7 lessons from Laurie Anderson (a first draft)
Thoughts on seeing Laurie Anderson’s new show, Ark: United States V.
Digression can be a method - In her film Heart of a Dog, Laurie often says, “Well, I digress,” after wandering off into a story that seems barely connected to the previous one. It was the same with her Norton Lectures. At first, you think, “Blimey, this woman is easily distracted.” But after a while, you realise: digression is her method.
You don’t have to make sense - The rest of us are desperately trying not to digress, because we want to ‘make sense’. We think that the story we are telling needs to be linear. It needs to be tidy, not have loose ends left hanging. Because… that’s how life is, isn’t it? We all know it’s not true that life makes sense, yet the delusion that it should persists.
You don’t have to be one thing - Who are you? Are you wacky, with a bizarre sense of humour? Or are you deadly serious? Profound or silly? Laurie teaches us we don’t have to choose. It’s okay if one moment you’re sharing something heartbreakingly sad, and the next something totally bonkers. Being everything is closer to our true nature than being something.
Catch people off-guard, it’s a gift - We go to a comedy to have a good laugh, or a play to watch something profound unfold. Seeing Laurie Anderson perform, we have to let go of any ideas about how we’re supposed to feel. From one moment to the next we might be laughing, our defences down, then a bit of life and death reality lands with a punch, next tears of tenderness. It’s a gift to be caught off guard.
It’s okay to repeat yourself, all artists do - This show was like a retrospective, with themes that had been there from the beginning. Motifs like, ‘you have to learn to feel sad without being sad’ run through her work like handrails. It’s okay to spend your whole life pondering a handful of things. As long as you keep going deeper.
Nothing is ever finished - I’m not sure the show was finished. It had the feeling of a work in progress. But then, is anything ever finished? Can you really find where something begins, where it ends? Of course, at some point you have to declare it ready, press the button, like on this blog post. But that doesn’t make it finished.
Take yourself seriously, but humbly - Laurie Anderson is one of the bravest people I know. She’s doing her thing (it’s not for you or for me). Yet, that’s why we love her. And, at the end, she all but avoided the applause, directing it to others. There was no grand finale. It was more like the end of an intimate meeting… oh well, it’s getting late, better leave it there, thanks for tonight.
