..:: audio-music dot info ::..


Main Page    The Desert Island    Copyright Notice
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz


Laurie Anderson: Ugly One with the Jewels and Other Stories

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s

Artist: Laurie Anderson
Title: Ugly One with the Jewels and Other Stories
Released: 1995
Label: Warner Bros. Records Inc.
Time: 71:00
Producer(s): Laurie Anderson
Appears with:
Category: Pop/Rock
Rating: *********. (9/10)
Media type: CD
Purchase date:  2000.09.25
Price in €: 1,47
Web address: www.laurieanderson.com

 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] The End Of The World (Anderson) - 5:00
[2] The Salesman (Anderson) - 3:19
[3] The Night Flight From Houston (Anderson) - 1:33
[4] Word of Mouth (Anderson) - 4:50
[5] The Soul Is A Bird (Anderson) - 3:56
[6] The Ouija Board (Anderson) - 4:11
[7] The Ugly One With The Jewels (Anderson) - 5:06
[8] The Geographic North Pole (Anderson) - 5:22
[9] John Lilly (Anderson) - 3:34
[10] The Rotowhirl (Anderson) - 3:54
[11] On The Way To Jerusalem (Anderson) - 1:20
[12] The Hollywood Strangler (Anderson) - 1:50
[13] Maria Teresa Teresa Maria (Anderson) - 5:43
[14] Someone Else's Dream (Anderson) - 2:25
[15] White Lily (Anderson) - 1:17
[16] The Mysterious "J" (Anderson) - 2:57
[17] The Cultural Ambassador (Anderson) - 6:47
[18] Same Time Tomorrow (Anderson) - 7:49

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


LAURIE ANDERSON - Violin, Keyboards, Vocals, Photography

JOEY BARON - Drums
CYRO BAPTISTA - Gong, Surdo, Shakers
GREG COHEN - Bass, Guitar, Keyboards
BRIAN ENO - Keyboards
GERRY LEONARD - Guitars

YOLANDA CUOMO - Design
BOB BIELECKI - Photography
MARK GARVIN - Photography
PERRY HOBERMAN - Photography
CHRIS HA - Photography
MARCIA RESNICK - Photography
EBET ROBERTS - Photography
LINDA GOLDSTEIN - Management
STEPHEN COHEN - Original Artists Associate

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


The Ugly One is a live recording of readings from Anderson's recent retrospective and pseudo-autobiography Stories from the Nerve Bible . Recorded in London in the spring of '94, and full of typically dry, robotic humor, The Ugly One traverses subjects serious and silly, from Ouija boards to Hollywood stranglers. One story segues into another, always cryptically backed up by sounds spacey and swirling. Anderson accompanies her tales with trademark ambient background music (violins, looped tracks, and effects) that she mixed in the moment from her "podium" on stage. She also added a few overdubs after the fact; keyboards via Brian Eno, drums by Joey Barron, and work from bassist Greg Cohen and guitarist Gerry Leonard flesh out "Maria Teresa Teresa Maria." Her metaphor for the human body, the "Nerve Bible" opens up an odd pastiche of verbal images and allows her the freedom to create techno-storytelling for the wandering masses in an interactive age.

Roger Len Smith, e.Bop
November 1, 1995



On her later albums, Laurie Anderson had moved from her earlier spoken word-plus-effects style to a more overtly musical approach, with less effective results. The Ugly One With The Jewels, a recording of a live performance of readings from her book Stories From The Nerve Bible, returned her to speaking instead of singing, and it was her best album since Big Science. The 18 stories reflected Anderson's extensive travels, including forays into the Third World and to convents, although she made Los Angeles and Houston sound just as exotic. In fact, telling her stories over sounds from birds to guitars to electronic beeps, she seemed an anthropologist from another world, always finding the natives friendly but strange. And she didn't fail to recognize that she could appear just as odd to them: "The Ugly One With The Jewels" was a name used by one of her subjects to describe her.

William Ruhlmann, All-Music Guide



Der schöne Schein interessierte Laurie Anderson noch nie. The Ugly One With The Jewels sprengt wieder alle Grenzen: Lesungen aus ihrem Buch Stories From The Nerve Bible garniert Laurie sparsam mit Synthie-Sound und Cello: ein Hörspiel mit wenig Lärm um viel Inhalt. Für Fans und Spezialisten.

© Audio



...full of typically dry, robotic humor, THE UGLY ONE traverses subjects serious and silly....techno-storytelling for the wandering masses in an interactive age.

