The Sunday Read: ‘Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2021

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the Hirshhorn Museum told Laurie Anderson that it wanted to put on a big, lavish retrospective of her work, she said no. For one thing, she was busy and has been for roughly 50 years. Over the course of her incessant career, Ms. Anderson has done just about everything a creative person can do. She helped design an Olympics opening ceremony, served as the official artist in residence for NASA, made an opera out of “Moby-Dick” and played a concert for dogs at the Sydney Opera House. And she is still going. On top of all this, Ms. Anderson had philosophical qualms about a retrospective. She is 74, which seems like a very normal age to stop and look back, and yet she seems determined, at all times, to keep moving forward.

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0:00.0	Today's episode of The Daily is sponsored by BetterHelp.
0:03.5	Why not take the next 10 seconds to focus on your breath, whatever you are doing, wherever
0:08.1	you are.
0:09.1	Breathe in.
0:10.9	Breathe out.
0:12.5	BetterHelp is therapy online via video, phone or message and is now available in the
0:17.4	UK, making mental health affordable and accessible.
0:21.2	Sign up and get matched with a therapist.
0:23.6	Listeners get 10% of their first month at BetterHelp.com slash daily pod.
0:28.4	One of the first times I met Laurie Anderson was at a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall.
0:38.7	It was late February 2020, which feels today like the innocent world of the before times.
0:50.4	So I went to see Laurie set up for this show.
0:53.4	And I remember getting there and Carnegie Hall was completely empty, except for the performers
0:58.2	were all sort of setting up and getting ready.
1:00.8	There was Philip Glass sitting at a grand piano tinkling his little arpeggios and they were
1:06.6	all kind of taking turns.
1:07.8	I remember the actress Sandra O came and really beautifully read this poem by Alan Ginsburg.
1:15.0	And during all of this warming up, Laurie Anderson was by herself in the middle of the
1:20.1	stage, down on her knees, setting up her very elaborate kind of homemade musical rig
1:27.7	that she uses for her performances and has used for almost 50 years.
1:32.8	All of these synthesizers and just instruments that can electronically simulate every kind
1:39.1	of instrument you can imagine.
	...

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