the green room: milan

Friday, May 19

The Smeraldo Theatre

The first official show. A bit nervous about how it will work in a country where people speak English as a second or, more likely, third language. Did some parts in Italian and it was funny.

A lot of press. We set up the computer and George and Cristina from Voyager demonstrated "Puppet Motel." Did "Videomusic" a TV show with our hosts: a hyperactive bald kid with a razor-sharp Mohawk shark-fin hairdo (circa London 1985) and an extremely gregarious hostess. She and I began by sitting in some bleachers with about 50 teenage girls who were instructed to applaud almost everything I said. The hostess decided to focus on a story I tell in "The Nerve Bible" about how I survived a trek in the Himalayas.

Hostess: "So you were in the mountains...and they sent you down in a body bag!"

Me: "Yes that's right." (huge applause)

Hostess: "But you came back to tell us about it!"

Me: "Yes and uh..."

Hostess: "Laurie Anderson!" (even huger applause)

And so on...Part two was demonstrating "Puppet Motel" and our web site with the Mohawk host. George White was there to pull up some of the web site on one monitor and I started to show "Puppet Motel" on another. The cameras were swinging pretty frantically between the two monitors, always managing to capture the "load" scenes rather than the pictures so I'm not sure if anybody got what we were doing at all. Some sort of technical typing was probably the overall impression.

Also, I'd forgotten that George had told me he didn't really enjoy talking to groups but suddenly Mohawk decided to put the spotlight on him, "And now!!! The fabulous GEORGE! George, love your hair, what've you got to say?" (applause) .Actually George was great. He explained The Green Room really coherently and I think there would have been a chance for some of the TV viewers to understand it if it hadn't been drowned out by the cheers from the girls in the bleachers.

I should have seen this coming back in the make-up room with the make-up artist who took his job really seriously. I really should know by now that whenever you spend more with the make-up artist then with the director you're in for an experience that can be pretty humbling: your work reduced to a few frantic blips sandwiched between commercials. Hey! Lookin good! (applause)

Voyager: the green room: turin

Saturday, May 20

Teatro Regio

Woke up in the middle of a park with only a sketchy idea of how to find the theater. It turned out to be a very beautiful opera house with an amazing set on the stage: a huge canopy bed and plasterboard towers for some fairy tale opera or other. The show was a big relief to me. It turns out that even though they didn't understand all the English- they really got it. It was a very emotional audience and very awake.

Voyager: the green room: rome

Sunday, May 21

Teatro Sistina

A rainy cold morning. Woke up at ten o'clock somewhere in the rolling Italian countryside still very far from the capitol. Since it usually takes us about eight hours to set up, things weren't looking so good. Finally made it to the Piazza di Spagna where we got stuck. Our trucks couldn't turn around; we were trapped like huge fish in a tank that's way too small. After rearranging a few cars we managed to stagger to the theater by three pm.

Every time I've played in Rome it's the same story. For one reason or another everything is really late- they forgot to order a sound system or there's a strike or everyone just went out to eat and didn't say when they'd be back and it seems like the show will have to be cancelled. Then suddenly something happens and somehow things work out.

I think it has to do with the Miracle Concept. If you believe in miracles you sort of get used to the rhythm: disaster/chaos/miracle/resolution. So if things are going fairly well and don't seem like they'll require a miracle, it's just too humdrum. So somebody throws a wrench into the works, everything falls apart and then - MIRACOLO!- it gets fixed. It took me a while to get used to this but once I did I really enjoyed it too.

Voyager: the green room: zurich

Tuesday, May 23 The Kongresshaus

Thursday, June 22 The Kongresshaus

May 23

Saw a beautiful exhibition at the Kunsthaus of a Georgian artist curated by Bice Curiger, editor of Parkett magazine. The artist- whose name I can't remember at the moment- was a sort of Russian Rousseau who painted powerful and mysterious paintings of the postman, the town beauty, various midnight outdoor drinking parties where the burghers stand around ceremoniously downing drinks from ram's horn cups. The paintings came from a national musuem that employed three hundred Russians who were apparently very reluctant to let the paintings out of the country. These paintings are mixed with contemporary works by Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Tony Oursler, and about ten other artists whose work really seems to look even better in this context.

June 22

It's great to be back in a place we've already played. According to our itinerary, we were supposed to be going to Poland and then to Zagreb. Unfortunately our trucks couldn't actually reach Poland in time so here we are back in Zurich. And as for Zagreb, we had to cancel this concert because I couldn't in good conscience sign the part on the War Insurance Form that said I was responsible for death or injury to the crew. There are lots of things I'll do to tour but this isn't one of them- playing the fearless leader just isn't my thing. I've been in touch with the promoter who has been insisting that the fighting "isn't that bad" in the area. But exactly how does he think we're going to get there? Parachute in?

