Song of the Day 10/8: Laurie Anderson, “Language Is a Virus”
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington wanted to mount a Laurie Anderson career retrospective. She wasn’t interested, but she agreed to put together a new multi-media show instead. So through next July 31, you can see “The Weather,” billed as her largest-ever U.S. installation. The Hirshhorn is part of the Smithsonian, so admission is free.
The exhibit will feature some live performances starting in January, but it’s impossible to guess what Anderson has in mind. Her magnum opus, “United States,” originally ran for eight hours over two consecutive nights. This was released as a single from the 5-LP vinyl set, and though it didn’t chart it gives a good idea of her oeuvre. The title comes from a line by William S. Burroughs.
“The Weather” takes its name from John Cage’s piece “Lectures on the Weather,” commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for the U.S. Bicentennial. Cage used the occasion to act as a weatherman in Bob Dylan’s sense of the word. In his spoken-word introduction to the piece, which consists mostly of a dozen people speaking snippets of Henry David Thoreau’s writing selected at random from the I Ching, Cage tells us exactly which way the wind was blowing. Strikingly, it hasn’t really changed direction since.
Our leaders are concerned with the energy crisis. They assure us they will find new sources of oil. Not only will earth’s reservoir of fossil fuels soon be exhausted: their continued use continues the ruin of the environment. Our leaders promise they will solve the unemployment problem: they will give everyone a job. It would be more in the spirit of Yankee ingenuity, more American, to find a way to get all the work done that needs to be done without anyone’s lifting a finger. Our leaders are concerned with inflation and insufficient cash. Money, however, is credit, and credit is confidence. We have lost confidence in one another. We could regain it tomorrow by simply changing our minds.