Jazziz (10/95)



In 1994, Laurie Anderson published a book entitled "Stories from the Nerve Bible", which took into account her 20 years as a performance artist. Her spoken word CD, "The Ugly One With The Jewels", was released one year later and documents a minimalist reading/concert she gave at Sandler's Wells Theater in London. Though this album is a pleasant excursion into the witty and intelligent mind of one of America's most brilliantly creative iconoclasts, it by no means comes as a surprise; all of her previous work has, at some juncture, included similar spoken word pieces designed to reinforce the musical accompaniment. Admittedly autobiographical in nature, the 18 selections on "Jewels" are rich in detail, humor and emotional depth without becoming cloying. Anderson's voice is more expressive than it has been in the past, and helps unite the pieces with the wonderful conversational demeanor of someone you've known for a long time, but haven't seen in a while. The stories themselves are varied and incisive, and specific scenes from the narrative stay with the listener long after the story is told: an African Chief sits on his throne clicking off pictures on his disposable camera without advancing the film in "Word Of Mouth"; a ouija board dissects Anderson's previous reincarnations as "a hat" and "hundreds of rabbis" in "The Ouija Board"; Andy Kaufman acts out a death scenario in "The Rotowhirl". Musical accompaniment to these verbal snapshots is created and minimized by Anderson herself and works to support the mood and texture of specific narratives in question. The one drawback seems to be Anderson's insistence on recycling previously released material over and over again. Her first album, "Big Science", was built on material from her "United States Live" box set, "Home of the Brave" utilized songs from "Mr. Heartbreak" and "The Ugly One With The Jewels" revisits a few songs from her last studio album, "Bright Red". These tend to break the continuity of the spoken material, almost like a loud noise disrupts one's concentration. Even so, this is still a fine listen and one that allows both neophites and those who have followed her career a limited access into the experiences that have influenced her art. Personal Favorites: the clash between two cultures in "Word Of Mouth"; the hauntingly spooky "The Ouija Board" and the airplane hitchhike to the North Pole accounted in "The Geographic North Pole".



I had been familiar with Laurie's work for many years and owned a couple of her earlier records. About 3 years ago, I had to make a two-day car trip by myself across the Southern U.S. I was not getting into any of the CDs I brought for the trip. So, I stop in a shopping mall in Tupelo, Mississippi and, operating on instinct, I bought The Ugly One With The Jewels. I listened to it three times through on that trip and I rarely let more than a few weeks pass without playing the thing again, 3 years later. Laurie doesn't sing much here, focusing instead on her storytelling, spoken language/poetry, with highly effective background electronic textures. It's a stunning CD, funny as a matter of routine, and then suddenly moving and evocative. I still shutter everytime I hear "White Lily."

With tongue in cheek I label this little review "a date with Laurie." This is because, with this CD, you get to know the enigmatic Ms. Anderson a bit, and you find her to be a load of fun. Can't wait 'til the next one....



This is a terrific album for those who love to listen to Laurie Anderson's quirky stories, and her hypnotic compelling voice telling them. These were recorded live in London, and throughout the whole album, Anderson's etherial voice tells the stories over a musical accompanyment. The stories are, in typical Laurie Anderson fashion, full of irony, humor, and off-beat observations of human foibles and idiosyncracies. The music presents a haunting backdrop for the stories. A few of the selections are pulled from other albums, (for example, Bright Red), and there's a section from Mister Heart Break that should sound familiar to L.A. fans. But most of it is brand new (at least to me), and it makes for a fascinating listen.

Laurie Anderson: The Ugly One with the Jewels and Other Stories

Speaking of music that doesn't make you dance, this album goes out of its way to warn you that it isn't going to, writing "A reading from Stories from the Nerve Bible" right on the cover, and, on the copy I bought, affixing an extra sticker warning of the dangerous "spoken word" material contained inside, like it was some kind of contamination that would require special handling during use. The thing, though, is that the lines between poetry, prose and music have always been pretty infrequently limed in Laurie Anderson's work, and I almost think that her other recent album, Bright Red/Tightrope, ought just as well to have had a sticker on it warning that it contained singing and music, given her history. The two albums, put together, actually complement each other nicely, providing separately the musical and narrative elements that some of Laurie's albums provide together.

And, despite the "reading" warning, there is quite a bit of music on this record. Laurie accompanies herself with atmospheric keyboards throughout, and a small band (including Brian Eno on keyboards) even drops by to play during one of the stories. Even her reading is so carefully done that at many points calling it singing wouldn't be at all ridiculous. Her control of timing and timbre, and her use of repeated phrases, are musical in the strictest sense, and while this album is most devoid of melody as we're used to hearing it, the distinction between "melody" and what Laurie does with her voice here only really obtains if you don't examine it too closely.

Still, and perhaps this is what justifies the distinction after all, you shouldn't buy this album for the sound of it, you should buy it to listen to the stories. Then again, now that I've said that, I'm not totally sure it's what I mean. After all, I've read Stories from the Nerve Bible already, so I already knew all the stories she reads here. And what's more, if I bought this album just to hear the stories, why am I finding it so fascinating listening to it again, after I've already both read and heard them? Perhaps this is what I mean: these are very cool stories, worth experiencing, and hearing them is a good way to experience them, as is reading them (I also highly recommend the book, which is an intense catalogue of Laurie's work over twenty years, and features a large number of pictures which you cannot hear on this recording); an additional virtue of the audio version is that, once you've become familiar enough with the stories that you are no longer interpreting the narrative as you listen, you can begin to concentrate on the exact nuances of Laurie's performance. In my opinion, they're worth the attention.