Passed the train station today and heard what sounded like a riot. Now I'm always ready for a riot and happened to have my Polaroid so I rushed into the station. The epicenter of the sound was a huge statue of Michael Jackson made of fiberglass that looked like granite. This thing was about four stories high- looked like a combination of Stalin and some Nordic god. Wearing a bikini, Mexican-style bandarillo bullet belt crossed over the chest and shoes the size of cars. Standing legs far apart on a pedestal inscribed "Michael Jackson History 1995."

There was a Swiss guy in gold lame pants standing on the pedestal between the gargantuan legs. He had a microphone and was barking out something in Swiss German dialect. (Apparently one of the subthemes of the record is that somehow Michael Jackson's music was instrumental in the freeing of Eastern Europe) There was a big sound system but they weren't playing the record- it was only the sounds of uneasy crowds hub hub bubububrrrr grrrbubuhubba. This turned out to be a good idea under the circumstances because it's never a good PR to unveil something of this size in total silence. As it was, the only people there were about 200 members of the Brazilian soccer team, stuck between trains in the station, me, and some early commuters on their way to suburbia. The soccer team was mostly licking ice cream cones and staring into the middle distance and the silence was not exactly of the stunned variety.

Actually I've always thought of Michael as just another pop artist (although great production!) but as I looked at this statue my estimation of his art increased 1000 per cent. I now think he may be one of the greatest artists of our time. I mean conceiving yourself as a giant action doll from outer space via Stalinist propaganda techniques- this is a certain kind of genius. And then of course there's marrying the king's daughter.

By the way, has anyone taken the tour of Graceland lately? It's much more interesting than the White House tour- (half an hour downloading Socks' "miao"). I checked into a seance there recently in which they'd managed to contact the king: two knocks "yes" one knock "no."

"So, Elvis, how is life in the ..uh..afterlife? Is it good?"

(Two knocks)

"Yes! That's GREAT! So...Elvis, do you approve of all the renovations we've been doing here at Graceland?"

(Two knocks)

"You do!! That's really fortunate!"

Voyager: the green room: konstanz

Wednesday, May 24,

The Zeltfestival

We're performing in a tent tonight next to a lake on the Swiss border. Dan- the carpenter- found a bicycle in the lake and fished it out- a ten speed beauty.Not really in such bad shape. The derailleur a bit bent. The light filled with water but still working. Hoping we're not going to find the rider as well. Lots of barbed wire in the water. Do people really try to swim across the border?

Our set looked pretty unusual under the big top- sort of cheery really. After strolling through the town I got a little nervous about doing the show here. It's a resort town filled with a lot of tourists licking ice cream and staring off into the middle distance. Uh oh. But hey! Surprise! The audience was great. Reminded me of doing clubs in San Francisco. People who love to party. They actually seemed to have a wonderful time.

Voyager: the green room: amsterdam

Saturday, May 27,

The Rai Auditorium

An actual day off! Went sailing with a Michel Waiswisc on an almost impossibly idyllic little lake about half an hour from the city. Amazing to see how many boats were being piloted by three year olds- little kids learning the ropes floating around in boats the size of bathtubs. Also a lot of gaff rigged eel boats doing a kind of regatta around the perimeter. Managed not to run into any of them or get in the way of their wind when I was at the rudder so I'm feeling pretty confident about my sailing abilities today.

Major hysteria in the street because Holland defeated Milan. Rolling Stones are in town tonight at the Paradiso. Astoundng that they're still on tour after three decades. I wonder if they still like it or if they just don't know how to stop. Then again, I wonder about that myself. It's such a strange way to live and seems utterly divorced from my other life in New York. But it's a pleasant kind of schizophrenia and the only way I know to present my work in the most ideal way.

Bought a bike today. An old Dutch single-speed clunker with a bell that seems to just keep sort of automatically ringing. Rode to RAI trying to avoid getting the wheels stuck in the tram tracks. I love that Dutch saying, "Not until we get our bicycles back." I'd heard it a few times before I bothered to ask what it meant. Turns out, in WWII, the Germans commandeered any Dutch bicycle they felt like taking and then just kept them. Post war reparations went on for quite a while and the stubborn Dutch kept saying they wouldn't settle until the Germans gave back absolutely everything.

Voyager: the green room: paris

Sunday, May 28,

The Olympia Theatre

Every time I've played in this theater, I hear the same long story about how all the greats- from Edith Piaf to Charles Aznavour- have starred here. The theater itself is very tiny and we had to really work to cram our set in. Actually we left quite a bit of it in the trucks out on Rue des Capucines. The city is about to tear down this historic landmark, put in a six storey underground parking lot and then top it off with "an exact replica" of the Olympia. Well. Good luck!

