United States by Laurie Anderson Part One Say Hello A certain American religious sect has been looking at conditions of the world during the Flood. According to their calculations, during the Flood the winds, tides and currents were in an overall southeasterly direction. This would mean that in order for Noah’s Ark to have ended up on Mount Ararat, it would have to have started out several thousand miles to the west. This would then locate pre-Flood civilization in the area of Upstate New York, and the Garden of Eden roughly in New York City. Now, in order to get from one place to another, something must move. No one in New York remembers moving, and there are no traces of Biblical history in the Upstate New York area. So we are led to the only available conclusion in this time warp, and that is that the Ark has simply not left yet. Let’s compare this situation to a familiar occurrence: You’re driving alone at night. And it’s dark and it’s raining. And you took a turn back there and you’re not sure now that it was the right turn, but you took the turn anyway and you just keep going in this direction. Eventually, it starts to get light and you look out and you realize you have absolutely no idea where you are. So you get out at the next gas station and you say: Hello. Excuse me. Can you tell me where I am? You can read the signs. You’ve been on this road before. Do you want to go home? Do you want to go home now? Hello. Excuse me. Can you tell me where I am? You can read this sign language. In our country, this is the way we say Hello. SAY HELLO. Hello. Excuse me. Can you tell me where I am? In our country, this is the way we say Hello. It is a diagram of movement between two people. It is a sweep on the dial. In our country, this is also the way we say Goodbye. Hello. Excuse me. Can you tell me where I am? In our country, we send pictures of people speaking our sign language in Outer Space. We are speaking our sign language in these pictures. Do you think that They will think his arm is permanently attached in this position? Oh, do you think They will read our signs? In our country, Goodbye looks just like Hello. SAY HELLO. SAY HELLO. SAY HELLO. Walk the Dog Well, I saw a lot of trees today and they were all made of wood. They were wooden trees and they were made entirely of wood. I cam home today and you were all on fire. Your shirt was on fire, and your hair was on fire, and flames were licking all around your feet. And I did not know what to do! And then a thousand violins began to play, and I really did not know what to do then. So I just decided to go out and walk the dog. I went to the movies, and I saw a dog thirty feet high. And this dog was made entirely of light. And he filled up the whole screen. And his eyes were long hallways. He had those long, echoing, hallway eyes. I turned on the radio and I heard a song by Dolly Parton. And she was singing: Oh! I feel so sad! I feel so bad! I left my mom and I left my dad. And I just want to go home now. I just want to go back in my Tennessee mountain home now. Well, you know she’s not gonna go back home. And I know she’s not gonna go back home. And she knows she’s never gonna go back there. And I just want to know who’s gonna go and walk her dog. Oh! I feel so bad. I feel so sad. But not as bad as the night I wrote this song. Close your eyes! (OK) Now imagine you’re at the most wonderful party. (OK) Delicious food. (Uh huh.) Interesting people. (Mm hmm.) Terrific music. (Mn hmmh.) Now open them! (Oh no.) Well, I just want to go home now and walk the dog. Violin Solo [instr] Closed Circuits Well I know who you are, baby. I’ve seen you go into that meditative state. You’re the snake charmer, baby. And you’re also the snake. You’re a closed circuit, baby. You’ve got the answers in the palms of your hands. Well I saw a blind Judge and he said: I know who you are and I said: Who? And he said: You’re a closed circuit, baby. He said: The world is divided into two kinds of things. There’s luck, and there’s the law. There’s a knock on wood that says: IT MIGHT. And there’s the long arm of the law that says: IT’S RIGHT. And it’s a tricky balancing act between the two because both are equally true. ’Cause might makes right and anything could happen. Che sarà sarà. Am I right? Who? Do. Who? do. Who do you love? Well I saw a couple of hula dancers just hula-ing down the street. And they said: Well I wonder which way the tide is gonna roll tonight? And I said: Hey hold up hula dancers! You know the tide’s gonna roll out and then it’s gonna roll right back in again. ’Cause it’s a closed circuit, baby. We got rules for that kind of thing. and you know the moon is so bright tonight. Who? Do. Who? Do. And don’t think I haven’t seen all those blind A-rabs around. I’ve seen ’em around. And I’ve watched them charm that oil right out of the ground. Long black streams of that dark electric light. And they said: One day the sun went down and it went way down, into the ground. And three thousand years go by and we pump it right back up again. ’Cause it’s a closed circuit, baby. We can change the dark into the light and vice versa. Well I know who you are, baby. I’ve watched you count yourself to sleep. You’re the shepherd, baby. And you’re also one, two, three hundred sheep. I’ve watched you fall asleep. Well I was up real late last night. Must have just dropped off to sleep. ’Cause I saw you were crying, baby. You were crying in your sleep. You’re the snake charmer, baby. And you’re also a very long snake. You’re a closed circuit, baby. You’ve got the answers in the palms of your hands. For a Large and Changing Room [instr] {From ‘Pictures of It’: Images of a room are projected onto ceiling [out of sight of audience] white violin bow cuts into plane of focus, creating a ‘screen.’ Room floats midair.} The Language of the Future Last year, I was on a twin-engine plane coming from Milwaukee to New York City. Just over La Guardia, one of the engines conked out and we started to drop straight down, flipping over and over. Then the other engine died: and we went completely out of control. New York City started getting taller and taller. A voice came over the intercom and said: Our pilot has informed us that we are about to attempt a crash landing. Please extinguish all cigarettes. Place your tray tables in their upright, locked position. Your Captain says: Please do not panic. Your Captain says: Place your head in your hands. Captain says: Place your head on your knees. Captain says: Put your hands on your head. Put your hands on your knees! (heh-heh) This is your Captain. Have you lost your dog? We are going down. We are all going down, together. As it turned out, we were caught in a downdraft and rammed into a bank. It was, in short, a miracle. But afterwards I was terrified of getting onto planes. The moment I started walking down that aisle, my eyes would clamp shut and I would fall into a deep, impenetrable sleep. (YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THIS ... YOU DON’T WANT TO BE HERE ... HAVE YOU LOST YOUR DOG?) Finally, I was able to remain conscious, but I always had to go up to the forward cabin and ask the stewardesses if I could sit next to them: “Hi! Uh, mind if I join you?” They were always rather irritated--“Oh, all right (what a baby)”--and I watched their uniforms crack as we made nervous chitchat. Sometimes even this didn’t work, and I’d have to find one of the other passengers to talk to. You can spot these people immediately. There’s one on every flight. Someone who’s really on _your_ wavelength. I was on a flight from L.A. when I spotted one of them, sitting across the aisle. A girl, about fifteen. And she had this stuffed rabbit set up on her tray table and she kept arranging and rearranging the rabbit and kind of waving to it: “Hi!” “Hi there!” And I decided: This is the one _I_ want to sit next to. So I sat down and we started to talk and suddenly I realized she was speaking an entirely different language. Computerese. A kind of high-tech lingo. Everything was circuitry, electronics, switching. If she didn’t understand something, it just “didn’t scan.” We talked mostly about her boyfriend. This guy was never in a bad mood. He was in a bad mode. Modey kind of a guy. The romance was apparently kind of rocky and she kept saying: “Man oh man you know like it’s so digital!” She just meant the relationship was on again, off again. Always two things switching. Current runs through bodies and then it doesn’t. It was a language of sounds, of noise, of switching, of signals. It was the language of the rabbit, the caribou, the penguin, the beaver. A language of the past. Current runs through bodies and then it doesn’t. On again. Off again. Always two things switching. One thing instantly replaces another. It was the language of the Future. Put your knees up to your chin. Have you lost your dog? Put your hands over your eyes. Jump out of the plane. There is no pilot. You are not alone. This is the language of the on-again off-again future. And it is Digital. And I answered the phone and I heard a voice and the voice said: Please do not hang up. We know who you are. Please do not hang up. We know what you have to say. Please do not hang up. We know what you want. Please do not hang up. We’ve got your number: One ... Two ... Three ... Four. We Are Tapping Your Line [instr] {From: Small Voice. Pillow speaker (in mouth) runs to concealed cassette deck which plays tape of violin solo. Violin coming from the mouth is phrased + modulated by the lips.