinder film and they sit around at night now drinking schnapps and gin and she.
The day, the Devil comes to getcha. You know him by the way he smiles. The day, the Devil comes to getcha. He's a rusty truck with only twenty miles. He's got bad brakes, he's got loose teeth.
Anyway, I was in Israel as a kind of cultural ambassador and there were lots of press conferences scheduled around the performances. The journalists usually started things off by asking about the avant-garde..
There's a story in an ancient play about birds called The Birds. And it's a short story from before the world began. From a time when there was no earth, no land..
I don't know about your dreams. But mine are sort of hackneyed.. Same thin. night after night.. Just...repetitive.. And the color is really bad -. And the themes are just infantile..