Fortunately for me, the French audience didn't make fun of my French accent which was a relief because my mouth simply refuses to put itself into some of the positions required to speak it. I really expected a kind of snobbish attitude but I was completely off base. It was one of the friendliest audiences so far. It's strange how you can actually feel good will being projected towards you.

Voyager: the green room: brussels

Wednesday, May 17,

Cirque Royal

Monday, May 29,

Palais des Beaux-Arts

May 17th - The Preview Concert

Arrived at the airport in my usual jetlagged fog. A major hike from the plane to customs and I'm dragging my bag of books along a corridor that actually recedes to a vanishing point. Finally step up to the passport cubicle and try to hand over my passport but suddenly five men dressed in white cotton robes start jabbing me from behind, jostling and pushing. I look behind me and about 2,000 Saudi Arabians are streaming towards customs, all of them wearing flowing white robes and dragging 30 gallon plastic containers filled with water. (Didn't they think Brussels would have a water supply?) Desert people. With a whole different attitude towards what we call personal spatial boundaries.

Several Saudi women surrounded me inspecting my luggage, stroking and pinching my leather bag as if it might be for sale and they were about to make some offers. When we got through customs the desert people were met by their Belgianized sons and daughters, people wearing haphazard improvisations of robes over polyester pants, combinations of European and Arabic costumes. These relatives didn't seem that surprised about the amount of water that had just been imported. The only thing I was able to find out was that it was Ramadan and maybe this was some kind of special water. They melted into Brussels driving off in hundreds of little cars. Apparently about 10 per cent of Brussels is Arabic but from then on I didn't see a single one.

We're here to pick up our English lighting crew and a lot of new gear. The idea is to rehearse for a couple of days and then do an "event" for a "high-tech company." In fact, as it turns out, the president of this company is retiring and we are, more or less, the entertainment at his retirement party. When they showed up in black tie and party dresses I recognized them immediately: ad agency creative teams. Now creative ad agents are not exactly my ideal audience especially if they don't speak English. We did Part Two of "The Nerve Bible" and I'd say mystification would sum up their reaction.

There's a theater festival in town with a huge variety of events. I went to a few and began to have some real sympathy for the agents. Most of the performances were in mixtures of French and German and I was pretty exhausted at the end of them from trying to follow along. I'm beginning to get pretty nervous about doing a performance with so much English in it- and not just plain English but English with subordinate clauses, tilted syntax, a vocabulary that includes words like "singe" and "slinkey," colloquialisms like "up for the same Safeway account" and snatches from "The Tempest" and "Moby Dick." I plan to do parts of the show in Italian; I've also had parts translated into Czech, Slovenian, and Polish. However, I've just received a letter from the Polish promoter.

Here are some excerpts:

"With all due respect we'd like to try to dissuade you from your plans for Laurie Anderson to perform some of her material in Polish. We have no doubt Ms. Anderson would overcome the phonetic and prosodic features of Polish, however there's much more to language than that. No matter how you look at it, we find her material much too culture-specific to be able to give to Polish spectator a translation that would carry hte (sic) sense of her material in a persuasive way. Notice that a couple of Polish lyrics in Gorecki's 3rd Symphony are delivered by Dawn Upshaw in the original for the same reason. We are poles apart, semantically speaking. For instant (sic) "Call me Ishmael" may ring bells in any American's ears. How do you expect a country, where one in a thousand may have read the tale of the whale, to understand that, provided that Catholics don't read the Holy Book as a principle?

"Quite a lot of her material would be lost in translation and especially, the poetic ambience that permeats (sic) her act. She is American phenomenon to us and we want her this way. Straight no 'chaser' in the form of a remote tongue from a distant place. The public likely to come to the concert will be people well versed in the American cultural idiom and will be in sufficient numbers. It took Meryl Streep about two years to learn to "sound" Slavic in "The Deer Hunter" or "Sophie's Choice."

"Please be understanding and patient and take our suggestions to heart."

Not much I can say to this impassioned plea. Gotta love someone who takes the trouble to think about this in the first place. And even though I have some problems with being "American phenomenon" or a drink with no chaser (actually I like the image of language as some kind of mind bending Polish vodka), I guess I'll give up my ambitions to be the Meryl Streep of performance art. Oh well.

Hanging out in the hotel lobby around midnight faxing various friends and relatives when I hear an incredibly booming voice with a Franco/German accent, announce "LAURIE!." I turn arund to see one of the tallest women I've ever laid eyes on wearing a baseball cap and extending a huge hand. "VERUSHKA!" she says. And she is. She explains she's performing in a theater piece- all women- with an all-girl Cuban orchestra. Sounds good. I drop by but only catch the last few minutes when the orchestra is lip-synching full tilt. Music produced by Ned Sublette. Sounded really great but I guess playback wasn't noticeable to anyone but me.