} Three Walking Songs I saw an man on the Bowery and he was wearing ancient, greasy clothes and brand-new bright white socks and no shoes. Instead, he was standing on two small pieces of plywood and as he moved along the block, he bent down, moved one of the pieces slightly ahead and stepped on it. Then he moved the other piece slightly ahead and stepped on it. There are Eskimos who live above the timberline. There’s no wood for the runners on their sleds. So instead, they use long frozen fish which they attach to the bottoms of their sleds to slip across the snow. I saw a photograph of Tesla, who invented the Tesla coil. He also invented a pair of shoes with soles four inches thick to ground him while he worked in the laboratory. In this picture, Tesla is sitting in his lab, wearing the shoes, and reading a book by the light of the long, streamer-like sparks shooting out of his transformers. The Healing Horn When I was in L.A. I went to several services run by an organization called the Universalist World Church. The services were held in a huge auditorium, formerly a used-car showroom. The head of this operation was a man named Dr. J., an Egyptologist, preacher and recording artist. At the back of the church he sold cassettes he had produced in his home studio. The cassettes had titles like: “UFOs and the Creatures Who Drive Them.” His assistant was a tiny woman named Miss Velma, a soprano who also administered the Oil of Youth at the Healing Horn. The Healing Horn was an actual horn of identifiable origins all set in jewels. When you touch the horn you feel a rejuvenating surge of energy, about fifty volts, as long as you happen to be standing on the metal plate embedded in the altar. The most spectacular event of the year at the World Church was a Christmas service. There was a giant screen painted with a Nativity scene. There were lots of animals painted on the screen, with holes cut out where their heads would be; there was a microphone behind each hole. During the service, Miss Velma would stand behind the screen and stick her head through these holes, using a different voice for each animal. “Hi. I’m the cow and I saw it all.” “Hello. I’m the dove. The lovely dove. And I was there too. I saw everything too.” The service would then abruptly cut to Dr. J., who would announce, “First, Miss Velma will shoot an arrow through a balloon. Then she will perform an Indian dance. And finally, she will perform a song for you on the mellophone.” With no further explanation, Miss Velma comes out from behind the screen. First she shoots an arrow through a balloon. Then she does an Indian dance. And last, she performs a song on the mellophone. And somehow it was amazing. First he tells you what will happen and then it actually happens, just the way he said it would. Like a prophecy being fulfilled. New Jersey Turnpike {It is against the rules and regulations of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to drive in the wrong direction on the New Jersey Turnpike. It is against the rules and regulations of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to drive in the right direction in reverse on the New Jersey Turnpike. It is against the rules and regulations of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to drive herds of hooven animals on the New Jersey Turnpike. It is against the rules and regulations of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to drive vehicles with metal tires on the New Jersey Turnpike. It is against the rules and regulations of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to drive in the wrong direction on the entrance and exit ramps of the New Jersey Turnpike. It is against the rules and regulations of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to drive in the right direction in reverse on the entrance and exit ramps of the New Jersey Turnpike. It is against the rules and regulations of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to drive herds of hooven animals on the entrance and exit ramps of the New Jersey Turnpike. It is against the rules and regulations of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to drive vehicles with metal tires on the entrance and exit ramps of the New Jersey Turnpike.} PETER: There was an old couple who decided to drive cross country in their car. Both of them were almost legally deaf. About ten miles away from home, the burglar alarm for their car door went off and got stuck in the “on” position. They drove all the way to San Francisco like this. You could hear them coming from three miles away. The alarm didn’t seem to bother the old woman at all. She thought it was sort of pleasant. Near Chicago, she said to her husband, “It sounds like faraway bees on a summer day.” Her husband said, “What?” LAURIE: You can read the signs. You’ve been on this road before. Do you want to go home? Do you want to go home now? PETER: One of the major airlines used to run a kind of lottery, mostly to give passengers something to do while the plane was waiting in line on the runway. The stewardess would hand out lottery tickets and you peeled the sticker away. If you had the right combination of numbers, you won a free trip to Hawaii. If you didn’t, you didn’t win a free trip. The airline discontinued the game when there were too many complaints about the timing of the lottery. They said: Our surveys tell us that our customers felt that waiting on the runway was the wrong time to play a game of chance. LAURIE: In my dream, I am your customer, and the customer is always right. PETER: He said, you know, to be _really_ safe you should always carry a bomb on an airplane. Because the chances of there being _one_ bomb on a plane are pretty small. But the chances of _two_ bombs are almost minuscule. So by carrying a bomb on a plane, the odds of your becoming a hostage or of getting blown up are astronomically reduced. LAURIE: You’re driving and you’re talking to yourself and you say to yourself: Why these mountains? Why this sky? Why this road? This big town. This ugly train. PETER: In our eyes. And in our wives’ eyes. In our arms and (I might add) in our wives’ arms. LAURIE: How come people from the North are so well organized, industrious, pragmatic and--let’s face it--preppy? And people from the South are so devil-may-care? Every man for himself. PETER: I know this English guy who was driving around in the South. And he stopped for breakfast one morning somewhere in southeast Georgia. He saw “grits” on the menu. He’d never heard of grits so he asked the waitress, “What are grits, anyway?” She said, “Grits are fifty.” He said, “Yes, but what _are_ they?” She said, “They’re extra.” He said, “Yes, I’ll have the grits, please.” LAURIE: Over the river and through the woods. Let me see that map. PETER: A sideshow. A smokescreen. A passing landscape. LAURIE: I was living out in West Hollywood when the Hollywood Strangler was strangling women. He was strangling women all over town, but he was particularly strangling them in West Hollywood. 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. 