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subject appears to be a white male, early 50's, pathologically tall/skinny. brain patterns show evidence of a life in alcohol - first swimming in it then running from it. fingers show wear from years of guitar playing. heart presents slow repair, through writing, from being broken by rock and roll.
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I Feel Like I’m in a Burning Building: Laurie Anderson’s Prayer for Peace
Back in the 80’s, amidst the hurley burley flash of the hair bands and the spiffy fey postures of the New Romantics, there stood an artist of quiet un-definability. Laurie Anderson was called, in an effort to pigeon hole the vastness of her work, a performance artist. She described herself as ‘a girl who plays violin and tells stories’, which as good an overall description of this woman’s amazing catalog of art. A body of work that spans the last 25 years and continues to this day. I first became aware of the phenomenon known as Laurie Anderson in 1981 while half watching a late night video show at my sister’s house in the small mountain town of Idaho Springs, Colorado. Me and my sister and a few friends were playing spades and drinking beer when I suddenly heard a strange chant coming from the television…
"ha", it said, "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...."
It was ‘O Superman’, of course, Laurie’s breakthrough single that brought the New York City avant garde into the homes of America. A vocoded, spoken word lament over the timeless theme of humanity’s love/hate relationship with technology, along with vague references to mom, dad and American planes (made in America). A cunning pastiche of Mark Twain hominess and Huxleyan futurism, ‘O Superman’ became the strangest single to ever reach #2 on the British pop charts. Prophets being without honor in their own country, the single never made it here. But Anderson then enjoyed, as she still does, a very devoted cult following and one well deserved. Laurie’s work has the NYC hipness ( and Laurie’s the voice of NYC, literally: she wrote the NYC entry in the Encyclopedia Brittanica) that all cool cats and kittens aspire to, with none of the cloying, nihilistic reverie that sent Richard (to) Hell.
‘O Superman’ was originally part of a larger piece called ‘United States I-IV’, a monumental performance piece spread over 4 nights at the Academy of Music in Manhattan (and released as a 5 record set in 1983, later re-released on a 2 CD set) that established Anderson as a force to be reckoned with, if not categorized. Her 1982 album ‘Big Science’ (which included the single ‘O Superman’) is a record of peaceful, meditative pieces that, at close listening reveal an artist trying to explain the world to herself and, by extension, to all of us. Most pieces are based on 2 chord, midterm changes, played on string section sounding synthesizers or Anderson’s violin. Loops of handclaps and, of course, ‘ha’, serve as a rhythm section that approaches the beating of a human heart. I’ve always thought that was Anderson’s greatest strength: making the most human of music with the most electronic of equipment.
Far from the sterile, one could say soulless throb of electronica then and now, Anderson’s work, all drum machines and MIDI sequences (combined with musicians as varied as percussionist David Van Tiegham, guitarist Adrian Belew and jazz bagpiper Rufus Harley) never lost the human element. There’s always a person searching for something amongst the twists and turns and robotic sweeps of this woman’s work. After ‘Big Science’ came ‘Mr. Heartbreak’, a more band oriented record than ‘Science’. Of course this band had a vocal cameo by William S Burrough’s so we’re not exactly talking Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band here.
Which brings me to the present. Well, almost. There’s been a great deal of music by Laurie Anderson released between then and now and I urge you all to check it out, but the record I want to speak of was released in May of 2003 but recorded on September 19-21, 2001. ‘Laurie Anderson Live in New York’ was recorded at New York’s Town Hall just a week after 9/11. Dedicated, by Anderson, to peace, it contains songs from her, at the time, most recent record ‘Life on a String’ but also includes re-arranged versions of songs from ‘Big Science’. Songs like ‘O Superman’ which sings lines like ‘…here come the planes. They’re American planes. Made in America.’ and ‘Let X=X’ which contains the line “I feel like I’m in a burning building and I’ve got to go’. Both lines, among others, I’m sure, absorbed a new resonance in those early days after the WTC tragedy and I’m not going to burden you with mine. It’s just that I feel that Laurie Anderson’s bravery in not canceling the show so soon after 9/11 and not censoring her music in order to ‘spare’ anyone the experience of thinking about airplanes and burning buildings showed a respect for her art and her audience’s intelligence that, to my mind, far surpasses the feel good jingoism of Springs teen’s ‘The Rising’, released over a year after the fact and offering such platitudes as ‘It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright.’
In 2003, Laurie Anderson was named NASA’s 1st ‘artist in residence’. I can think of no better person to represent art in the 21st century. Recent works have included a stage showe based on ‘Moby Dick’ and an installation about imprisonment where she sent the image of an actual prisoner, holographic ally to wander in a garden in Montreal. Words cannot describe the depth and breadth of Laurie Anderson’s work so I urge you to find out for yrself, so words can fail you, too.
To find more info go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Anderson
And http://www.laurieanderson.com
For more info/video http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/anderson/
Posted by: timbyrnes at 23:34 |
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