May 29th - The Public Concert

A maze of corridors and theaters of several sizes. Musicians rehearsing all over the place. The last time I played here there was a sound console permanently installed in the middle of the theater. One of the faders was cross-wired to an adjoining theater. I never found out why. But last time Harry Belafonte was doing a calypso show in the theater next to ours, we could raise the fader and hear "Day oh me sa day me sa day me sa daaaaaayo" coming up on that line. And if things got boring over on his side, they could raise their fader and hear, "A while ago..I dreamed I was...." and so on.

Doing the pieces in French was a little trickier here. The promoter was nervous during the intermission because the Flemish journalists were a bit miffed that those pieces were in French and why not Flemish. Hey! What's wrong with Flemish?! I told him that first of all I imagined they could feel some empathy for me since I was struggling like they were to manage a language with so many odd sounds. And second, I only did pieces that happened to be about the sound of a human voice and not necessarily exactly what it was saying so my lack of expertise in the pronunciation was part of the story- that is- an artistic choice. These explanations/justifications didn't seem to be enough ammunition for him since he seemed to be expecting a confrontation with some pissed off Flemish journalists. I hung out with him for a while after the show and didn't see any of them but who knows.

Voyager: the green room: birmingham

Tuesday, May 30th

Symphony Hall

This is by far the most, let's say, undemonstrative audience so far, next to Louisville. Even though everybody clapped enthusiastically at the end, during the performance it was eerie. There was almost no sound at all. Also my view of the audience wasn't too clear and I kept having the sensation that everybody had slipped silently out the side doors and that I was the only one left in the theater.

After the show, got on the bus as usual but this time we missed the ferry so got to spend a few hours wandering around Holyhead in Wales. Hit the local dive- the "79" club- as well as the real estate joint; it's become my hobby to check out prices of sheep farms.

Voyager: the green room: dublin

Thursday, June 1

The National Concert Hall

Met the people who run Art House- a new multi media center. They'll also have a large exhibition area for art and are working on how to interest artists who don't usually work with computers. They were just putting together their computer room and since it was looking a little bit like an office I was trying to think what could make it a bit looser. I suggested getting big wicker baskets of candy and strewing them around the room. There's something about a limitless selection and the constant availabilty of free candy that's just sort of homey. I noticed they did this at a computer company in Knoxville and it seemed to create a mighty fine atmosphere.

Also suggested they tap in to the women's Train-to-Beijing project. Maybe do some on line coverage of the event. This is a pretty cool project- a long train leaving from Paris- only women aboard bound for Beijing where there will be some kind of international conference on women's rights. I suppose China is as good a place as any to talk about women's rights but I still want to know the real statistics on health care for Chinese girl babies. The last time I checked it wasn't exactly a sterling record. Especially in the countryside. Boy-kid gets sick and the family goes to quite a bit of trouble to find a doctor; Girl-kid gets sick and she's sort of on her own. Is this, through natural selection, creating a super race of especially hardy Chinese females, the super tough survivors? (Marianne Faithful and I will be doing a send off concert at the UN on August 19 so maybe I'll have some current statistics on this by then.)

Met up with Brian Eno who's here working with U2. Went out to meet Bono and Edge at their studio which is right on a sparkly canal. What a view! Great old barges floating by, the industrial edge of town. Made me very homesick for Canal Street where I have a similar view of the mighty Hudson flowing past. Great place to make music. It's like the river- with its constantly shifting colors and textures- is a "visual track" for the music. When Brian and I were working at my studio we had a policy about the music we were making , "If it goes with the river it goes on the record."

Voyager: the green room: glasgow

Saturday, June 3

The International Concert Hall

Rode my bike all over town- down by the super clean dark black river, out to the glass enclosed palm garden- the Winter Palace- where they're preparing a big cactus show for the weekend. Past the university where there were exams going on. Thought it might be fun to drop in and take one of the exams- physics maybe- you know, lower the curve, do the students a favor. Couldn't find anything except a bunch of people doing jumping jacks so gave up on it.

Stopped in a shop that was advertizing "Fish Tea." I couldn't imagine tea made of fish. Some kind of exotic briney/scaley infusion? Some brisk new drink from Japan? I ordered it, even though it seemed a little expensive. What arrived was several shapeless oily pieces of cod, mounds of fried potatoes, and a fairly normal looking cup 'o tea. Forgot that tea here is a meal. Is there "Cheese Tea" too? "Meat Tea?" Mmm.

