Just to throw everyone for a loop: Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson, 1986

On a 'bad hair' day . . .

(Image from Wikipedia)

We haven't listened to Laurie Anderson via this blog in a long time . . . like, um, forever. Technically, that means that we could never have reached this moment -- as in the Kalam Cosmological Argument -- but who's counting? So, let's listen to "O Superman" on You Tube, using a different browser (so, open one), as we follow along reading the lyrics below for about ten minutes of weird, uneasy dissociation of sensibility:

O Superman. O Judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.
O Superman. O Judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.
Hi. I'm not home right now. But if you want to leave a
message, just start talking at the sound of the tone.
Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you
coming home?
Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don't know me,
but I know you.
And I've got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
So you better get ready. Ready to go. You can come
as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go.

And I said: OK. Who is this really? And the voice said:
This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the
hand, the hand that takes.
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.

'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justive is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. So hold me,
Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms.
In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.
In your electronic arms.

I last listened to this song by Anderson back in the early eighties . . . in Berkeley, of course. My thoughts turned again to Ms. Anderson the other day when I read about her in a New York Times article by Will Hermes, "Electronic Expressions in the Service of the Soul" (June 22, 2010). Ah, that brings back memories of a misspent youth . . . but listening to "O Superman" now, post-9/11, makes for a rather eerie experience:

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.

Smoking or non-smoking? The 9/11 passengers didn't ultimately have that choice, did they. The lyrics were written post-Vietnam, a very different time. I wonder what Ms. Anderson thinks about the post-9/11 landscape, which means that I wonder what her new album, Homeland, is about, given the title. Mr. Hermes links it thematically to "O Superman" -- and cites some of her musings from his interview with her:

"Homeland" similarly twists together ideas of the personal and political, beginning with the title, a word that has acquired ominous overtones in the shadow of Sept. 11.

"It’s a very cold, bureaucratic word," Ms. Anderson said. "No one I know would say 'my homeland.'" She notes its recent pairing with the word "security," which she contends "is not about security, really, but more about control. The phrase doesn't make anyone feel particularly safe, does it?"

She's got a point. Americans don't generally speak of America as their 'homeland', and the expression "Homeland Security" serves only to remind us of American insecurity. Still . . . where does she go with that point? Vaguely in an ambiguous direction? Mr. Hermes writes of a song and its lyrics on the Homeland album:

"Dark Time in the Revolution" tries to square modern-day America with the nation Tom Paine was defining when he wrote "Common Sense." "You thought there were things that had disappeared forever/Things from the Middle Ages/Beheadings and hangings and people in cages," Ms. Anderson intones over Joey Baron’s inexorable tom-tom rolls. "And suddenly they're alright welcome to the American night."

Odd way to put things. The 'Medieval' "Beheadings and hangings" certainly aren't "alright" . . . though I suppose that she's speaking in irony. But in what sense is this the "American night"? I get that "people in cages" likely alludes to Guantanamo, but beheadings are with us courtesy of a far darker force in the world.

I guess I'll just have to listen to the new album and judge for myself.