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 out the garbage 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 police was on the panel. He said, “Now, girls, 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 L.A. was doing twice the speed limit. PETER: I remember when we were going into outer space. I remember when the President said we were going to look for things in outer space. And I remember the way the astronauts talked and the way everybody was watching because there was a chance that they would burn up on the launching pad or that the rocket would take off from Cape Canaveral and land in Fort Lauderdale five minutes later by mistake. And now we’re not even trying to get _that_ far. Now it’s more like the bus. Now it’s more like they go up just high enough to get a good view. They aim the camera back down. They don’t aim the camera up. And then they take pictures and come right back and develop them. That’s what it’s like now. Now that’s what it’s like. LAURIE: Every time I hear a fire engine it seems like the trucks are running away from the fire. Not towards it. Not right into it. They seem like monsters in a panic--running away from the fire. Stampeding away from the fire. Not towards it. Not right into it. PETER: In Seattle, the bus drivers were out on strike. One of the issues was their refusal to provide a shuttle service for citizens to designated host areas in the event of a nuclear attack on Seattle. The drivers said, “Look, Seattle will be a ghost town.” They said, “It’s a one-way trip to the host town, we’re not driving back to that ghost town.” LAURIE: A city that repeats itself endlessly. Hoping that something will stick in its mind. So Happy Birthday JOE: In our country, you’re free and so you’re born and so they say, “You’re free,” so happy birthday. And even if you were born to lose--even if you were a complete wreck when you were born--you might still grow up to be president ... because you’re free. GERALDINE: Today, you might be an average citizen ... a civilian ... a pedestrian ... But tomorrow you might be elected to some unexpected office--or sell your novel and suddenly become famous. Or you could get run over by a truck and your picture could get into the papers _that_ way. Because you’re free and anything might happen ... so happy birthday. JOE: Gee! All those lights and all those screens! The New York Experience is mind-boggling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many screens and I’ll probably come again ... It was really amazing, mind-boggling. GERALDINE: You’re walking and you don’t always realize it but you’re always falling at the same time. With each step you fall forward. Over and over, you’re falling and then catching yourself from falling ... And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time. JOE: Look! Over there! It’s a real dog ... and it’s really talking GERALDINE: I wanted you and I was looking for you ... but I couldn’t find you. I wanted you and I was looking for you all day ... but I couldn’t find you. JOE: Well, I paid my money, and I’ve got this funny feeling that somehow--you know--it’s not what I paid my money for. I mean I _paid_ my money and I just don’t think this is what I paid my money--you know--what I paid my money for. GERALDINE: No one has ever looked at me like this before ... no one has ever _stared_ at me for so long like this ... This is the first time anyone has ever looked at me like this ... stared at me like this for such a long time ... for so long. JOE: Well, he didn’t know what to do so he just decided to watch the government and see what the government was doing and then kind of scale it down to size--and run his life that way. GERALDINE: She said the hardest thing to teach her three-year-old kid was what was alive and what wasn’t. The phone rings and she holds it out to her kid and says, “It’s Grandma. Talk to Grandma.” But she’s holding a piece of plastic. And the kid says to herself: “Wait a minute. Is the phone alive? Is the TV alive? What about that radio? What is alive in this room and what doesn’t have life?” Unfortunately, she doesn’t know how to ask these questions. JOE: We were in a large room. Full of people. All kinds. And they had arrived at the same time. And they were all free and they were all asking themselves the same question: What is behind that curtain? They were all free. And they were all wondering what would happen next. GERALDINE: This is the time and this is the record of the time. EngliSH SH SH SH EngliSH... FrenSH... SpaniSH... DeutSH... DutSH... YiddiSH... RusSHian... SHinese... PoliSH... SwediSH...FinniSH... FinniSH... FinniSH... Dance of Electricity (for Nikola Tesla) A while ago, I got a call from the Tesla Institute in Belgrade, long distance. The voice was very faint and it said, “Understand do we that much of your work has been dedicated to Nikola Tesla and do we know the blackout of information about this man in the U.S. of A. And so we would like to invite you to the Institute as a free citizen of the world ... as a free speaker on American Imperialist Blackout of Information .. Capitalist resistance to Technological Progress ... the Western World’s obstruction of Innovation. So think about it.” He hung up. I thought: Gee, really a chance to speak my mind, and I started doing some research on Tesla, whose life story is actually really sad. Basically, he was the inventor of AC current, lots of kinds of generators and the Tesla coil. His dream was wireless energy. And he was working on a system in which you could plug appliances directly into the ground. A system which he never really perfected. Tesla came over from Graz and went to work for Thomas Edison. Edison couldn’t stand Tesla for several reasons. One was that Tesla showed up for work every day in formal dress--morning coat, spats, top hat and gloves--and this just wasn’t the American Way at the time. Edison also hated Tesla because Tesla invented so many things while wearing these clothes. Edison did his best to prevent conversion to AC and did everything he could to discredit it. In his later years, Edison was something of a showman and he went around on the Chautauqua circuit in upstate New York giving demonstrations of the evil effects of AC. He always brought a dog with him and he’d get up on stage and say: “Ladies and gentlemen! I will now demonstrate the effects of AC current on this dog!” And he took two bare wires and attached them to the dog’s head and the dog was dead in under thirty seconds. At any rate, I decided to open the series of talks in Belgrade with a song called “The Dance of Electricity” and its beat is derived from an actual dance--an involuntary dance--and it’s the dance you do when one of your fingers gets wedged in a live socket and your arms start pumping up and down and your mouth is slowly opening and closing and you can feel the power but no words will come out. Three Songs for Paper, Film and Video The detective novel is the only novel truly invented in the twentieth century. In the detective novel, the hero is dead at the very beginning. So you don’t have to deal with human nature at all. Only the slow accumulation of facts ... of data ... In science fiction, the hero just flies in at the very beginning. He can bend steel with his bare hands. He can walk in zero gravity. He can see right through lead doors. But no one asks how he is able to do these things. They just say, “Look! He’s walking in zero gravity.” So you don’t have to deal with human nature at all. When TV signals are sent out, they don’t stop. They keep going. They pick up speed as they leave the solar system. By now, the first TV programs ever made have been traveling for thirty years. They are well beyond our solar system now. All those characters from cowboy serials, variety hours and quiz shows are sailing out. They are the first true voyagers into deep space. And they sail farther and farther our, intact, still talking. And as we listen with our instruments, as we learn to listen farther and farther into space, we can hear them. We listen farther and that is all we hear. They are jamming our lines. We listen and we hear them talking, traveling, going faster and faster ... getting fainter and fainter. And as our instruments become more sophisticated, we can hear them better .... speeding away ... the sound of speeding away ... like a phone continuously ringing. Born, Never Asked [instr] Sax Trio [instr] Part Two From the Air [instr] Beginning French Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of concerts in French. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French. I memorize it. I mean, my mouth is moving but I don’t understand what I’m saying. It’s like sitting at the breakfast table and it’s early in the morning and you’re not quite awake. And you’re just sitting there eating cereal and sort of staring at the writing on the box--not reading it exactly, just more or less looking at the words. And suddenly, for some reason, you snap to attention, and you realize that what you’re reading is what you’re eating ... but by then it’s much too late. After doing these concerts in French, I usually had the temporary illusion that I could actually speak French, but as soon as I walked out on the street, and someone asked me simple directions, I realized I couldn’t speak a single word. As a result of this inadequacy, I found that the people I had the most rapport with were the babies. And one of the things I noticed about these babies was that they were apparently being used as some kind of traffic testers. Their mothers would be pushing them along in their strollers--and they would come to a busy street with lots of parked cars--and the mother can’t see what the traffic is like because of all the parked cars--so she just sort of edges the stroller out into the street and cranes her head out afterwards. And the most striking thing about this is the expression on these babies’ faces as they sit there in the middle of traffic, stranded, banging those little gavels they’ve all got and they can’t even speak English. Do you know what I mean? Violin Pantomime [instr] {The hammer strikes. Its bang is memorized by a harmonizer and repeated. Strike and repeat. Like a ticking watch.