Voyager: the green room: manchester

Sunday, June 4

The Apollo Theatre

Met with the people who are working with Cornerhouse- an art gallery/coffee bar/ film theater. The performance is in some way a benefit for Cornerhouse where they're doing a great John Baldessari retrospective.

This city seems to have a pretty cool art scene. Also talked about a project for the fall that they'll be doing in a building here- a lot of exhibitions and on line/television/radio extravaganza. Hope to get back here for that.

Voyager: the green room: london

Monday, June 5 to Wednesday, June 7

The Royal Festival Hall

My birthday! Seems like I'm always working on my birthday. Then again can you really call this work? Received an award- the Marshall MacLuhan award for multi media something- via a teleconferenced hook-up after one of the shows. It's incredibly weird to be part of an event as a talking head from another continent. Didn't really even know where the hosts actually were- except that it was a theater somewhere in California and that Herbie Hancock was playing the piano in the background the whole time. I have to admit my acceptance speech was pretty lame.

Gave a talk/interview conducted by Michael Morris at the ICA. Always been one of my favorite places in London because it's sort of the center of an art/media world that I feel very at home in. So the questions were really good ones- many things that I wouldn't think about otherwise. Compared to this, the radio interviews were pretty silly: "What's your favorite music? Pick some of your favorite videos." Duh.

Voyager: the green room: frankfurt

Friday, June 9 & Saturday, June 10

Theatre Am Turm

The new Am Turm is a fantastic building- cast iron structure- former repair station for tram cars. Went to my all time favorite spa: Taunustherme out in Bad Homburg. A fabulous complex of indoor and outdoor pools, blazing fires, saunas of every temperature and herbal flavor, sun tanning grottos, restaurant, movie theater. Now this is fun! Walk around for hours getting in and out of different water and steam. My favorite part: a chute that sends you through a corridor on fast jets of water, catapulting you into a big pool. Spawning time for the salmon.

Did another teleconference hook-up with a few people today. The event was hosted by Michael Morris who was at a multi media conference in Montreal. Other people on the line were Robert LePage in Quebec City, an artist in Amsterdam, Pinchas Zucherman in Tokyo and myself in Frankfurt. Like most multi-media conferences, the topic of this one was "Communication" so (typically) it began with quite a few technical glitches.

Only two people were on screen at once- and the images were controlled by the audio- so that whoever was talking was also seen. The picture was quite pixillated and jerky- way out of synch with the audio so the faces always seem to have a somewhat quizzical expression, like they're slightly surprised by the words that have just come out of their mouths.

The conference began with a lot of generalizations about technology, the sort of stiff off-the-rack jargon connected with future speculations. At one point we were having a lot of trouble with the audio in our studio and they kept saying, "Frankfurt! Frankfurt! Could you please get off the line!"

It's not that I personally mind being asked to leave, but since I was always being adressed as "Frankfurt" instead of by my name, I did suddenly feel a competitive twinge, like I was part of some kind of Frankfurt team. Finally we worked it out and continuued.

The high point was definitely Pinchas who suddenly bolted on line- his voice extra loud like he was using a primitive phone. "HEY LAURIE! NICE TO MEET YOU! SAY, HOW MUCH DID YOU PRACTICE TODAY?" This really caught me off guard. Suddenly I was actually talking to someone, really making a connection, not just indulging in these techno generalizations. I decided to say "EIGHT HOURS" which was such an enormous lie- I haven't practiced for eight hours since I was a teenager. I don't really know why I said that, maybe because his voice was so booming and it reminded me of my violin teacher (who I also lied to about the amount of time I practiced). Pinchas was brimming with enthusiasm about this new toy- and his attitude was pretty contagious. Suddenly it seemed like a great thing to be able to talk to him like this and I began to imagine what great master classes he could give in this form. He went on, "LAURIE! NOW LISTEN! JUST GO ON OVER TO THE ALTE OPER AND JUST TO YOUR RIGHT YOU'LL SEE A FANTASTIC ITALIAN RESTAURANT TELL THEM PINCHAS SENT YOU." And that did it for me. This was really practical! I decided to head right over to the restaurant. What if people could really have this immediate kind of contact on a regular basis?

Voyager: the green room: munich

Sunday, June 11

The Philharmonie

Last time I was here at the Philharmonie was about three years ago at a great festival that included a really wild collection of musicians- Arto Lindsay, fifty Bavarian horn players, Babes in Toyland, Michel Waisvisc, Lou Reed, John Zorn, Miles Davis and a lot of others. Because it was curated by musicians, it was the kind of festival where musicians actually get to hang out together, play in each others' pieces, and talk talk talk. Often festivals are so tightly run that you never get the chance to see the other performers except in passing. So this was really fun. Especially remember Zorn's "Kristallnacht" a beautiful piece performed on the anniversary of the actual event. Now that's nerve! I remember following Zorn and his group through customs on the morning we arrived and it was a great experience to see the customs agent's expression when he looked up and saw John and his crew- in blue mohawks, earrings, muscle T-shirts with "Rhythm & Jews" inscribed on them next to the gold Jewish star. Uh...good morning. Welcome to Bavaria.

