Laurie Anderson (b. June 5th,
1947)
a.k.a.
Laura Phillips Anderson, Laura Phillips Anderson
MY FAVORITE THINGS
Laurie Anderson
Armed with a violin, a keen wit, and a stunning visual sense, Laurie Anderson has made a career as an author, performance artist, musician, storyteller, and filmmaker. More often than not, she combines all of these talents at the same time. Her recent stage production Songs and Stories from Moby Dick took the Melville classic into the world of multimedia. She has collaborated with an impressive range of similarly innovative artists including musician Peter Gabriel, filmmaker Wim Wenders, and beat icon William S. Burroughs. The two-CD set Talk Normal: The Laurie Anderson Anthology collects 20 years of her off-center music and musings, including her offbeat radio hits "O Superman," "Language Is a Virus," and "Excellent Birds," a duet with Gabriel. Barnes & Noble.com's Steve Ciabattoni had this normal talk with Anderson about her inspirations.
Barnes & Noble.com: What's fascinating you artistically right now -- other than your own work?
Laurie Anderson: I went to see Shakespeare at the Brooklyn Academy. There was an amazing Richard II. I didn't really know that play, because it's not one of the big ones. Ralph Fiennes was in it, and he was amazing, just hair-raising. So it made me want to get the play and read it. And there are these throwaway lines in it like "Oh, nimble mischance." Nimble mischance? Wow, that's so great! A 400-year-old phrase that really should come back.
B&N.com: Do you remember the first performance that inspired you?
LA: As a little kid I had a record called "Letter from Daddy," which was what they now call "spoken word," which is one of the stupidest phrases I've ever heard. I thought all records were music until I heard that thing. This is when I was like five, so that was a turning point. But I've always liked a single person talking a lot. So when I heard William S. Burroughs for the first time, when I heard Ken Nordine for the first time -- these were my heroes for what you can do with just a voice.
B&N.com: As a teenager in the '60s, did you ever have a Herman's Hermits phase or bubblegum pop phase?
LA: I never liked those guys; they were more in the Chipmunks category. Maybe I didn't have a very good radio [laughs], because it sounded too jangly for me. I liked very gushy violin music like Tchaikovsky. I loved that very over-the-top stuff.
B&N.com: What music do you put on to enjoy now?
LA: Astor Piazzolla. I like the textures of it and the fact that it's so passionate and rhythmic and spare.
B&N.com: What music or books do you recommend to friends?
LA: Right now, Don DeLillo's book The Body Artist, which is coming out next year. I'm going to be doing the audiobook. It's about how we really think. It's the first thing I've ever read where they really got it right about what you're thinking about and how you're predicting what the other person's going to say and what's running through your mind as you're talking. I've been enjoying short books lately. I got this wonderful edition of the Communist Manifesto, which I'm very interested in mostly because I was doing a lot of thinking about the 19th century when I was working on this Moby Dick project. So I came across two books written in the middle of the century, both about work. I think that was a century that was trying to figure out what work was for the first time. The one book was [Melville's] Bartleby the Scrivener and the other was the Manifesto, which starts out "A specter is haunting Europe." What a great way to start a book. And then it ends with "Workers of the world unite." Right now I'm reading all of Anne Carson's books. Autobiography of Red is an incredible book about a guy who just happens to have very large wings, and it's not really mentioned -- and they're bright red -- and other than that he fits right in. Very seriously beautiful stuff.
B&N.com: Novelists and filmmakers seem to inspire you as much as musicians.
LA: I love Wim Wenders movies, because they're about everything. He really gets music. I hate to say it, but he probably did invent the music video. His first films were just music with images. I like stuff that are mixtures like that.
B&N.com: What art do you think should be put in a time capsule, and what art would you choose to just plain bury?
LA: I wouldn't bury anybody's art, but for a time capsule...I'm not really good at that, imagining life in 500 years.
B&N.com: Do you think in 1851 Melville dreamed you'd turn Moby Dick into a stage show?
LA: That was my nightmare. "You're making my book into a multimedia show?!" But it's really astounding that Shakespeare wrote a half a millennium ago, and you completely get his jokes now. So I would think the things that are the most heartfelt will be the ones that people will love in 500 years. And the things that are clever and cool won't be understood.
October, 17, 2000
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