} O Superman (for Massenet) O Superman. O Judge. O Mom and Dad. Hi. I’m not home right now. But if you want to leave a message, just start talking at the sound of the tone. Hello? This is your mother. Are you there? Are you coming home? Hello? Is anybody home? Well you don’t know me but I know you. And I’ve got a message to give to you. Here come the planes. So you better get ready, ready to go. You can come as you are but pay as you go. Pay as you go ... And I said: OK! Who is this really? And the voice said: This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the hand. The hand that takes ... Here come the planes. They’re American planes, made in America. Smoking or nonsmoking? And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. ’Cause when love is gone there’s always justice, and when justice is gone there’s always force, and when force is gone, there’s always Mom. Hi Mom! So hold me Mom in your long arms ... So hold me Mom, in your long arms, in your automatic arms, your electronic arms, in your arms ... So hold me Mom, in your long arms, your petrochemical arms, your military arms, in your electronic arms ... Talkshow During the newspaper strike, the networks asked the writers to read their columns on TV. The writers weren’t actors, they did all the wrong things they squinted into the ... lights, wore rumpled! clothes and used BIG WORDS the signs for the deaf were getting more and “more” obscure with lots of qualifying (phrases) and ... uh ... awkward ... pauses so the producers kept saying: OK! Buzz words only! Two syllabus. tops! {Earshot Talkshow Uplink Update Phaselock Downtime Hotline Aftermath Upshot Dropout Nosecone Headset Hotshot Heatwave Domehead Flashback Feedback} Frames for the Pictures I had this dream ... and in it my mother was sitting there cutting out pictures of hamsters from magazines. In some of the pictures, the hamsters are pets, and in some of them, hamsters are just somewhere in the background. And she’s got a whole pile of these cedar chips--you know the kind: the kind from the bottoms of hamster cages--and she’s gluing them together into frames for the pictures. She glues them together, and frames the pictures, and hangs them up over the fireplace--that’s more or less her method. And suddenly I realize that this is just her way of telling me that I should become a structuralist filmmaker--which I had, you know, planned to do anyway ... Democratic Way I dreamed that I was Jimmy Carter’s lover, and I was somewhere, I guess in the White House ... and there were lots of other women there, too ... and they were supposed to be his lovers too ... but I never even saw Jimmy Carter ... and none of the other women ever saw him either ... And there was this big discussion going on because Jimmy had decided to open up the presidential elections to the dead. That is, that anyone who had ever lived would have the opportunity to become President. He said he thought it would be more democratic that way. The more choice you had the more democratic it would be Looking for You; Walking and Falling I wanted you ... and I was looking for you ... but I couldn’t find you .... I wanted you. And I was looking for you all day. But I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find you. You’re walking and you don’t always realize it but you’re always falling. With each step, you fall slightly forward and then catch yourself from falling. Over and over, you’re falling and then catching yourself from falling. And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time. Red Hot My sister and I used to play this game called Red Hot. And in Red Hot, the ceiling is suddenly about a thousand degrees. And there’s no gravity. Gravity doesn’t exist anymore. And you’re trying not to float up to the ceiling so you have to hold on to things. You have to hold on to sheets, pillows, chairs, _anything_ so that you won’t go floating up to that ceiling. I guess it’s not what anyone would call a very _competitive_ game. You know what I mean? Mainly, we just sweated a lot and we were really glad when it was all over and the ceiling cooled back down again. Private Property William F. Buckley, Jr., Mr. Private Property, planned to give a little talk, a political speech, in a small town in Illinois. His advance men discovered that the center of town had disappeared, and that all the commercial action was out at the mall. When Buckley arrived at the mall, he set up his microphone near a little fountain and began to hand out leaflets and autograph copies of his latest book. Just as a small crowd of shoppers gathered, the owners of the mall ran out and said: Excuse us. This is private property, we’re afraid you’ll have to leave ... You know, when I got back from a trip this summer, I noticed that all of the old factories here on the outskirts of town had suddenly been transformed into luxurious condos and that thousands of people had moved into them almost overnight. Most of the new residents appeared to be professional barbecuers. Every night, they were out on their fire escapes barbecueing something. And the smoke rising from their little fires made the whole neighborhood look like a giant battlefield. And I would look out my window and say: Hm. You know, last night I came up out of the subway and I said to myself: Hm. Do you want to go home? And I thought: You _are_ home. Do you want to go home? Do you want to go home now? Neon Duet [instr] Let X = X I met this guy-- and he looked like he might have been a hat check clerk at an ice rink-- which, in fact, he turned out to be-- And I said: Oh boy! Right _again_! Let x = x. you know, it could be you. It’s a sky-blue sky. Satellites are out tonight. let x = x. You know, I could write a book-- and this book would be thick enough to stun an ox. Cause I can see the future--and it’s a place ... about 70 miles east of here--where it’s lighter. Linger on over here. Got the time? let x = x. I got this postcard and it read, it said: Dear Amigo ... Dear Pardner-- Listen--I just wanted to say thanks. So ... thanks. Thanks for all the presents. Thanks for introducing me to the Chief. Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out-- Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife. Oh and uh ... thanks for letting me autograph your cast. Hugs + kisses -- XXXOOOO Oh yeah. P.S. I ... I feel--feel like--I am--in a burning building-- And I gotta go. Cause I--I feel--feel like--I’m in a burning building-- And I gotta go. It’s a sky-blue sky. Satellites are out tonight. let x = x. You know, I could write a book. Cause I can see the future--and it’s a place about 70 miles west of here--where it’s darker Linger on over here. Got the time? Your eyes. It’s a day’s work looking into them. Your eyes. It’s a day’s work just looking into them. The Mailman’s Nightmare I have this recurring nightmare, and that is that everyone in the world, except myself, has the problems of babies. I mean they’re normal height and everything--five feet, six feet tall--but they have these giant heads, like babies, you know? And enormous eyes, and tiny arms and legs, and they can hardly walk. And I’m going down the street and when I see them coming, I give them some room and step aside. Also, they don’t read or write, so I don’t have much to do. Jobwise, it’s pretty easy. Difficult Listening Hour Good evening. Welcome to Difficult Listening Hour. The spot on your dial for that relentless and impenetrable sound of Difficult Music (Music). So sit bolt upright in that straight-backed chair (Music), button that top button (Music), and get set for some difficult music. Ooola. I came home today, and I opened the door with my bare hands, Ooola. and I said: Hey! Who tore up all my wallpaper samples? Who ate all the grapes-- Ooola. the ones I was saving? And this guy was sitting there, and I said: Hey, Pal! What’s Ooola. going on here? And he had this smile, and when he smiled he had these big white teeth, Ooola. like luxury hotels on the Florida coastline. And when he closed his mouth, it looked Ooola. like a big scar. And I said to myself: Holy smokes! Looks like some kind of a guest/ Ooola. host relationship to me. And I said: Hey, pal! What’s going on here anyway, who are you? Ooola. And he said: Now, I’m the Soul Doctor, and you know, language is a virus from Outer Space. And hearing your name is better than seeing your face. Language is a Virus from Outer Space (--William S. Burroughs) I saw this guy on the train, and he seemed to have gotten stuck in one of those abstract trances, and he was going ugh ... ugh ... ugh ... And Geraldine said: You know, I think he’s in some kind of _pain_ ... I think it’s a pain cry. And I said: If that’s a pain cry, then language ... is a virus ... from outer space ... {A Train B Flick C Note D Day E Coli F Stop G Men H Bomb I Beam K Rations L Shape M 16 N YC O Type P Coat Q Tip RS VP T Shirt U Boat V Sign W WII X Ray Y Me?