The stage is very oddly configured here at the Philharmonie and all the balconies are skewed at very odd angles so I tried to avoid looking out into the house much during the show because it seemed like it was about to collapse.

Voyager: the green room: berlin

Monday, June 12

The Tempdrom

Why is it always cold and rainy in the capitols on this tour? Not that Berlin is officially the capitol- it just seems that way. The Tempodrom is a few tents and bright yellow caravans arranged around the park near the Congresshalle. Across the street is the Reichstag in the early stages of being wrapped by Christo- just a few dormer windows at the top are shrouded in white. And all around the park the Berlin rabbits are hopping about. The city is full of them and Berliners seem to be quite fond of them; apparently the rabbit population skyrocketed during the thirty years (approximately 100 generations in rabbit time) that The Wall was up, since they were allowed to scamper about in the no man's land between east and west.

Rained all day and running electrical cables through pools of water has always made me nervous. Also circus tents are really made for short bursts of sound- trumpets that tell you the elephants are about to appear- that sort of thing- so the speakers sent the sound swirling around and regenerating in weird vortexes.

The audience was a lot of fun. Really awake. Berliners are always sharp, agressive, and emotional. They really ask a lot of performers and a lot of musicians I know really love this city for that reason. Although this can sometimes work to your disadvantage. A few years ago I was performing in a jazz festival at the nearby Congresshalle and near the beginning of the concert (I was playing keyboards and telling some sort of story) - during a quiet pause- some guy yelled, "PLAY JAZZ!" I froze. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't the slightest idea how to play jazz and that he had a perfectly good point, he'd bought a ticket to a jazz festival most likely because he wanted to hear some jazz and the story I was telling definitely hadn't a single thing to do with jazz. Who booked this anyway? What did I think I was doing? These are not great thoughts to have while you're trying to play a song so I did get a little rattled.

Voyager: the green room: nurnberg

Tuesday, June 13

The Meistersingerhalle

Biked around the park here and visited the stadium out near the Zeppelin airfield where H. Hitler delivered some of his most momentous speeches. It looks like some kind of Aztec structure- but in excellent condition. Currently something of a bird sanctuary. All the holes in the walls- probably where the bleachers were attached- have become nests for crows and they flap around screaming. Haunted.

Voyager: the green room: stuttgart

Wednesday, June 14,

The Liederhalle

A dark and drizzly day. The buses and trucks parked in a dank netherworld that is backstage touring. We're now on the first part of what seems like an endless stream of one nighters. Met Fred Frith who came to the show. Told me his ideal tour is two weeks long. Hmmm. Met my friend Rolf Engel who described some odd projects he's worked on with Brian Eno, Andre Heller, and David Bowie. One was an event commissioned by a maharajah to startle his six year old son. Heller worked for a year rounding up performers from all over India and restyling them slapdash in Euro disguises. Apparently the six year old only got bored once. Another project that Heller did was in Lisbon. He printed silhouettes of the world's great writers onto paper sails, attached them to boats and floated them out into the harbor. At an appointed moment, all the sails burned. They were expecting 20,000 people to show up at the event but 600,000 arrived. They were all crowded around the water, pushing for a better view. Meanwhile Heller was hiding in a hotel watching with binoculars. When the boats went up in flames, the crowd got so excited they began jumping up and down and falling into the water. Portuguese TV was covering the event live but all the viewers could see were cameras swinging around wildly and occasionally dipping underwater. Sounds exciting.

Voyager: the green room: koln

Thursday, June 15

The Philharmonie

Corpus Christie Day. Big holiday here so people just seem to be wandering around shopping in the malls. Beautiful backstage area here with a cozy bar and lots of tables in nooks for local promoters, crews, artists; really chummy in a nice way.

Voyager: the green room: copenhagen

Friday, June 16

The Falkoner Theatre

Arrived really late but we were able somehow to put up most of the set because the crew was great and the load in was flat and easy. People here speak English a lot better than in many American towns, sort of eerie really.

Went on a nostalgic trip up to Humlebaek a small town on the coast north of the city. There's a museum there- Lousiana- which has always been a kind of model for me of how a museum should be run. First of all the setting is amazing. Glass corridors snake through the woods; suddenly the building opens up into a glass-sided tall box with only two or three Giacometti sculptures backed by one of the lovliest ponds I've ever seen. The restaurant is perched on a cliff that drops to the sea; clipped lawns descend at sharp angles to the water.