Copyright © 1995, glenn mcdonald



Speaking in a Jeweled Tongue

1n 1994, Laurie Anderson published a book entitled "Stories from the Nerve Bible", which took into account her 20 years as a performance artist. Her spoken word CD, "The Ugly One with the Jewels", was released one year later and documents a minimalist reading/concert she gave at Sandler's Wells Theater in London. Though this album is a pleasant excursion into the witty and intelligent mind of one of America's most brilliantly creative iconoclasts, it by no means comes as a surprise; all of her previous work has, at some juncture, included similar spoken word pieces designed to reinforce the musical accompaniment. Admittedly autobiographical in nature, the 18 selections on "Jewels" are rich in detail, humor and emotional depth without becoming cloying. Anderson's voice is more expressive than it has been in the past, and helps unite the pieces with the wonderful conversational demeanor of someone you've known for a long time, but haven't seen in a while. The stories themselves are varied and incisive, and specific scenes from the narrative stay with the listener long after the story is told: an African Chief sits on his throne clicking off pictures on his disposable camera without advancing the film in "Word of Mouth"; a ouija board dissects Anderson's previous reincarnations as "a hat" and "hundreds of rabbis" in "The Ouija Board"; Andy Kaufman acts out a death scenario in "The Rotowhirl". Musical accompaniment to these verbal snapshots is created and minimized by Anderson herself and work to support the mood and texture of specific narratives in question. The one drawback seems to be Anderson's insistance on recycling previously released material over and over again. Her first album, "Big Science", was built on material from her "United States Live" box set, "Home of the Brave" utilized songs from "Mr. Heartbreak", and "The Ugly One with the Jewels" revisits a few songs from her last studio album, "Bright Red". These tend to break the continuity of the spoken material, almost like a loud noise disrupts one's concentration. Even so, this is still a fine listen and one that allows both neophites and those who have followed her career a limited access into experiences that have influenced her art. Personal Favorites: the clash between two cultures in "Word of Mouth", the hauntingly spooky "The Ouija Board" and the airplane hitchhike to the North Pole accounted in "The Geographic North Pole".

Reviewer from El Paso, TX - February 6, 2000
 

 L y r i c s


 THE END OF THE WORLD

— Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to London Laurie Anderson.
Ooooaaaah!
Ooooaaaah!

Hi. This evening I’ll be reading from a book I just finished and since a lot
of it is about the future, I’m going to start more or less on the last page,
and tell you about my grandmother. Now she was a Southern Baptist Holy Ruler
and she had a very clear idea about the future, and of how the world would end.

— In fire.

In fire.

— Like in Revelations.

Like in Revelations.

And when I was ten my grandmother told me the world would end in a year. So I
spent the whole year praying and reading the Bible and alienating all my friends
and relatives. And finally the big day came. And absolutely nothing happened.
Just another day.

Ooooaaaah!

Now my grandmother was a missionary and she had heard that the largest religion
in the world was Buddhism. So she decided to go to Japan to convert Buddhists.

— And to inform them about the end of the world.

And to inform them about the end of the world.

And she didn’t speak Japanese. So she tried to convert them with a combination
of hand gestures, sign language and hymns, in English.

Ooooaaaah!

The Japanese had absolutely no idea what she was trying to get at. And when she
got back to the United States she was still talking about the end of the world.
And I remember the day she died. She was very excited. She was like a small bird
perched on the edge of her bed near the window in the hospital. Waiting to die.
And she was wearing these pink nightgowns and combing her hair so she’d look pretty
for the big moment when Christ came to get her.

Ooooaaaah!

And she wasn’t afraid but then, just at the very last minute something happened
that changed everything. Because suddenly, at the very last minute she panicked.
After a whole life of praying and predicting the end of the world, she panicked.
And she panicked because she couldn’t decide whether or not to wear a hat.

Ooooaaaah!

And so when she died she went into the future in a panic with absolutely no idea
of what would be next.


THE SALESMAN

Now the book is called Stories from the Nerve Bible and what I mean by the Nerve
Bible is the body. And parts of the body appear and disappear throughout the book,
adding up to a kind of self-portrait although not a very naturalistic one. And I
used the word Bible in the title of this book because the first really strange
stories I remember hearing were Bible stories. And these stories were completely
amazing: about parting oceans, and talking snakes. And people really seemed to believe
these stories. And I’m talking about adults. Adults, who mainly just did the most mundane
things imaginable: mowing their lawns and throwing potluck parties; they all believed in
these wild stories. And they would sit around and discuss them in the most matter-of-fact
way. So in a way I was introduced to a special local form of surrealism at an early age
and so there was always a question in my mind about what’s actually true and what is just
another art form. Now I’ve always been intere! sted in trying to define what makes up the
late twentieth century American for example and so, as an artist, I’ve always thought my
main job was to be a spy, to use my eyes and ears, and find some of the answers. For
example, I like to hang around the banks of phones in airports, one of my favorite
listening posts and eavesdrop on conversations. Now I usually travel on the same schedule
as salesmen and after lunch these guys call into the main office and I just stand there at
the phones, listening in and taking notes for my portrait of the American salesmen.
— Oh Frank? Listen, Frank. You know, I hate to say this about Brad. I mean we both know
he’s got a heck of a job. Ya, ya. Oh you’re so right. But you know, we both know that
Brad isn’t pulling his weight. You know what I mean? And I’m not saying this just because
we’re both up for the same Safeway account.

So this book is really a collection of voices and stories as well as portraits of people
that I’ve met along the way.


