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Planet news
Laurie Anderson reports
BY TED DROZDOWSKI

When Laurie Anderson first slipped into the mainstream, it was easy to mistake her for an electronic-age jester. Her performance-art résumé included a piece in which she played violin while wearing ice skates, embedded in ice to her ankles. And her breakthrough, the 1981 recording "O Superman," buzzed with effects-distorted vocals and allusions to techno-fascism yet sported a cheeky sing-song lyric cadence. Despite all its wired wit, the tune might have been a mere post-punk novelty.

Now, as Anderson prepares to bring her latest work, The End of the Moon, to the Majestic Theatre this Sunday, intimations in "O Superman" of a Big Brother–like corporate oligarchy seem prophetic, much as the overriding sadness and the description of airplanes flying with uncertain intent over a city in Life on a String (Atlantic) seemed chillingly apt just a month after that album’s August 2001 release.

In more than 30 years of blurring the lines separating musician, actress, monologuist, journalist, and joker with finesse and unflagging energy, Anderson has cemented her reputation as a modern Renaissance woman. She’s produced an impressive variety of works for theatrical and concert stages, visual art, soundtracks, films, and stories. Among them are the multimedia opus United States, a show that explores identity and culture in nearly 80 songs, narratives, and musical interludes, and Moby Dick, a contemplation on desire, history, and nature inspired by Herman Melville’s tale.

All of Anderson’s creations are clever, poignant, and thought-provoking, but with Life on a String, which was fueled by the death of her father and the reawakening of her interest in the violin, she started tapping into parts of the human psyche — or maybe the soul — that most artists never reach. To hear her describe it, the process is closer to unconsciousness than self-consciousness. She’d recently completed a stint as NASA’s first artist-in-residence when The End of the Moon began to crystallize. It’s the second part of a trilogy of narrative solo performances that she began with 2002’s Happiness, which describes her experiences on an Amish farm, working at a McDonald’s, and living in New York after September 11.

"Happiness was very journalistic, which was a huge challenge for me," she says over the phone from New York. "It made me use more nouns and be as specific and non-judgmental as I could. The big difference with The End of the Moon is that the language is a lot stranger. I haven’t written lyrics or poems but stories that have connections that are different from the ones I usually make. Is that vague enough?" She laughs as she asks.

"Originally, it was supposed to be about beauty, but now it’s framed as a kind of report on my time at NASA that immediately leaves report land with stories about my dog and war and other things. Once someone asked me, ‘Who taught you what beauty is?’ That really set me back. The honest answer involves so many people. How do you sum it up? Einstein said he rejected some of his theories because they weren’t beautiful enough. What could that mean?"

For Anderson, who saw great beauty and creativity at NASA in photos of distant planets and displays of the Mars Rover’s prowess as well as the dark alliance between the military and the space program, The End of the Moon’s theme clarified as she was working on a second project — a multimedia installation for a sculpture garden that will be part of the World Expo, a kind of trade show for industrial nations this April in Aichi, Japan. "In the film, there’s an image of Mount Fuji, and the accompanying text says I’d lost something but didn’t really know what it was. The translator asked me what I was writing about, just to get some context, and I realized it was my country. I suddenly felt that I had lost the place where I lived, and putting those words next to Fuji, with its history and symbolic significance of durability and geography and pride in Japan, gave it the right resonance. The translator immediately understood, although to me it wasn’t clear at all when I was writing.

"That made so much sense. The violin in this piece has become more of a second voice for me than before, much more of an emotional voice than my own. I’m a very optimistic, happy person, but when I hear myself play sometimes now, I feel incredibly sad, which has made me realize I’m much sadder than I thought. But that’s not negative. I love being able to express that."

So the core of The End of the Moon is likely the despair sweeping many Americans as the war in Iraq continues and the Bush administration, hand in hand with corporate barons and religious fundamentalists, does its best to undermine the nation. "Although that’s not a popular idea to express, it is really deeply felt by many people on an inarticulate level," Anderson allows.

If Anderson is channeling America’s burdened soul through her violin, she’s better equipped to do so than ever before. "I’ve been practicing!" she jokes. She’s also been modernizing, with a new electric Ned Steinberger instrument that she says sounds more natural and a bank of 12 synthesizers accessible to her bow and strings via a lap-top and foot pedals. "What I used to carry in a tractor trailer now fits into two briefcases. It gives me the most flexibility I’ve ever had, so I can improvise more, and that’s an unbelievable amount of fun. What’s beautiful about the violin is that it can go anywhere, including to dead silence, which can be incredibly expressive."

But with a dozen synths, each with hundreds of sounds at its disposal, what if she hits the wrong pedal? "I do that all the time, and it’s great fun. It’s like, ‘Wow, how do I get out of this one?’ "

Laurie Anderson performs this Sunday, January 16, at 7:30 p.m. at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont Street in the Theater District; call (800) 233-3123.


Issue Date: January 14 - 20, 2005
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