Laurie Anderson: United States I-IV Live

From back in the days when boxed sets were rare luxuries, not everyday stocking-fillers. This set was probably my second, after '70-'80 and just before Biograph. I was hoovering up every clue I could to try and break the code of what Laurie A was 'really' saying.

I copied these five LPs onto three cassettes and listened to them more or less on repeat, noting and following up — where I could — the references to Burroughs, Wittgenstein, Buckminster Fuller, Tesla. I tried to apply ideas from my studies: J.L. Austin's speech acts, the artificial intelligentsia and cognitive science of Marvin Minsky, Chomsky and the whole MIT 'crew'. (No Barthes or Habermas allowed on our course; that came later.)

I went to the University Library in search of United-States-the-book. They were supposed to have every book in print, but I couldn't find this one. Thanks to the web, I finally tracked down a copy last year, and had it sent to me, from the United States of course, so that the postage was almost as much as the book (available from Amazon and AbeBooks). The anti-climax, after 23 years, was that the book is really just an illustrated lyric sheet for the album.

I got RoseLee Goldberg's book about Laurie Anderson, too. That was no help at all. It just has a few of the lyrics plus some fairly clueless observations like "Communicating with an audience was Anderson's goal from the start" and "United States, with its sophisticated manipulation of many media, biblical references, and prescient overtones of a futuristic world commandeered by technology, was considered to be a deeply allegorical rendering of contemporary America." Durrr, citation needed, as Wikipedia would say.

The lesson of this quarter century of seeking is precisely that there is no allegory here, no one-to-one mapping, no key and no code. (Actually it didn't take quite that long; I began to catch the drift a long time ago, and certainly by the time of The Ugly One with the Jewels.) That's the charm of the anecdotes, short stories and repeated motifs ("I came home today and…"); that they worm their way into your head like dreams but speak a language that resists translation.

When I moved onto my next course in Sheffield, at the beginning of an essay on Human-Computer Interaction, I quoted the section of Language of the Future where Laurie sits next to a fifteen-year-old girl on a plane as kind of introductory epigram.

… suddenly I realised she was speaking an entirely different language. Computerese.
A kind of high-tech lingo.
Everything was circuitry electronics, switching.
If she didn't understand something, it just "didn't scan."
We talked mainly about her boyfriend. This guy was never in a bad mood. he was in a bad mode.
Modey kind of a guy.
The romance was apparently kind of rocky and she kept saying: "Man oh man you know like its so digital!" She just meant the relationship was on again, off again.
Always two things switching.
Current runs through bodies and then it doesn't.

The conceit of HCI, in 1986 at any rate, was to make computers emulate human dialogue as closely as possible. I wanted to entertain the idea that human dialogue was neither 'ideal' nor a fixed mooring to which computers could be anchored. I realised that an anecdote was probably the best way to do that.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to disc 1 in full at Last.fm, disc 2, disc 3, disc 4 Listen to this album in full at We7 Listen to this album in full at Spotify

Comments

[Me]

I'm glad to know I wasn't the only person obsessed with Laurie Anderson's "deeper meaning." I first heard this album as a teen when I was somewhat out of my mind on LSD; I'm reasonably sure the combination permanently altered my brain.

Laurie's delivery, combined with her writing skill, always left you feeling like you were missing...something. That was really part of her schtick. My guess is, there wasn't much under the surface.

Similar to Steely Dan, whose sardonic and ironic delivery of clever lyrics loosely based around some story always made me look for something more; or The Matrix, with its loose collection of various religious symbols allowed people to see more than was intentionally there, Laurie's work captures people's imaginations because she does not fill in the blanks.

I remember reading an interview with the director of "Jacob's Ladder." They were talking about the relatively low-budget special effects to create the demons in the movie. He explained that by doing something as simple as putting a nylon over an actor's face, having him look out the window of a moving van, and letting the camera get a brief, shaky glimpse as the van goes by, your brain will fill in a much scarier image than they could build with makeup or effects.

I think the mystery of her work is the asset that makes it timeless. The fact that there may or may not be anything substantial under the surface, to me anyway, doesn't really diminish it.

Thanks for writing.