THE NIGHT FLIGHT FROM HOUSTON

It was the night flight from Houston. Almost perfect visibility. You could see the lights
from all the little Texas towns far below. And I was sitting next to a fifty-year old woman
who had never been on a plane before. And her son had sent her a ticket and said:
— Mom, you’ve raised ten kids; it’s time you got on a plane.

And she was sitting in a window seat staring out and she kept talking about the Big Dipper
and that Little Dipper and pointing; and suddenly I realized that she thought we were in
outer space looking down at the stars. And I said:

— You know, I think those lights down there are the lights from little towns.


WORD OF MOUTH

In 1980, as part of a project called Word of Mouth, I was invited, along with a living
other artists, to go to Panape, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. The idea
was that we’d sit around talking for a few days and that the conversations would be made
into a talking record.
The first night we were all really jet-lagged but as soon as we sat down the organizers
set up all these mikes and switched on thousand white light bulbs. And we tried our best
to seem as intelligent as possible. Television had just come to Panape a week before we
arrived and there was a strong excitement around the island as people crowded around the
few sets. Then the day after we arrived, in a bizarre replay of the first TV show ever
broadcast to Panape, prisoners escaped from a jail, broke into the radio station and
murdered the DJ. Then they went off on a rampage through the jungle, armed with
lawnmower blades. In all, four people were murdered in cold blood. Detectives, flown
in from Guam to investigate, swarmed everywhere. At night we stayed around in our
cottages, listening out into the jungle.

Finally the local chief decided to hold a ceremony for the murder victims. The artist
Marina Brownovich and I went, as representatives of our group to film it. The ceremony
was held in a large thatched lean-to and most of the ceremony involved cooking beans
in pits and brewing a dark drink from roots. The smell was overwhelming. Dogs 040225
around barking. And everybody seemed to be having a fairly good time… as funerals go.

After a few hours Marina and I were presented to the chief, who was sitting on a raised
platform above the pits. We’d been told we couldn’t turn our backs on the chief at any
time or ever be higher than he was. So we scrambled up onto the platform with our film
equipment and sort of duck-waddled up backwards to the chief. As a present I brought one
of those Fred Flintstone cameras, the kind where the film canister is also the body of
the camera, and I presented it to the chief. He seemed delighted and began to click off
pictures. He wasn’t advancing the film between shots, but since we were told we shouldn’t
speak unless spoken to, I wasn’t able to inform him that he wasn’t going to get twelve
pictures, but only one, very, very complicated one.

After a couple more hours the chief lifted his hand, and there was absolute silence. All
the dogs had suddenly stopped barking. We looked around and saw the dogs. All their
throats had been simultaneously cut and their bodies, still breathing, pierced with rods,
were turning on those pits. The chief insisted we join in the meal but Marina had turned
green and I asked if we could just have ours to go. They carefully wrapped the dogs in
leaves and we carried their bodies away.


THE SOUL IS A BIRD

In 1984, as part of the press for the tour I was doing in Japan, I was asked to go to
Bali and speak about the future with the prince of Ouboud. Now the idea was that I would
represent the Western world, the prince the Southern world, and the Japanese press
representative would represent whatever was left. The conversations would be published
in a large book, scheduled for release one year after the concert tour. Now as press
this didn’t really seem like a great way to advertise concerts but it sounded like fun
anyway.
And I stayed at the palace in one of the former king’s harem houses. Each of the king’s
wives had had her own house guarded by a pair of animals, a bear and a fox for example.
By the time I got there, years later, the menagerie had dwindled a bit. My house was
guarded by two tropical fish. Bali was extremely hot in the afternoons and the
conversations with the prince drifted along randomly from topic to topic. The prince
was a bon vivant trained in Paris and he spoke excellent English and when he wasn’t
in the palace he was out on the bumpy back roads racing cars. So we talked about cars,
a subject I know absolutely nothing about, and I felt that as far as representing the
Western world was going, I was failing pretty dismally. Then, on the second night, the
prince served an elaborate feast of Balinese dishes. At the end of the meal, the
conversation slowed to a halt, and after a few minutes of silence he asked:

— Would you like to see the cremation tapes of my father?

The tapes were several hours long and were a record of the elaborate three-month
ceremony shot by the BBC. When the king died the whole country went to work, building
an enormous funeral pyre for him. After months of preparation, during which time the
corpse continues to reside in the living room, they hoisted the body to the top of
this rickety, extremely flammable structure, and lit a match. The delicate tower
crumbled almost immediately, and the king’s body fell to the ground with a sickening
thud. Suddenly, everyone began to cheer.

Later, I learned that the Balinese believe that the soul is a bird and that when the
body falls it shakes the bird loose and gives it a hit start on its way to heaven.


THE OUIJA BOARD

In 1978, I spent some time in California in the fall, looking for a quiet place to live.
I finally found what seemed to be the perfect apartment. But the night after I moved in
I heard a tremendous pounding sound. As it turned out, I had moved in right above a Hawaiian
hallow log drum school. Every other night, it was converted into a hula school with a live
band of six Hawaiian guitars.
I decided to soundproof my place but I didn’t hang the door very well and all the sounds
kept drifting in. About this time, like a lot of New Yorkers who find themselves on the
West Coast, I got interested in various aspects of California’s versions of the occult.
We would sit around at night when the Santa Anna winds howled outside, and ask questions
to the ouija board. I found out a lot of information on my past 9,361 human lives on this
planet. My first life was as a raccoon.