} Well I was feeling really rotten the other day, I was feeling washed up .... and I said to myself: I know what I’m going to do--I’m going to take myself out. So I went to the park and I sat down and I said: Boy is this fun. I’m really having fun now. I can’t remember having this much fun before ... And then this little _dog_ ran up, and this dog had ears like a drop-leaf table, and I said: Boy is this ever fun ... Well I was talking to a friend the other day, and I was saying: I wanted you ... and I was looking for you ... but I couldn’t find you. And he said: _Hey_ ... are you talking to me ... or are you just practicing for one of those performances of yours? {ZZZZZZZZZZ} You know, I don’t believe there’s such a thing as the Japanese language. I mean, they don’t even know how to write. They just draw pictures of these little characters, and when they talk, they just make sounds that more or less synch up with their lips. That’s what I think .... Well I walked uptown and I saw a sign that said: Today’s lecture Big Science and Little Men. So I walked in and there were all these salesmen and a big pile of electronics. And they were singing: Phase Lock Loop. Neurological Bonding. Video Disc. They were singing: We’re gonna link you up. They were saying: We’re gonna phase you in. They said: Let’s look at it this way--Picture a Christmas tree with lots of little sparkly lights, and each light is totally separate, but they’re all sort of hanging off the same wire. Get the picture? And I said: Count me out. And they said: We’ve got your number. And I said: Count me out. You gotta count me out. Reverb [instr] {Contact mic attached to glasses--presses on head; banging is amplified & reverbed} If You Can’t Talk About It, Point To It (for Ludwig Wittgenstein and Reverend Ike) [instr] {Throw that crutch away! --Reverend Ike} City Song {There are ten million stories in the Naked City. But no one can remember which one is theirs.} Finnish Farmers During WWII, the Russians were testing their parachutes. Sometimes they didn’t open at all and a lot of troops were lost this way. During the invasion of Finland, hundreds of troops were dropped during the middle of winter. As usual, some of the chutes didn’t open and the troops fell straight down into the deep snow, drilling holes fifteen feet deep. The Finnish farmers would then get out their shotguns, walk out into their fields, find the holes, and fire down them. During the 1979 drought in the Midwest, the American farmers began to rent their property to the United States government as sites for missile silos. They were told: Some of the silos contain Minutemen, and some do not. Some are designed to look like ordinary corn and grain silos. The military called these Decoy Silos, but the farmers called them the Scarecrows. The government also hinted that some of these silos might be connected by hundreds of miles of railroad in an underground shuttle system. This is the breadbasket. These are the crops. The shot heard round the world. The farmers, the Minutemen. The farmers, the ones who were there. Breadbasket. Melting Pot. Meltdown. _Shutdown_. Part Three Hey Ah It was up in Canada and it was August, but very cold. I had been staying on this Cree Indian reservation for a few days, just sort of hanging around. One day, some anthropologists showed up at the reservation. They came in a little plane with maple leaves painted on the wings. They said they were there to shoot a documentary of the Cree Indians. They set up their video equipment in a tin Quonset hut next to the Hudson Bay Company. Then they asked the oldest man on the reservation to come and sing some songs for their documentary. On the day of the taping, the old man arrived. He was blind and wearing a red plaid shirt. They turned on some lights and he started to sing. But he kept starting over and sweating. Pretty soon it was clear that he didn’t really know any of the songs. He just kept starting over and sweating and rocking back and forth. The only words he really seemed sure of were “Hey ah ... hey ah hey ... hey hey hey ah hey ... hey ...” (Hey ah hey hey hey ah hey) I am singing the songs, (Hey ah hey ah hey) the old songs ... but I can’t remember the words of the old songs, (Hey hey hey ah hey) the old hunting songs. I am singing the songs of my fathers and of the animals they hunted down. (Hey hey hey ah hey) I never knew the words of the old songs. (Hey hey ah hey hey hey hey ah hey) I never went hunting. (Hey hey ah ah hey ah hey) I never sang the songs (Hey ah hey) of my fathers. (Hey hey ah hey) I am singing for this movie; (Hey ah) I am doing this for money. (Hey hey ah hey) I remember Grandfather; he lay on his back while he was dying. (Hey ah hey hey ah hey) I think I am no one. (Hey hey ah hey hey) Bagpipe Solo Redskins Red coats Red tape Red ink Red letter Red handed Red blooded Red eye Red neck Red wood Red bait Red herring Red cross The Reds Steven Weed Steven Weed was asked by the FBI to come in and answer a few questions. He said it wasn’t like an interrogation room at all. There were no bright lights. But he said they had it set up so that there was an agent on his right and an agent on his left and that they alternated questions so that he had to keep turning his head in order to answer them. And he said after a few hours of doing this that no matter what question they asked or what answer he gave the answer always looked like no no oh-no. no. Time and a Half In the middle of the seventeenth century, the only people living in the American colonies were the Indians, a few scattered pilgrims, and lots of British troops. Communication between Britain and the colonies was confused and chaotic. King George told the troops: “Just pick some kind of headquarters and talk to me from there. I don’t care where you put it.” The logical choice for the headquarters was Philadelphia which had a few brick streets and some picturesque supply stores and nobody has ever been able to figure out why the British troops chose Washington instead--which was basically a few shacks in a swamp. Recently, historians have discovered two facts that might add up to a possible explanation. First, the outskirts of Washington, D.C. lay just a few yards inside the official subtropical zone of the British Empire. Second, all British troops working in subtropical zones were paid time and a half. Voices on Tape Was ist das Prinzip? What is the principle? Das Prinzip ist folgenes: The principle is as follows: Klang besteht aus Wellen. Sound is composed of waves. Wenn die Wellen sich zu Formen beginnen, horen wir das als Klang. When the wave form begins, we hear it as sound. Sie sind nicht mehr hörbar, sie bewegen sich langsamer. But after the sound has disappeared, the waves continue to travel. Dies ist ein normaler Raum. This is a normal room. Niemand hat ihn seit 1955 betreten. No one has been in this room since 1955. Aber er ist immor noch voller langsam sich bewegen der Wellen. Die Stimmen und Klange längst verflossener jahre darstellen. However, it is still full of slowly traveling waves. The original sound and voices continue to move back and forth. Mit starken Stereo-mikrofonen, war es uns moglich diese Klange aufzunehmen, und sie in horbare Satze urzuwandeln. With sensitive stereo-microphones, we were able to record these waves, and then translate them back into their original form: words. Ich bin hier. (I am here.) Goethe ist ein Diplomat. (Goethe is a diplomat.) So viele Licht hier. (So few lights here.) Example #22 The sun is shining slowly. The birds are flying so low. Honey, you’re my one and only. So pay me what you owe me. Lights are going down slowly. In the woods, the animals are moving. Honey, you’re my one and only. So pay me what you owe me. Strike False Documents I went to a palm reader and the odd thing about the reading was that everything she told me was totally wrong. She said I loved airplanes, that I had been born in Seattle, that my mother’s name was Hilary. But she seemed so sure of the information that I began to feel like I’d been walking around with these false documents permanently tattooed to my hands. It was very noisy in the parlor and members of her family kept running in and out. They were speaking a high, clicking kind of language that sounded a lot like Arabic. Books and magazines in Arabic were strewn all over the floor. