Laurie Anderson needs to be seen live as a performance artist and musician to experience the full effect. She's bringing her highly original performance piece, "Delusion"—consisting of music, puppetry and visuals—to Chicago. Anderson shared some insights Nunn on One by telephone before her trip to the Windy City.
Windy City Times: Hello, Laurie. How are you today?
Laurie Anderson: I am having computer problems. Why does everything go down when I am trying to leave the house?
WCT: I have no idea. It's funny how you have such a technologically driven career, and now you have computer issues.
Laurie Anderson: Doesn't everyone? The more tech you have the worse the problem.
WCT: Definitely.
Laurie Anderson: I have gotten used to it. If you think things are going to run smoothly; then, you are out of your mind.
WCT: How do you feel technology has changed? Has it been hard for you to adapt to things?
Laurie Anderson: Well I'm always updating like everyone else and trying so hard not to get sucked into it, but it's harder and harder. The book that is on top of my list these days is How to be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson. He writes about technology and what you think you're doing, like, "Who told you that in order to be a good person you have to be working?" Its unthinkable to people now; they are fixing their e-mails and can't even walk out the door. It is sad with what is happening.
WCT: What do you think of Facebook?
Laurie Anderson: I hate it! I don't want any more friends. I have enough, thank you very much. Do I care what they are doing? Not at all, not one single bit, and I'm not going to tell them what I am doing either. It's insane. I don't have to keep people posted on my comings and goings. I am more of a hermit and I really like to be private, which is a stupid thing to say from someone who gets onstage and prances around.
WCT: I get it. Has being married to Lou Reed made you more private?
Laurie Anderson: Depends. We have friends, a nice scruffy kind of place to live and nobody bothers us. Everyone is walking their dogs. It's great.
WCT: You are originally from Glen Ellyn, Ill.
Laurie Anderson: Yes, I am.
WCT: And you're coming to Chicago.
Laurie Anderson: I love Chicago! I was just there because I received an award from the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra. It was their first alumni award and I was super-proud to get it because I loved being in that orchestra. It was really fun to rehearse and be in the exact same building as before.
WCT: I want to say congrats on your Grammy nomination for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
Laurie Anderson: Thank you!
WCT: Why did you decide to call the album Homeland?
Laurie Anderson: I started writing it in the Bush days when I was really frustrated and angry so no American could hear that phrase without having heavy quotes around it. And it has gotten more extreme in living here; the paranoia, the way that people's lives are being more and more restricted, it's not a great direction. Especially when you are running around the holidays, it's really torture to be searched all the time and watch children get searched as well.
Last time I was in Chicago I saw three little boys being searched all over their bodies. They were standing there going, "Momma, is everything okay?" I don't want to live in a place like that.
WCT: I listened to your track "Only an Expert," and it was all about the recession.
Laurie Anderson: Oh, isn't it amazing? How come the first guys were never brought up to account for anything? Not one person in the elections had to stand up and say, "I kind of did a stupid thing." It's happening all over again. I used to think that my formula was when conservatives were empowered it will be politics and when liberals where empowered it will go back to poetry. It's too much to complain about.
WCT: Is your music therapy for yourself as well as the audience?
Laurie Anderson: I don't want to say therapy because I think that's more of an individual thing. I try not to use people to vent. I try to make things where other people can understand on another level not just so they can feel sorry for me. That is not the theme of what I am doing. Instead of having to put it in a sentence, why not keep it in the language of your mind? I'm quoting a little bit of a speech my mother did on her deathbed. It was so touching.
It's going to be weird doing it in Chicago, where she died—[it's] kind of intense for me. In that sense it is very personal but also a lot of political stuff into the mix as well.
WCT: Can you give people a sense of what your performance at Harris will be like?
Laurie Anderson: Well, lots of images. That's the different thing I've been doing lately. This one has a lot. I have gone pretty far away from doing pictures with rectangles so there is a silver projection on different surfaces. I'm sick of looking at computer screens, movie screens and all the screens. It's just too flat. So I wanted to make a really vivid—not three-dimensional, but a sense of curving around objects. For me it has become a new obsession of projecting images like that.
WCT: Are you performing "O Superman?"
Laurie Anderson: No. I haven't done that in so many years; I did that around 9/11. I was actually in Chicago on 9/11 when I sang that song for the first time in 20 years. I'm not a person to sing old songs. I try to do new songs. That was a greatest hit, so I did sing that song around that time and it was so eerie. Were you living in Chicago at that time?
WCT: Yes, I was.
Laurie Anderson: I remember people were going, "Maybe L.A. is next or London or Chicago."
WCT: Yes, it was scary being in a big city.
Laurie Anderson: You forget that the first 48 hours was when you didn't know what was going on. It could have been the end of the world. When you write about power, war and love, they don't tend to go away, just switch focus. I wrote that song about the Iran-Contra affair, this crazy attempt to rescue all of these hostages in the desert where helicopters just crashed and burned. Technology was just falling apart. The same thing with 9/11: "Wow we are really vulnerable. Even with all of our stuff they can get us." When you look at what Bin Laden did 10 years later as everyone is being searched in the airport, you go, "I wonder who won that round?"
WCT: That's a good point. It was great talking to you and good luck with your computer.
Laurie Anderson: Thank you so much!
For the Laurie Anderson experience, tickets are available at the Harris Theater box office, 205 E. Randolph, by calling 312-334-7777 or by visiting www.harristheaterchicago.org . Connect with more Anderson at www.laurieanderson.com .