— And then you were a cow. And then you were a bird. And then you were a hat, spelled the ouija.

We said “a hat?” We couldn’t figure it out. Finally we guessed that the feathers from the
bird had been made into a hat. Is this true?

— Yes, spelled the ouija. Hat counts as half life.

And then?

— Hundreds and hundreds of rave eyes.

Now this is apparently my first life as a woman, which should explain quite a few things.
Eventually though, the ouija’s written words seemed to take a kind of personality, a kind
of a voice. Finally we began to ask the board if the ouija would be willing to appear to us
in some other form.

— Forget it, forget it, forget it, forget it, forget it, forget it.

The ouija seemed like it was about to crash. Please, please, what can we do 060318 now so
you will show yourself to us in some other manifestation?

— You should lurk. You should L, U, R, K. Lurk.

No, I never really figured out how to lurk in my own place, even though it was only a rented
place, but I did find myself looking over my shoulder a lot. And every sound that drifted in
seemed to be a version of this phantom voice whispering in a code that I could never crack.


THE UGLY ONE WITH THE JEWELS

In 1974, I went to Mexico to visit my brother who was working as an anthropologist with Tsutsil
Indians, the last surviving Mayan tribe. And the Tsutsil speak a lovely birdlike language and
are quite tiny physically; I towered over them. Mostly, I spent my days following the women
around since my brother wasn’t really allowed to do this. We got up at 3am and began to separate
the corn into three colors. And we boiled it, ran to the mill and back, and finally started
to make the tortillas. Now all the other women’s tortillas were 360°, perfectly toasted, perfectly
round; and after a lot of practice mine were still lobe-sided and charred. And when they thought
I wasn’t looking they threw them to the dogs.
After breakfast we spent the rest of the day down at the river watching the goats and braiding
and unbraiding each other’s hair. So usually there wasn’t that much to report. One day the women
decided to braid my hair Tsutsil-style. After they did this I saw my reflection in a puddle. I
looked ridiculous but they said, “Before we did this you were ugly, but now maybe you will find
a husband.”

I lived within in a yurt, a thatched structure shaped like a cob cake. And there’s a central
fireplace ringed by sleeping shelves sort of like a dry beaver down. Now my Tsutsil name was
Lausha, which loosely translated means “the ugly one with the jewels”. Now ugly, OK, I was
awfully tall by local standards. But what did they mean by the jewels? I didn’t find out what
this meant until one night, when I was taking my contact lenses out, and since I’d lost the
case I was carefully placing them on the sleeping shelf; suddenly I noticed that everyone was
staring at me and I realized that none of the Tsutsil had ever seen glasses, much less contacts,
and that these were the jewels, the transparent, perfectly round, jewels that I carefully hid
on the shelf at night and then put for safekeeping into my eyes every morning.

So I may have been ugly but so what? I had the jewels.

Full fathom thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade
But that suffers a sea change
Into something rich and strange
And I alone am left to tell the tale
Call me Ishmael


THE GEOGRAPHIC NORTH POLE

The summer of 1974 was brutally hot in New York and I kept thinking about how nice and icy it
must be at the North Pole. And then I though, “Wait a second, why not go?” You know, like in
cartoons where they hang going to the North Pole on their door knobs and they just take off.
So I spent a couple of weeks preparing for the trip, getting a hatchet, a huge backpack, maps,
knives, sleeping bags, lures and a three month supply of Banic, a versatile high-protein paste
that can be made into flat bread, biscuits or cereal.

Now I had decided to hitch hike and one day I just walked out onto Austin Street, weighing down
seventy pounds of gear, and stuck out my thumb.

— Going North? I asked the driver as I struggled into a station wagon.

After I got out of New York, most of the rides were trucks until I reached the Hudson Bay and
began to hitch in small male planes. The pilots were usually guys who’d gone to Canada to avoid
the draft or else embittered Vietnam vets who never wanted to go home again. Either way they
always wanted to show off a few of their stunts. We’d go swooping along the rivers doing loop
do loops and baby 080152. And they’d drop me off at an airstrip. “There’ll be another plane
by here couple of weeks; see ya; good luck.”

I never did make it all the way to the geographic pole; it turned out to be a restricted area
and no one was allowed to fly in or even over it. I did get within a few miles of the magnetic
pole though. So it wasn’t really that disappointing. I entertained myself in the evenings,
cooking or smoking, and watching the blazing light of the huge Canadian sunsets as they turned
the lake into fire.

Later I lay on by back, looking up at the Northern lights and imagining there’d been a nuclear
holocaust and that I was the only human being left in all of North America and what would I do
then.

And then, when these lights went out, I stretched out on the ground, watching the stars as they
turned around and their enormous silent 080318.

I finally decided to turn back because of my hatchet. I’d been chopping some wood and the hatchet
flew out of my hand on the upswing. And I did what you should never do when this happens: I
looked up to see where it had gone and it came down — fffooo — just missing my head and I
thought, “My God! I could be working around here with a hatchet embedded in my skull and I’m
ten miles from the airstrip. And nobody in the whole world knows where I am.”

