I haven’t been able to sleep before 5am lately. This triggers uncontrollable thinking. One of the things that’s been on my mind is how people construct identity. Looking at people on the web is like looking at a tiny sliver of reality, and trying to fill in the blanks. It’s a selective piece, and I suspect I might not like many of them, if I really knew them. But it’s fun playing with the pieces, shoving them around, looking for overlaps in experience.
I was listening to a radio station compiled by one blogger. On their playlist was a tune by Laurie Anderson I hadn’t heard before. In the 80s, I was floored by Anderson's United States Live. It’s a five record set that is hard to characterize. Yes, it’s performance art; but it’s also quite musical. Growing up in the suburbs, a lot of the images had deep resonance for me. "I dreamed I had to take a test . . . at a Dairy Queen . . . on another planet"
The last Laurie Anderson record I bought was Strange Angels in 1989. It was a really odd coincidence, because at the time I was reading a lot of Walter Benjamin and she wrote a beautiful song about him. But I suppose I just wasn’t ready for an album of "songs" rather than cultural observations. I bought the book Stories from the Nerve Bible a few years ago, but I didn’t realize that there was a companion CD, The Ugly One with All the Jewels. The song I heard that triggered my interest was "The Salesman." It caused me to want to catch up a little bit, so I ordered that CD and Life on a String from 2001.
In some ways, it’s like reliving that past experience. The Ugly One with All the Jewels is like a pared down version of United States Live with a more international focus. I listened to it on the stereo one afternoon, and when I couldn’t sleep that night/morning I put on Life on a String to listen to through headphones while I lay in bed. It was beautiful, in the same way that Strange Angels was beautiful; but there is a difference. I’m different now, and it meant much more to me than Strange Angels did then.
Some records are just great on headphones, some aren’t. As I found out during the week long power outage last winter, Tom Waits’ Mule Variations isn’t. It’s too heavy on the panning, and is too jarring for the "inside your head" experience. Life on a String is a glorious headphone record. Maybe it’s Anderson’s partnership with Lou Reed (his binaural records are pretty good), or maybe it’s just that the electronic translates better to that listening space, but it’s quite compelling when listened to in this way.
I noticed some interesting differences in geographical perspectives in the lyrics though. The thread that runs through the songs is an image of the rarity of whales, and being able to see one surface. Maybe that’s the east-coast perspective, but whale watching is a big sport in California as they migrate by. It doesn’t have that quality of rare experience to me. At the photo shop I worked at, I saw hundreds of pictures of whales. But I suppose it's just that photography has this power to make the uncommon, common. Does it cheapen our experience? I suppose it's a trade-off, because it also exposes the common to a new light.
I noticed that she has a new album coming out soon, derived from a stage production of Moby Dick. I suppose I’ll have to start paying attention to her again. It’s strange how some things fade in and fade out. They come back into your experience through odd chains of connections. Listening to Stories from the Nerve Bible I’m just floored by Anderson’s control of language. She uses the pacing and breathing of the spoken word to create sculptural space. What is it with me and sculptors? There is another one I can think of that may have written "Jeff" on a piece of toast and set it to flame, but that's another story entirely.
Laurie Anderson creates some very compelling spaces. Learning about people through fragments also creates some odd spaces as well. I wonder what sort of picture people form based on musical references in others’ writing. It can’t be too accurate, but it is quite interesting.