There's a huge boathouse where artists stay to do residencies. When I was here in 1978 the director invited me to live in the boathouse and I took a raincheck. The trouble with showing up sixteen years later to take him up on his offer was that he was about to retire. But I remember him as being an incredible gracious host. I came here to do a performance with two other Americans- Jana Haimsohn and Julia Heyward. We had been travelling around as a kind of trio- each doing our own work but sort of a package deal. We had just done a show in Berlin and I remember being really shocked by the press. The reviews of Julia's piece (a fabulous rave of many voices along with some beautiful moody videos) and my own work (a collection of stories and film) were pretty good. But the review's of Jana's work (an amazing, emotional wild dance with drums and hair flying) was one of the scariest things I've ever read. The promoter didn't want to translate it for us but we insisted and it said things like "paranoid...out of control...typically Jewish sensibilty...dark...something deeply sick..." and so on. We were supposed to have stayed in Berlin but instead we wrote a letter to the editor objecting to the racist overtones of the piece and left town. In Humlebaek we happened to stay with a woman whose husband had been one of the bigwigs on the Danish underground during WWII getting Jews out of Germany. It felt like we were somehow still on this underground and that in some ways we were seeing the fallout of this catastrophe.

Voyager: the green room: oslo

Saturday, June 17

Sentrum Scene

A club that was filled with labyrinthine hallways, formerly a WWII Nazi headquarters and it was easy to imagine guys in uniforms scurrying along these dank corridors.

Doing advance press for Prague and Budapest. These are pretty tough- not just because they're done via phones that keep cutting out for no reason but because they have begun to resemble interrogations. "In 1978, you said that you would never use a guitar in your music because it represented macho pop culture. Yet, there were guitars on "Mister Heartbreak" album in 1984. How do you justify this?" Gee I'm really looking forward to being there. Another typical question from the Eastern press: "You use a lot of technology- computers, video, digital things and so on- but what would you do if you only had a wooden acoustic violin?" This question always reminds me of the one, "If you had a choice of having no eyes or no ears, which would it be?" Why do people want to know stuff like this? Would I rather be blind or deaf?

Voyager: the green room: stockholm

Sunday, June 18

The Cirkus

A really lovely creaky old building built for elephants and tigers. In the middle of a leafy park although I didn't get much of a sense of it since I was locked in the dressing room doing interviews. The dressing room looks like a Bergman set: tasselled lamps, divans, candles in thick pewter candleholders, two old photographs on the wall- a man and woman from the thirties. The promoter tells me the man was a big vaudeville star who performed at the Cirkus. In the forties he committed suicide right in front of the theater. Those Swedes! Since I'm one too I've got some sympathy for overwhelming bouts of dark depression but there's something so mean about killing yourself this way.

Odd to be here and see so many people who look like me. Especially the ski jump nose; it almost looks like someone came through this part of the world and glued these noses onto people's faces as some kind of joke- they all look the same and don't quiteblend with the faces. Tried to get all the Andersons in for free but the promoter said he didn't do refunds. Oh well.

Voyager: the green room: linz

Friday, June 23

Ars Electronica Festival-Brucknersaal

We're part of the Ars Electronica Festival here and the Brucknersaal is full of computers arranged along a glass corridor facing the Danube. Unfortunately many of them keep crashing- pretty tough to keep a show like this going. Among my favorites:

a beautiful CD ROM about Joseph Beuys. Seems like his work- scratchings on blackboards, lumps of fat, a coyote in a gallery- is perfect for this medium, actually enhanced- made even more mysterious- by the low end visuals.an installation by Bruce Odland and Sam Auringer that linked to the train station. Microphones placed along the tracks picked up low roars that were processed. A camera in the train station allowed people in the Brucknersaal to see the commuters and select the audio processing they were hearing in the train station. I loved this piece because it was really linked to the 3-D world. Also because the train schedules (Ankunft and Abfahrt) were posted as a sort of score for the piece so you could look up the times of the trains, which also had names like The Viennese Waltz Express

Voyager: the green room: graz

Saturday, June 24

The Orpheum

A large pale blue building with dormer windows that looks suspiciously like an orphanage. Went to a performance on the tallest hill in town where there's an open air theater and Germans in blackface were singing "Aida." Did part of the show in German which was definitely a good idea here in Austria where people just don't speak English quite as fluently as along the Rhine.