Daddy Daddy, it was just like you said
Now that the living outnumber the dead
Where I come from it’s a long thin thread
Across an ocean. Down a river of red
Now that the living outnumber the dead
Speak my language


JOHN LILLY

Now in this book there are a lot of stories about talking animals: talking snakes, and birds,
and fish; and about people who try to communicate with them.
John Lilly, the guy who says he can talk to dolphins, said he was in an aquarium and he was
talking to a big whale who was swimming around and around in his tank. And the whale kept
asking him questions telepathically. And one of the questions the whale kept asking was: do
all oceans have walls?

You know, I’ve always thought that one of the most serious defects of the human body was that
you couldn’t close your ears. You can’t point them anywhere or close them, they just sort of
hang there on the sides of your head. But an acupuncturist explained to me that the pressure
points in the ears are very important because the whole body is represented right there in
the ear. The ears, he said, are vestigial fetuses, little versions of yourself, one male and
one female, and he showed me here’s the lobe, that’s the miniature upside down head, and this
curve here is the spine, and right here are the little genitals, and that was when I went
back to wearing hats.


THE ROTOWHIRL

Around 1978, I met a comedian, Andy Kaufmann. And he was performing his avant-garde Elise
act in a club in Queens. The performance started with Andy playing the bongos, and for
some unknown reason, sobbing. We became friends and I acted as Andy’s straight man in clubs
and field trips. At the Improv in New York Andy would begin his show by insulting women and
saying, “I won’t respect them until one of them comes up here and wrestles me down.” This was
supposed to be my job. I sat in the club drinking whiskies trying to get up the nerve. In
the meantime I was also supposed to be heckling him. And after three whiskies I managed to
get pretty abusive. Wrestling him down though was really hard because Andy really fought.
On our field trips we would go to Coney Island to try out some of Andy’s theories on cutting-edge
comedy.
We’d stand around the “test your strength” games, the one with the big sledgehammer in the bell,
and Andy would make fun of all the guys who were swinging away. And I was supposed to beg him
for one of the huge stuffed bunnies. “Oh Andy Honey, please get me a bunny, please, please.”
Finally Andy would step up to the big thermometer and take a swing. The indicator would rise
a few inches and “Try again, weakling!” would flash. At this point Andy would start yelling
that the game was wicked and demanding to see the manager.

We also went at the rotowhirl, the ride that plasters everyone against the walls of a spinning
cylinder, and stretches their bodies into Dopplered blobs. Before the ride actually starts,
there are a couple of awkward minutes while the attendant checks the motor and the riders,
bound head and foot, stare at each other. This was the moment that Andy seized. He would
start by looking around in a panick and then he would start to cry. “I don’t wanna be on this
ride, I’ve changed my mind; we’re all gonna die.” The other riders would look around
self-consciously. Should they help? He would then begin to sob uncontrollably.

I loved Andy. He would come over to my house and read from a novel he was writing; he would
read all night. And I don’t know if any of this book was ever even published.

I have never been one that hoped that Elvis is still hanging around somewhere, hiding, but I
will probably always expect to see Andy reappear, someday.


ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM

There was a devout nun in the XVth century who decided to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and
she belonged to an order that wore bags over their heads. And the mother superior told the nun
that if she walked through the countryside with a bag on her head, she would scare people.
But the nun insisted, so the mother superior allowed to her to walk around and around the
cloister, every day for three years until she covered the equivalent distance to the Holy City.
At the end of her journey the nun was so exhausted that she collapsed. A doctor was called.
After examining her he announced that she was too weak to make the return trip. The nun died
shortly after.


THE HOLLYWOOD STRANGLER

I was living out in West Hollywood when a Hollywood strangler was strangling women. Every
night there was a panel discussion on TV about the strangler, speculations about his habits,
his motives, his methods. One thing was clear about him: he only strangled women when they
were alone, or with other women. And the panel members would always end the show by saying:
Now for all you women, listen: don’t go outside without a man. Don’t walk out to your car,
don’t even take the garbage out by yourself; always go with a man.

Then, one of the eyewitnesses identified a policeman as one of the suspects. The next night,
the chief of the police was on the panel, and he said:

Now for all you women, whatever happens, do not stop for a police officer, stay in your car.
If a police officer tries to stop you, do not stop, keep driving and under no circumstances
should you get out of your car.

For a few weeks, half the traffic in LA was doing twice the speed limits.


MARIA TERESA TERESA MARIA

Last spring, I spent a week in a convent in the Midwest. I’d been invited there to do a
series of seminars on language. They’d gotten my name from a list in Washington, from a
brochure that described my work as “deals with the spiritual issues of our time”, undoubtedly
a blurb I had written myself.
Because of this, and also because men were not allowed to enter the convert, they asked me
to come out. The night I arrived, they had a party for me in a nearby town, in a downstairs
lounge of a crystal lane’s bowling alley.

The alley was reserved for the nuns, for their Tuesday night tournaments; it was a pizza
party. And the lounge was decorated to look like a cave: every surface was covered with
that spray-on rock that’s usually used for soundproofing. In this case, it had the opposite
effect: it amplified every sound.