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe there was a translation problem--that maybe she was reading my hand from right to left instead of left to right. Thinking of mirrors, I gave her my other hand. Then she put her other hand out and we sat there for several minutes in what I assumed was some kind of participatory ritual. Finally I realized that her hand was out because she was waiting for money. New York Social Life Well, I was lying in bed one morning, trying to think of a good reason to get up, and the phone rang and it was Geri and she said: Hey, hi! How are you? What’s going on? How’s your work? Oh fine. You know, just waking up but it’s fine, it’s going OK, how’s yours? Oh a lot of work, you know, I mean, I’m trying to make some money too. Listen, I gotta get back to it, I just thought I’d call to see how you are ... And I said: Yeah, we should really get together next week. You know, have lunch, and talk. And she says: Yeah, uh, I’ll be in touch. OK? OK. Uh, listen, take care. OK. Take it easy. Bye bye. Bye now. And I get up, and the phone rings and it’s a man from Cleveland and he says: Hey, hi! How are you? Listen I’m doing a performance series and I’d like you to do something in it. Uh, you know, you could make a little money. I mean, I don’t know how I _feel_ about your work, you know, it’s not really my style, it’s kind of trite, but listen, it’s _just_ my opinion, don’t take it personally. So listen, I’ll be in town next week. I gotta go now, but I’ll give you a call, and we’ll have lunch, and we can discuss a few things. And I hang up and it rings again and I don’t answer it and I go out for a walk and I drop in at the gallery and they say: Hey, hi. How are you? Oh fine. You know. How’s your work going? OK. I mean ... You know it’s not like it was in the sixties. I mean, those were the days, there’s just no money around now, you know, survive, produce, stick it out, it’s a jungle out there, just gotta keep working. And the phone rings and she says: Oh excuse me, will you? Hey, hi! How are you? Uh huh. How’s your work? _Good._ Well, listen, stick it out, I mean, it’s not the sixties, you know, listen, I gotta go now, but, uh, lunch would be great. Fine, next week? Yeah. Very busy now, but next week would be fine, OK? Bye bye. Bye now. And I go over to Magoo’s, for a bite, and I see Frank and I go over to his table and I say: Hey Frank. Hi, how are you? How’s your work? Yeah, mine’s OK too. Listen, I’m broke you know, but, uh, working ... Listen, I gotta go now, uh, we should _really_ get together, you know. Why don’t you drop by sometime? Yeah, that would be great. OK. Take care. Take it easy. I’ll see you. I’ll call you. Bye now. Bye bye. And I go to a party and everyone’s sitting around wearing these party hats and it’s really awkward and no one can think of anything to say. So we all move around--fast--and it’s: Hi! How are you? Where’ve you been? Nice to see you. Listen, I’m sorry I missed your thing last week, but we should really get together, you know, maybe next week. I’ll call you. I’ll see you. Bye bye. And I go home and the phone rings and it’s Alan and he says: You know, I’m gonna have a show on, uh, cable TV and it’s gonna be about loneliness, you know, people in the city who for whatever sociological, psychological, philosophical reasons just can’t seem to communicate, you know, The Gap, The Gap, uh, it’ll be a talk show and people’ll phone in but we will say at the beginning of each program: Uh, listen, don’t call in with your _personal_ problems because we don’t want to hear them. And I’m going to sleep and it rings again and it’s Mary and she says: Hey, Laurie, how are you? Listen, uh, I just called to say hi ... Uh, yeah, well don’t worry. Uh, listen, just keep working. I gotta go now. I know it’s late but we should really get together next week maybe and have lunch and talk and ... Listen, Laurie, uh, if you want to talk before then, uh, I’ll leave my answering machine on ... and just give me a ring ... anytime. A Curious Phenomenon Recently there has been a discovery of a curious phenomenon deep in the deciduous woods of Southern Illinois. In the midst of the underbrush there is a clearing revealing a circle of short wooden tree-stump-like structures. In the middle of that circle there is a post-and-lintel structure. The entire circular configuration is oriented toward the exact point at which the sun rises on the day of the summer solstice. Who built this structure? And for what purpose? To what end? A primitive calendar? A center of worship? A lost tribe? [Woodhenge: A mystery that continues to cloud the American brain.] Yankee See Well I had a dream and in it I was teaching cave people how to use blenders and toasters. I drive up to the cave in my car. Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey. In my car. And there they are banging their heads against the walls of the cave. And I say: Hey folks! Listen, you’re doing it the hard way. Lemme show you a thing or two. One. Two. Three. Four. Well I was trying to think of something to tell you about myself, and I came across this brochure they’re handing out in the lobby. And it says everything I wanted to say--only better. It says: Laurie Anderson, in her epic performance of United States Parts 1 through 4, has been baffling audiences for years with her special blend of music ... slides ... films ... tapes ... films (did I say films?) ... hand gestures and more. Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey! (Much more.) Let’s take a look around the stage at what we like to call The System--i.e., the highly sophisticated (very expensive) state-of-the-art gadgetry with which I cast my spell. Now let me tell you something: this stuff does not grow on trees. Well I was out in L.A. recently on music business, and I was just sitting there in the office filling them in on some of my goals. And I said: Listen, I’ve got a vision. I see myself as part of a long tradition of American humor. You know--Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Roadrunner, Yosemite Sam. And they said; “Well actually, we had something a little more adult in mind.” And I said: “OK! OK! Listen, I can adapt!” Lucy I’m home. Lucy, I’m home! LUCY? I’m home!! I wonder what happened to her? I Dreamed I Had To Take A Test I dreamed I had to take a test in a Dairy Queen on another planet. Four, Three, Two, One Four three two one. Rock the cradle. Rule the world. One two three four. Beat the clock. Stop the press. Four three two one. Stop the press. Beat the clock. Rock the cradle. And rule the world. The Big Top When Buckminster Fuller came to Canada, he kept asking the same question: “Have you ever really considered how much your buildings weigh?” The Canadians took this very seriously. (Hey, we never thought of that!) He showed them plans for domed cities, cities with no basements, no foundations. Cities that could be moved in a minute. Portable cities. Portable towns. He said; Think of it as camping out. Think of it as one big tent. He said: Think of it as The Big Top ... spinning ... lightweight ... portable. He said: Think of it as The Big Top. Spinning ... Lightweight ... Flyaway ... He said: Think of it as the Big Top. It Was Up In The Mountains It was up in the mountains. We had this ceremony every year. We had it and everyone from miles around came in for it. Cousins, aunts, uncles, and the kids. Grandmothers, grandfathers ... everyone. And we set it up around this big natural pool. With pine trees and palm trees. All the trees were there. And we had thousands of those big urns--you know the kind. And everyone would dance and sing, and it lasted for three days. Everyone cooked and looked forward to it all the year. Well one year, we were in the middle of it, and I was just a boy at the time. Anyway, it was evening, and suddenly a whole lot of tigers came in. I don’t know where they came from. They rushed in, snarling, and knocked over all the urns, and it was really a mess. Well, we spent the whole next year rebuilding everything. But in the middle of the ceremony the next time the same thing happened. These tigers rushed in again and broke everything and then went back into the mountains. This must have gone on four or five years this way--rebuilding and then the tigers would come and break everything. We were getting used to it. Finally we had a meeting and decided to make these tigers part of the ceremony--you know--to expect them. We began to put food in the urns, so the tigers would have something to eat. Not much at first ... crackers, things like that. Then later we put more food until finally we were saving our food all year for the tigers. Then one year, the tigers didn’t come. They never came back. Odd Objects Our plan is to drop a lot of odd objects onto your country from the air. And some of these objects will be useful. And some of them will just be odd. Proving that