Voyager: the green room: ljubljana

Sunday, June 25

Krazanke Monastery

Arrived very late stark white sky an empty town. Our trucks haven't arrived so we're sitting in a dreary restaurant drinking some kind of gritty grain drink called "coffee." The waitress seems incredibly insulted when we ask for anything (like a menu for example) and shuffles off to some far away room. This is the venue that's been the most mysterious- a monastery? Open air? Must close highway that runs next to the monastery? It didn't look too promising on paper. In fact, the no-frills stage sat under a huge canopy and the odd configurations on stage left and right meant that we had a lot of fun with our set. We perched the globe and cube on low pedestals on the edge of the stage and so the show had a completely different look. The crowd was definitely there to have a good time so even though they didn't understand everything, the whole atmosphere was intense and a lot of fun.

Voyager: the green room: vienna

Monday, June 26

Konzerthaus

Looks like the inside of one of those tiled stoves - blue and white trimmed with gold. The King's Box hangs over the stage near the organ. Not a great view of the shows if you ask me but maybe people wanted a good view of his majesty- part of the show.

Voyager: the green room: budapest

Tuesday, June 27

Sportscsarnok

Industrial size arena in a sculpture park full of clumps of statues that ring a playing field. There's a jogging track around the field and the statues seem to mutate from scene to scene. At the beginning of the circle they are athletes-throwing javelins and balls straining their bulging calves. Halfway around the ring, they're holding guns instead of javelins and then back to javelins.

Chris Kondek and I split off from the group at this point and went to see some caves on the border of Hungary and Slovakia. We drove there with Snopko, the former minister of culture of Czechoslovakia. The caves are 21 kilometers long and truly stupendous. They were rediscovered in the early part of the twentieth century after 6,000 years. It looked like the cave people had just stepped out for a walk and never came back- pieces of pottery just lying around. Saw a huge clump of bats squeaking and clinging to each other. The smell of bat guana is pretty unforgettable.

We went to the caves because Snopko has a theory about the inscriptions on the walls of the cave and on the pottery. He feels it can be translated into music and wanted me to try doing the transcriptions. We crawled around looking at the markings and I have to say it wasnŐt exactly obvious how to do this. But he's promised to send more information and now that I have endless series of slides and videos of the caves maybe I'll give it a try. I mean I'd really like to do a "Prehistoric Cave Music" CD and I'm sure Warner Brothers would be thrilled as well.

Voyager: the green room: prague

Thursday, June 29

Palace of Culture

Every seat in this former Communist convention center is equipped with headphones for simultaneous translations. Boy do I wish I could use it! There just is no way to do translations well. Supertitles are distracting, my Czech accent is pretty abysmal, and it's pretty awful to realise that what you're saying sounds really abstract to most of the audience. There seems to be quite a cool art scene here- at least a lot of artists showed up for the "after show" all wanting to talk talk talk IDEAS.

Voyager: the green room: hannover

Friday, June 30

Theater Am Aegi

We're the last event in a sound festival that has been going on for a month or so. Have to say it's a real relief to be back in Germany. Language isn't so severe a barrier and I have to say that the most perceptive writing about "The Nerve Bible" has been by German writers. They're the only ones who really see things about the structure of the piece; they don't just go for the flash and I really appreciate that more than anything!

Voyager: the green room: hamburg

Saturday, July 1

The Musikhalle

Did an on-line chat which seemed like a lot of fun. Talked about the caves in Slovakia. Any ideas on what other musicians you could collaborate with? How 'bout Nick Cave? That kind of thing. As it turned out, most of the people I was chatting with were right there in the office. Either it was too hard to translate from German to English or not enough was coming in- but it was pretty odd.

We're the first night of a jazz festival and again the term is used pretty loosely here. As usual, didn't get to see much of the town but all the more reason to come back next time.

Voyager: the green room: lisbon

Wednesday, July 5

Coliseu dos Recreios

Can this really be the last show? It's now been almost half a year of my life- rehearsing and doing "The Nerve Bible." There have been a lot of nights when the house lights go out and the show begins (again!) that I've thought: I cannot possibly do or say these things yet again. Why can't I feel like an actress and just do it technically, professionally? Maybe it's because I'm saying my own words again and again and it just becomes a unique form of psychological torture- caught in a hellish loop of your own making. Usually once the performance starts I'm OK and can find plenty of things to do to make it better. Here at least I have the challenge of doing part of the show in Portugese which is a truly difficult language. So many of the sounds just don't exist in English and squishing your mouth into those shapes feels extremely odd. On the other hand I was really glad I made the effort.

Thanks to all of you who have been coming into The Green Room! I have read just about everything that's come in but I just wish I'd been able to respond from the road. As it turned out, it was often difficult to get phones and we were moving so fast that I could barely keep up with everything that was going on. Anyway, one of my projects when I get back to New York will be to make contact with as many writers as possible. I also hope to keep the web site going because it's really been a great way to find out whatŐs been going on. Also I hope to extend it in a few ways. So check in again!