Now the nuns were in the middle of their annual tournament playoffs. And we could hear all
the bowling balls rolling very slowly down the aisles above us, making the rock club
stalactites tremble and resonate.

Finally the pizza arrived, and the mother superior began to bless the food. Now this woman
normally had a gruffed low-pitched speaking voice but as soon as she began to pray he voice
rose, became pure, bell-like, like a child’s. The prayer went on and on increasing in volume
each time a sister got a strike, rising in pitch “Dear Father in Heaven”.

The next day I was scheduled to begin this seminar on language. I’d been very struck by
this prayer and I wanted to talk about how women’s voices rise in pitch when they’re
asking for things, especially from men. But it was odd. Every time I set a time for the
seminar, there was some reason to postpone it: the potatoes had to be dug out, or a
busload of old people would appear out of nowhere and have to be shown around.

So I never actually did the seminar. But I spent a lot of time there, walking around the
grounds and looking at all the crops, which were all labeled. And there was also a neatly
laid-out cemetery, hundreds of identical white crosses in rows, and there were labeled
“Maria”, “Teresa”, “Maria Teresa”, “Teresa Maria”, and the only sadder cemetery I saw was
last summer in Switzerland. And I was dragged there by a Hermann Hesse fanatic, who had
never recovered from reading 130414, and one hot August morning when the sky was quiet,
we made a pilgrimage to the cemetery; we brought a lot of flowers and we finally found
his grave. It was marked with a huge fur tree and a mammoth stone that said “Hesse” in
huge Helvetica bold letters. It looked more like a marquee than a tombstone. And around
the corner was this tiny stone for his wife, Nina, and on it was one word:
“Auslander” — foreigner. And this made me so sad and so mad that I was sorry I’d brought
the flowers. Anyway, I de! cided to leave the flowers, along with a mean note, and it read:

Even though you’re not my favorite writer, by long shots, I leave these flowers on your
resting spot.


SOMEONE ELSE’S DREAM

You know those nights, when you’re sleeping, and it’s totally dark, and absolutely silent,
and you don’t dream, and there’s only blackness, and this is the reason, it’s because on
those nights you’ve gone away. On those nights, you’re in someone else’s dream, you’re busy
in someone else’s dream.
Some things are just pictures, they’re scenes before your eyes. Don’t look now, I’m right
behind you.


WHITE LILY

What Fassbinder film is it? The one-armed man comes into the flower shop and says:
What flower expresses days go by, and they just keep going by endlessly, endlessly pulling
you into the future? Days go by endlessly, endlessly pulling you into the future.

And the florist says:

White Lily.


THE MYSTERIOUS “J”

In the book there are several chapters about women talking and women writing. Now it seems
likely that men invented writing and wrote what? Maybe ninety, maybe ninety-five percent
of everything that’s ever been written. Oh there’s the recent theory that a woman, the
mysterious “J”, wrote much of the Old Testament, but only because God was portrayed in this
book as patriarchal, tyrannical and inconsistent, the way presumably only a woman would
write about a man. But I think I can picture this “J” scribbling away and laughing although
the first time I saw the Bible re-enacted was sometime in the 70s and there was a cable TV
show in the Midwest and Bible study groups would act out parts of the Bible. But these were
pretty low budget productions and shot in a church basement or somebody’s 160109 and all
the prophets had towels wrapped around their heads for turbans, but you could see the tags,
the ones with the washing instructions, sort of sticking out and back. There were ver! y few
women on these tapes. They tended to be the odd shepherdess sort dancing girl bit part.
Then last year I was invited to perform in Israel and I was very excited because I wanted to
see Jerusalem where this mysterious “J” had spent her life writing and working and the Gulf
War had made me even more curious. So I did some asking around, some informal research, and
I talked to an Israeli woman who was living in New York and she was really having a hard
time living there, and she was always complaining about American men, and she’d say:

— You know, American men are such wimps, I mean, they’re always talking about their feelings.

And I said:

— They are?

And she said she really liked Israeli men because they were so tough and because they all had
guns and I said:

— Guns, you like guys with guns?

And she said she did and went on about how terrible it was that Clinton wanted to reduce the
army and she was so animate about this that I started to get kind of worried. Yeah, I thought,
yeah that’s true, what are all these military people going to do when they lose their jobs?
And then I thought, well, hang on, we’ve got all these service industries now, things like
psychotherapy, and the military approach to psychotherapy would really be kind of perfect,
really efficient and fast, you know, listen, you are nothing, you are a worm, and if you
don’t get that mother complex out by 0400 hours you are dead meat.


THE CULTURAL AMBASSADOR

Anyway, I was in Israel as a kind of cultural ambassador and there were lots of press
conferences scheduled around the performances. The journalists usually started things
off by asking about the avant-garde.
— So, what’s so good about new? they’d ask.

— Well, new is… interesting.

— And what, they would say, is so good about interesting?

— Well, interesting is, you know… it’s… interesting. It’s like… being awake, you know,
I’m treading water now.

— And what is so good about being awake? they’d say.