these oddities were produced by a people free enough to think of making them in the first place. The U.S. helps, not harms, developing nations by using their natural resources and raw materials. [How far can you invade our scramble system?] One of the reasons that Chrysler has run into such financial trouble is that there have been some problems with the relay devices between the computers and the robot welders. When a problem develops further up the line, it takes a long time for the computers to tell the robot welders to stop. So the robot welders continue to make these welding motions, dropping molten steel directly onto the conveyer belt, even though there are no cars on the line, building up a series of equidistant blobs. It takes several hours for the computers to tell the robot welders to stop. At the rate of eighty cars per hour, a typical plant is capable of manufacturing approximately 100 of these blobs before the plant can be totally shut down. Dr. Miller [instr] Big Science Coo coo coo it’s cold outside. Coo coo. It’s cold outside. Don’t forget your mittens. Hey! Pal! How do I get to town from here? And he said: Well, just take a right where they’re gonna build that new shopping mall, go straight past where they’re gonna put in the freeway, take a left at what’s gonna be the new sports center, and keep going until you hit the place where they’re thinking of building that drive-in bank. You can’t miss it. And I said: This must be the place. Coo coo coo. Golden cities. Golden towns. Golden cities. Golden towns. And long cars in long lines. And great big signs. And they all say: Hallelujah. Yodellayheehoo. Every man for himself. Coo coo coo. Golden cities. Golden towns. Thanks for the ride. Big Science. Hallelujah. Big Science. Yodellayheehoo. You know, I think we should put some mountains here. Otherwise, what are the characters going to fall off of? And what about stairs? Yodellayheehoo. Here’s a man who lives a life of danger. Everywhere he goes, he stays a stranger. Howdy stranger. Mind if I smoke? And he said: Every man for himself. Every man, every man for himself. All in favor say aye. Hey professor! Could you turn out the lights? Let’s roll the film! Big Science. Hallelujah. Big Science. Yodellayheehoo. Part Four It Tango She said, It looks, don’t you think it looks a lot like rain? He said, Isn’t it, isn’t it just isn’t it just like a woman? She said, It goes. That’s the way it goes. It goes that way. He said, Isn’t it, isn’t it just like, just like a woman? She said, It’s hard. It’s just hard. It’s just kind of hard to say. He said, Isn’t it just like a woman? She said, It takes. It takes one. It takes one to. It takes one to know one. He said, Isn’t it, isn’t it just like a woman? She said, she said it, she said it to know, she said it to no one. Isn’t it, isn’t it just, Isn’t it just like a woman? Blue Lagoon I had this dream and in it I wake up in this small house. Somewhere in the tropics. And it’s very hot and humid and all these names and faces are somehow endlessly moving through me. It’s not that I see the, exactly; I’m not a person in this dream; I’m a place. Yeah ... just a place. And I have no eyes, no hands, and all these names and faces keep ... they keep passing through. And there’s no scale. Just a lot of details. Just a slow accumulation of details. I got your letter. Thanks a lot. I’ve been getting lots of sun and lots of rest. It’s really hot. Days, I dive by the wreck. Nights, I swim in the blue lagoon. I always used to wonder who I’d bring to a desert island. Days, I remember cities. Nights, I dream about a perfect place. Days, I dive by the wreck. Nights, I swim in the blue lagoon. Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing about him fades. But that suffers a sea change. Into something rich and strange. And I alone am left to tell the tale ... Call me Ishmael. I got your letter. Thanks a lot. I’ve been getting lots of sun. It’s really hot. I always wondered who I’d bring to a desert island. Days, I remember rooms. Nights, I swim in the blue lagoon. I saw a plane today flying lower over the island. But my mind was somewhere else. And if you ever get this letter: Thinking of you. Love and kisses ... Blue Pacific signing off. Hothead (La Langue d’Amour) Voyons ... euh ... c’était sur une île. Il y avait un serpent et ce serpent avait des jambes. Et il pouvait marcher tout autour de l’île. Let’s see ... uh ... it was on an island. There was a snake and this snake had legs. And he could walk all around the island. Oui, c’est vrai. Un serpent avec des jambes. Yes, that’s true. A snake with legs. Et l’homme et la femme étaient aussi sur l’île. Et ils n’étaient pas très malins, mais ils étaient heureux comme des poissons dans l’eau. Oui. And the man and the woman were on the island too. And they were not very smart, but they were happy as clams. Yes. Voyons ... euh ... alors un soir le serpent faisait un tour dans le jardin en parlant tout seul et il vit la femme et ils se mirent à parler. Et ils devinrent amis. De TRÈS bons amis. Let’s see ... uh ... then one evening the snake was walking about in the garden and hje was talking to himself and he saw the woman and they started to talk. And they became friends. VERY good friends. Et la femme aimait beaucoup le serpent parce que quand il parlait il emettait de petits bruits avec sa langue et sa longue langue lui fechait légèrement les lèvres. And the woman liked the snake very much because when he talked he made little noises with his tongue and his long tongue was lightly licking about his lips. Comme s’il y avait un petit feu à l’interieur de sa bouche et que la flamme sortit en dansant de sa bouche. Et la femme aimait beaucoup cela. Like there was a little fire inside his mouth and the flame would come dancing out of his mouth. And the woman liked this very much. Et après cela elle se mit à trouver l’homme ennuyeux pare ce que quoiqu’il advint, il était toujours aussi heureux qu’un poisson dans l’eau. And after that she was bored with the man because no matter what happened, he was always as happy as a clam. Que dit le serpent? Oui, que disait le serpent? What did the snake say? Yes, what was he saying? OK. Je vais vous le dire. OK. I will tell you. Le serpent lui raconta des choses sure le monde. The snake told her things about the world. Il lui parla du temps où il y eut un grand tiphon sur l’île et où tous les requins sortirent de l’eau. He told her about the time when there was a big typhoon on the island and all the sharks came out of the water. Oui, ils sortirent de l’eau et ils vinrent droit dans votre maison avec leurs grandes dents blanches. Et la femme entendit ces choses et elie tomba amoureuse. Yes, they came out of the water and they walked right into your house with their big white teeth. And the woman heard these things and she was in love. Et l’homme vint et lui dit: “Il faut qu’on s’en aille maintenant,” et la femme ne voulait pas s’en aller par ce qu’elle était une brulée. Parce qu’elle était une femme amoureuse. And the man came out and said: “We have to go now,” and the woman did not want to go because she was a hothead. Because she was a woman in love. Toujours est-il qu’ils montèrent dans leur bateau et quitterent l’île. Anyway, they got into their boat and left the island. Mais ils ne restaient jamais très longtemps nulle part. Parce que la femme ne pouvait trouver le repos. But they never stayed anywhere very long. Because the woman was restless. C’était uns tête brulée. C’était une femme amoureuse. She was a hothead. She was a woman in love. Ce n’est pas une historie que raconte mon peuple. C’est une langue que je sais par moi-meme. This is not a story my people tell. It’s something I know myself. Et quand je fais mon trvail je pense à tout cela. And when I do my job I am thinking about these things. Parce que quand je fais mon travail, c’est ce à quoi je pense. Because when I do my job, that’s what I think about. Oooo là là là. Yeah. La. La. La. La. Voici. Voilà. Here and there. Oooo là là là. Oh yes. Voici le langage de l’amour. This is the language of love. Oooo là là là là. Oooo. Oh yeah. Voici. Voilà là là. Here it is. There it is. La la. Voici de langage de l’amour. This is the language of love. Ah! Comme ci, comme ca. Ah! Neither here nor there. Voilà. Violà. There. There. Voici le langage de l’amour. This is the language of love. Voici le langage de l’amour. This is the language of love. Attends! Attends! Attends! Wait! Wait! Wait! Attends! Attends! Attends! Wait! Wait! Wait! Ecoute. Ecoute. Ecoute. Listen. Listen. Listen. Oooo là là là là. Oooo. Oh yeah. Oooo là là là là. Oh yeah. Yeah. Voici le langage de l’amour. This is the language of love. Voice le langage dans mon coeur. This is the language of my heart. Oooo là là là là. Oooo. Oh yeah. Voici le langage dans mon coeur. This