Laurie Anderson on Childhood, Storytelling, and Hiding in Plain Sight

Laurie Anderson talks to Paul Holdengraber about art, virtual reality, and telling jokes on stage. (And more.)

Laurie Anderson on hiding in plain sight…
I never didn’t use a microphone. I always used a microphone and I found that in many different ways, it’s the best place to hide. Stages are great places to hide; people can’t see that well. That’s why I hated it when streaming started happening because cameras are up your nose. The stage is no longer a good place to hide—its totally exposed now… People can’t see you that well and they’re not judging you. For example, I’ve never met a person who didn’t say, “Gee, I thought you were taller; you look so tall on stage,” you know? So they can’t tell who you are, you’re just a little thing there. So if you use a microphone, then you’re a big thing who looks little. But people want control over what you’re presenting.

Laurie Anderson on virtual reality…
I’m just starting with virtual reality things, because I love being able to create and visualize a world that isn’t there. You reach out with your real hands into this space and you see your hands but they’re made of something else. And that’s just the beginning. I want to see how our minds work, that’s it. My work has always been about the difference between real things and fantasy things—I don’t really, actually see much difference between them. I see them more as the same fabric.

Laurie Anderson on hearing and seeing stories…
Some books need music built in and you need to go into that room and sit in the visual room and look around. Then you can listen to the story. But you’re going to be someplace. So I built a motel called Public Motel which was made of many rooms and they were full of stories… It’s really hallucinatory. Books were, for me as a tiny kid, they were a world. So to fall into that world… they would be all around me. I can still walk into a book and be there, but it’s in a different way now, and I really wish I could still do it as a child. But I wish I could do a lot of things as a child: to be as innocent as I was, and to be hopeful as I was, and to be sure that I came from the sky and knew all sorts of things that I have forgotten over my lifetime.

Laurie Anderson on Karl Ove Knausgaard…
I walk into his books and it’s really wonderful because you’re there and in the most mundane details, and you learn from him what it feels like to push a stroller and how his self image is effected by walking down the street… And then I was invited to a music festival in Norway in his town, and the wild thing was I’m the only woman in the music festival. I was geeking out with Norwegian electronica men, which was great. But what was really wonderful was I knew all of them. I knew what they said to their mother on the phone, I knew what they felt when they pushed their stroller along, I knew what the argument was with their wife, I knew where they bought their shoes. Suddenly I had this insight into people that I normally would not, and I wasn’t that far off. I’m not trying to make people into coherent groups… People do—on a certain level—make a certain kind of sense. It was completely fascinating for me. Thank God for books where I can get out of myself and just be in somebody else’s skin for a minute.