Finally I got the hang of this: never answer a question in Israel, always answer by asking
another question. But the Israelis were vey curious about the Gulf War and what Americans
had thought about it, and I tried to think of a good question to ask and answer to this, but
what was really on my mind was that the week before I had myself been testing explosives in a
parking lot in Tel Aviv. Now this happened because I had brought some small stage bombs to
Israel as props for this performance and the Israeli promoter was very interested in them.
And it turned out that he was on weekend duty on one of the bomb squads, and bombs were also
something of a hobby during the week. So I said:

— Look, you know, these bombs are nothing special, just, just a little smoke

And he said:

— Well, we can get much better things for you.

And I said:

— No really, these are fine…

And he said:

— No but it should be big, theatrical. It should make an impression, I mean you really
just the right bomb.

And so one morning he arranged to have about fifty small bombs delivered to a parking lot,
and since he looked on it as a sort of special surprise favor, I couldn’t really refuse, so
we are on this parking lot testing the bombs, and after the first few explosions, I found
I was really getting pretty… interested.

They all had very different characteristics: some had fiery orange tails, and made these
low paah, paah, paah, popping sound; others exploded mid-air and left long smoky, slinky
trails, and he had several of each kind in case I needed to review them all at the end,
and I’m thinking:

— Here I am, a citizen of the world’s largest arms supplier, setting off bombs with the
world’s second largest arms customer, and I’m having a great time!

So even though the diplomatic part of the trip wasn’t going so well, at least I was getting
some instruction in terrorism. And it reminded me of something in a book by Dan 170256
about how terrorists are the only true artists left, because they’re the only ones who are
still capable of really surprising people. And the other thing it reminded me of, were all
the attempts during the Gulf War to outwit the terrorists, and I especially remember an
interesting list of tips devised by the US embassy in Madrid, and these tips were designed
for Americans who found themselves in war-time airports. The idea was not to call ourselves
to the attention of the numerous foreign terrorists who were presumably lurking 170334
all the way to terminal, so the embassy tips were a list of mostly don’ts. Things like:
don’t wear a baseball cap; don’t wear a sweat shirt with the name of an American university
on it; don’t wear Timberlands with no socks; don’t chew gum; don’t yell “Ethel, our pl! ane
is leaving!”. I mean it’s weird when your entire culture can be summed up in eight giveaway
characteristics.

And during the Gulf War I was traveling around Europe with a lot of equipment, and all the
airports were full of security guards who would suddenly point to a suitcase and start yelling:

— Whose bag is this? I wanna know right now who owns this bag.

And huge groups of passengers would start #170430 out for the bag, just running around in
circles like a Skud missile on its way in, and I was carrying a lot of electronics so I had
to keep unpacking everything and plugging it in and demonstrating how it all worked, and I
guessed I did seem a little fishy; a lot of this stuff wakes up displaying LED program                                                                                                                                            
have to keep setting all this stuff up and they’d listen for a while and they’d say:

— So uh, what’s this?

And I’d pull out something like this filter and say:

— Now this is what I’d like to think of as the voice of Authority.

And it would take me a while to tell them how I used it for songs that were, you know,
about various forms of control, and they would say:

— Now, why would you want to talk like that?

And I’d look around at the 170549 and the undercover agents and the dogs and the
radio in the corner, tuned to the Superbowl coverage of the war. And I’d say:

— Take a wild guess.

Finally of course, I got through, with this after all American-made equipment, and the
customs agents were all talking about the effectiveness, no the beauty, the elegance, of
the American strategy of pinpoint bombing. The high tech surgical approach, which was
being reported by CNN as something between grand opera and the Superbowl, like the first
reports before the blackout when TV was live and everything was heightened, and it was so…
euphoric.


SAME TIME TOMORROW

You know that little clock, the one on your VCR, the one that’s always blinking twelve
noon ’cause you never figured out how to get in there and change it? So it’s always the
same time, just the way it came from the factory. Good morning. Good night. Same time
tomorrow. We’re in record.
Ooohaaa
Ooohaaa

So here are the questions: is time long or is it wide? And the answers? Sometimes the
answers just come in the mail. And one day you get that letter you’ve been waiting for
forever. And everything it says is true. And then in the last line it says: burn this.

Ooohaaa
Ooohaaa
Ooohaaa

And I what I really want to know is: are things getting better or are they getting worse?

Stop, stop. Pause, pause. We’re in record.

Because 180244 stories that we have remembered, and most of them never even get
written down. And so when they say things like “We’re gonna do this by the book”, you
have to ask “What book?”, because it would make a big difference if it was Dostoyevsky
or just, you know, Ivanhoe.

Ooohaaa
Ooohaaa

I remember where I came from; there were burning buildings and a fiery red sea. I remember
all my lovers. I remember how they held me.

Ooohaaa
Ooohaaa

East, East. The edge of the world.
West, West. Those who came before me.

We’re in record.

Ooohaaa

Come here little girl. Get into the car. It’s a brand new Cadillac. Bright red.
Come here little girl.

Ooohaaa
Ooohaaa

When my father died we put him in the ground.
When my father died it was like a whole library had burned down.

Stop, stop. Pause, pause.

Ooohaaa
Ooohaaa

Same time tomorrow.

And wild beasts shall rest there
And owls shall answer one another there
And the hairy ones shall dance there
And sirens in the temples of pleasure

Speak my language.

Good night.

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


Currently no Samples available!