Artist and innovator Laurie Anderson’s upcoming show at the Fitzgerald—a copresentation of the Walker, the SPCO’s Liquid Music Series, and MPR Live Events—is called The Language of the Future, a name initially employed by a track on her 1984 album United States Live. Thirty years on, as the track’s ominous forecast of the digital age rings true, Anderson has continued to share the same incisive, oft-surreal narrative that aptly earned her the Gish Prize for “outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”
Regarding a philosophy of life, Anderson insists, “I don’t have one, and if I did, I wouldn’t make it into a film and make you watch it.” On having a message, she has said, “If I had [one], I would write it down and e-mail it to everybody.” Still, the artist has imparted her fair share of aphorisms over the years; collecting these could easily result in Anderson’s own edition of Oblique Strategies. In anticipation of her performance this Saturday, I’ve begun such a collection below.
1. “If you’re a young artist, wondering what to call yourself, consider ‘multimedia artist.’ It’s so vague. Then, no one can say, ‘Hey, how come you’re a jazz person, and you’re making a pop opera?’ Genres are for bins. ‘What bin should we put you in, so we that we can sell what you do?’ Ignore the bins.”
2. “Be as playful as possible. It’s the thing that is, in a way, the easiest to forget when you start doing things that have ‘big themes’ and you have to work in certain ways. Most of the things that I’ve made, I’ve made in the spirit of goofing around with stuff. Goofing around. So goof around with stuff. Be playful. Have a really good time and you’ll find some interesting things.”
3. “You can make a movie now with almost nothing and it will look pretty good. It’s the same with a record.” In response, Brian Eno added, “And if it doesn’t look good in a conventional way, you take advantage of the way it does look.”
4. “Sometimes, […] try to make your very, very worst work. You will learn a lot about what it is that you’re trying to do.”
5. “I think I do my work for some sadder version of myself, a woman who would be sitting in Row K. I am trying to make her laugh.”
6. “No one will ever ask you to do the thing you really want to do. […] Do not wait for this to happen. It will never happen. Things will happen to you, but this will never happen. Just think of what you’d like to do, what you dream of doing, and then just start doing it.”
7. “I’m just going to mention these three rules that Lou [Reed, her longtime partner] and I had. […] So the first one is don’t be afraid of anyone. Imagine your life if you’re not afraid of anyone. Two, get a really good BS detector and learn how to use it. Who’s faking it and who is not? Three, be really tender. And with those three, you’re set.”
8. (In response to the question, “What is the most important lesson life has taught you?”) “Love is everything.”
9. “[I]t’s always good to end with a question.”
10. “What is consciousness?”
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