Laurie Anderson is a seminal latter 20th C. performance artist in that cold, Germanic vibe that startles you just enough to stop you from throttling her from pretension. Kind of Madonna meets Brecht in a dark alley with synthesizers. She had a couple of minor hits in the 80s, but has always focused on building elaborate multimedia shows.
In fact, she's the kind of postmodern, ironic voice that I expected to find out of a job on September 12th, 2001.
Jump for the mystery of why I was wrong; why she's part of Crisisville after all...
On September 20, 2001, there appeared a concert at Town Hall in NYC. It began with the robotic pronouncement of a new world, a new opportunity to be seized with boldness. Early on, in fact, Laurie Anderson seemed to have tripped the postmod light fantastic, off into a the kind of valueless world that wakes James Dobson up at night, sweating through his flannel.
But then the music came in, and a kind of blessed transubstantiation occurred. The distance I had been mistaking for irony became an immediate stillness. A liquid stillness that bathed these torn ears in the long moment of now.
She sang
This is the hand, the hand that takes/ Here come the planes/They're American planes. Made in America/ Smoking or non-smoking?/ And the voice said: 'Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers/ From the swift completion of their appointed rounds'
from O Superman, written in 1981. And she meant it. The coolness that I had always chafed at was suddenly revealed as the only way to contain the strength of her tragedy. The two of us, connected through headphones, citizens of Crisisville together.
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