Laurie Anderson "Amelia"

September 25, 2024 8:53 PM

Laurie Anderson has a new work out. Amelia [YT Playlist] explores the life of Amelia Earhart. She discusses it here for about a half hour, if you're so inclined.
posted by hippybear (11 comments total)

I mean, as a commentary on my own post, I guess that as Laurie has gotten older, her works have gotten more emotionally taxing. Landfall was a lengthy meditation on the way Hurricane Sandy completely devestated her life. Life Of A Dog was... well, about pets. And this is... sort of... like an audio diary of a tragedy disguised as a string orchestra and sound collage work?

I truly love Laurie, and I guess even going back to O Superman... this is who she has been.

Still, I've listened to this twice now and I'm entirely stunned.
posted by hippybear at 10:18 PM on September 25 [2 favorites]

Also, I don't know why I discover things like this after making a post, but here is Oxy Live! Laurie Anderson in Conversation with Paul Holdengräber (4/10/2024) [1h25m] which is delightful.
posted by hippybear at 10:28 PM on September 25 [2 favorites]

hippybear, I don't know when I'm going to manage to make the time to listen to this, but I am bookmarking so many things you've posted this week. I'm so grateful to you for finding cool things and sharing them with me (and all of MetaFilter, hah). Thank you.
posted by kristi at 10:30 PM on September 25 [7 favorites]

Laurie Anderson and Amelia Earhart, two of my lifelong crushes in one post, thanks hippybear!

When I was younger and lived in SoHo, I would often see Laurie Anderson shuffling down the street, her hair making her instanty recognizable. Once, she sat next to me at Film Forum and I spent the entire showing trying to get the nerve to tell her how much I enjoyed her performances. Sadly, I was too shy then.

The associated interview was great too, but when was it recorded? Some of the topics (Ukraine, AI) make it sound as if it was recent. But at 5:25, she says something to the effect of "we just elected a new president last week, virtually, and *he* doesn't like women". Does she know something we don't? I hope not! Hearing that, even in her wonderful voice, still gave me a cold sweat.

Still, it's wonderful hearing about her process, and seeing how that ferociously creative mind looks at the world.....
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 11:34 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

It's an odd thing--as her works have gotten more cohesive, my music-time has gotten more fragmented, like we're aging in different directions. I still haven't finished listening to Life of a Dog. I can't seem to get more than a few minutes in to Songs from the Bardo without bursting into tears, so I don't even know what the middle sounds like. So I listen to my little pop songs that are only a minute and a half long--my Spotify is so locked down lately it feels like it can't offer me much else--and one of my two or three favorite artists is going on without me.
posted by mittens at 4:28 AM on September 26 [1 favorite]

Laurie seems to have gone further in the direction of telling stories set to music; maybe even stories that are music. My first time with this was when I heard “Stories From The Nerve Bible”. I used to just hear her stuff as music but not so much now. I like them as experiences for a quiet evening when I need to get out of my own head. This one has a full orchestra along with her and another vocalist.

I love her voice - calm even when conveying a sense of drama.
posted by cybrcamper at 9:18 AM on September 26

I forgot - “Stories From The Nerve Bible” turns out to be “The Ugly One With The Jewels”.
posted by cybrcamper at 9:42 AM on September 26

Yeah, Nerve Bible turned into Jewels and also Bright Red. There's a very primitive filming of The Nerve Bible on YouTube if you want to endure it. I was privileged to see the tour in person, one of a couple of times i've seen Anderson perform. It was a heady time to be a Laurie fan because she'd blown up so big and wasn't fitting into any boxes that anyone wanted to put her in.

The t-shirt from the tour has a list of Laurie's bookmark list down the back, which is still one of my favorite early internet artifacts because nobody knew what a bookmark list even was at the time.
posted by hippybear at 12:35 PM on September 26 [2 favorites]

Thank you for this!! Consider myself blessed to have caught her show live in PDX earlier this year. When can we get her to be President or Benevolent Dear Leader?
posted by riverlife at 2:40 PM on September 26

I've maintained this .sig for decades:

--
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment
before starting to improve the world. -- Anne Frank
Paradise is exactly where you are
right now...only much, much better. -- Laurie Anderson
posted by kingless at 5:22 PM on September 26

I've been captivated by Laurie since I was a young teenager, and I saw the film of one of her live performances on TV. Even then, with no frame of reference at all, I knew I was witnessing something really special.

I saw her years later in Melbourne performing a mix of spoken word and music. One of the spoken word pieces stuck with me (imagine this in her breathy alto):
"It's a digital world. Ones and Zeros. Everybody wants to be a one. But there are... a lot. Of. Zeroes."
posted by tim_in_oz at 7:31 PM on September 26