is the language of my heart. Voici le langage de l’amour. This is the language of love. Voici le langage dans mon coeur. This is the language of my heart. Voici le langage dans mon coeur. This is the language of my heart. Stiff Neck A while ago, I had this stiff neck. I couldn’t get it out of this one position. I went to a doctor and he said: I’m afraid this is no stiff neck--I think we’re going to have to operate right away. I couldn’t believe it so I went to a few specialists and they all said the same thing--we’ll have to operate immediately. So I finally decided to have the operation and right before, the doctor said: Oh, by the way, what kind of insurance do you have? And I said: I don’t have any insurance. And he said: Well, maybe we can wait on this. By this time I was convinced I really needed to have the operation so I went to one last guy--and the first thing I said when I walked into his office was: Look. I have no money and no insurance. And he said: Show me where it hurts. And I said: Well, it sort of starts in my neck here, and runs down my arm, and kind of crumples up the fingers on this hand. And he said: Exactly what is it that you do for a living? Telephone Song Hi. How are you? What are you doing? Yeah, I know, it’s kind of noisy here. There’s kind of a party going on. Why don’t you just come over. Just put on your coat and call a cab and come over. Yeah, I know you’re asleep--but it’s really fun--you’d have a really good time. Just put on your shoes and call a cab and come over. No, he’s not here. Well, maybe he’s here--maybe he’s not here. What’s the difference? Yeah, I know it’s Brooklyn. Yeah, well, what’s thirty bucks? It’s two nights. OK. OK. Listen, I’m sure I could get you in. Sweaters I no longer love your mouth. I no longer love your eyes. I no longer love your eyes. I no longer love the color of your sweaters. I no longer love the color of your sweaters. I no longer love the way you hold your pens and pencils. I no longer love it. Your mouth, Your eyes, The way you hold your pens and pencils. We’ve Got Four Big Clocks (and They’re All Ticking) Song for Two Jims A while ago I was camping out in Kentucky. I was sleeping out under this ledge and about three in the morning I woke up. The fire was out but I could see two boots standing a few feet away. I crawled out and there was a guy standing there holding a musket. He said: We eat critters. And I said: What? He said: We eat critters--you know, possum, squirrel, night animals. We hunt ‘em at night. He said he didn’t think it was a good idea for a woman to be alone in those parts--and he invited me back to his house. I followed him and ended up staying a week. His name was Mr. Taylor and he was married to Mrs. Taylor. They were also brother and sister--but they didn’t think that was too strange because their parents were brother and sister too. There were four Taylor kids--Jack, Jim, Rhonda and Jim. Two Jims--who knows why. We’d get up every day and sort of hack around in the tobacco patch and when it got too hot we’d just sit around on the porch and sort of stare out. The landscape around there was completely desolate except for the tobacco plants. Standard Oil had strip-mined it in the thirties, and just when some vegetation was beginning to grow back, they discovered that a certain kind of low-grade shale could be converted to oil, so they came back and drilled holes--very deep holes--hundreds of feet down into the bedrock. But they never got around to filling them afterwards. The just sent down a shipment of manhole covers, but nobody every bothered to put them over the holes. One day, Mrs. Taylor told me that she used to have another kid, but that he had apparently fallen down one of the holes. Her description was very abstract. She said: “Well one day I saw him out there and I was watching and then I didn’t see him out there no more.” Over the River Over the river and through the woods. Whose woods these are. Long time no see, Long time no see. Mach 20 Ladies and gentlemen, what you are observing here are magnified examples or facsimiles of human sperm. Generation after generation of these tiny creatures have sacrificed themselves in their persistent, often futile, attempt to transport the basic male genetic code. But where is this information coming from? They have no eyes. No ears. Yet some of them already know that they will be bald. Over half of them will end up as women. Four hundred million living creatures, all knowing precisely the same thing--carbon copies of each other in a Kamikaze race against the clock. Some of you may be surprised to learn that if a sperm were the size of a salmon it would be swimming its seven-inch journey at 500 miles per hour. If a sperm were the size of a whale, however, it would be traveling at 15,000 miles per hour, or Mach 20. Now imagine, if you will, four hundred million blind and desperate sperm whales departing from the Pacific coast of North America swimming at 15,000 mph and arriving in Japanese coastal waters in just under 45 minutes. How would they be received? Would they realize that they were carrying information, a message? Would there be room for so many millions? Would they know that they had been sent for a purpose? Rising Sun The Visitors A group of American minimal artists were on a goodwill trip to China. Near the end of their visit, they stopped in a remote province where few Americans had ever gone. One of the Chinese hosts seemed to be very confused about the United States. He kept asking questions like: “Is it true that Americans ride airplanes ... to work?” “Is it true that all your food is made in factories?” One of the artists was a conceptualist whose specialties was theories about information and truth. He decided to try out one of his theories on the host. So when the host asked, “Is it true you have robots in your houses?” he said, “Yes, yeah. We have lots of them. It’s true.” The host asked, “Is it true that Americans live on the moon?” The artist said, “Yes, it’s true. A lot of us live there. In fact, we go there all the time.” In this province, however, the word for moon was the same as the word for heaven. The hosts were amazed that Americans traveled to heaven. They were even more amazed that we were able to come back--that we went to heaven all the time. They look like us. They act like us. Remember us. They are not us. The Stranger A stranger came into our town at twilight. He said he had chosen our town out of all the other towns. He said, “Roll out the red carpet.” He said, “I’m the one you have been waiting for.” He said, “I’ve come to serve you--no questions asked. So let’s make a deal.” He said, “So put her here. Let’s shake on it. Give me five.” He said, “I’ve got a five-year plan. And we mean business. So put her here. Let’s shake on it.” It’s the one with the pool. It’s the one on the corner with the big garage. It’s the one with the fir tree in the front yard. Leave the lights on. It’s twilight. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not see the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Brother let me take out the speck that is in your eye,” when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye. You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye. Classified I came home today and you had rearranged all the furniture. And you had changed your name. And I’d never seen you wear that pin-striped shirt before. And then I realized, I was in the wrong house. In this picture, there’s a big blank piece of paper and I’m saying: Sign it. Go ahead. It’s blank. What have you got to lose? And the sun’s coming up and you still haven’t signed it and I keep saying: Sign it. Sign it. I’m going to draw a picture and I’m going to put in an eight-lane superhighway and I’m going to draw you on it in an old jalopy. And then I’m going to draw a whole fleet of Mack trucks bareling along the highway with their brights on. And then I’m going to draw a flat tire on the jalopy and then I’m going to draw the whole jalopy in X-ray to show that you’ve got no gas. He said: You can take my money. You can take my life. You can take my gun. You can take my wife. But just make sure that when you do--you take grandma too. Hey! That sounds great! That sounds really good! Just don’t put my name on it, OK? Take my name off it, all right? Wish they all could be California girls. Going Somewhere? Fireworks Dog Show Lighting Out for the Territories You’re driving and it’s dark and it’s raining. And you’re on the edge of the city and you’ve been driving all night. And you took a turn back there but now you’re not sure it was the right turn. But somehow it looks familiar so you just keep driving. Hello. Excuse me. Can you tell me where I am? You’ve been on this road before. You can read the signs. You can feel your way. You can do this in your sleep.