Ausschnitte aus: Laurie Anderson's Nerve

Ausschnitte aus:
Laurie Anderson's Nerve Bible
veröffentlicht auf: THE UGLY ONE WITH THE JEWELS AND OTHER STORIES 1995

The Cultural Ambassador
Now, last year I was invited to
perform in Israel and I was very excited because I wanted to see
Jerusalem where this mysterious "J" had spent her life writing and
working. So, I did some asking around before I left, some sort of
informal research. And I was talking to an Israeli woman who was living
in New York and she was having a really hard time living there and she
was always complaining about American men. And she'd say, "You know,
American men are such wimps. I mean, they're always talking about their
feelings." And I said, "They are?" And she said she really liked
Israeli men because they were so tough and because they all had guns.
And I said, "Guns. You like guys with guns?"
Anyway, I was in Israel as a kind of cultural ambassador. And there
were all of these press conferences scheduled around the concerts but
the journalists didn't want to talk about art or music, they were all
still talking about the Gulf War. And they kept asking me questions
about this and I was trying to answer them but what was really on my
mind was that I had myself, the week before, been testing explosives in
a parking lot in Tel Aviv. Now, this happened because I brought some
small stage bombs to Israel as props for the performance and the
Israeli promoter was very interested in them. And it turned out that he
was on weekend duty on one of the bomb squads and bombs were also
something of a hobby during the week. So, I said, "Look, you know,
these bombs are nothing special, you know, just a little smoke." And he
said, "Well, we can get much better things for you." And I said, "No,
no, really, these are fine." And he said, "No, but it should be big,
theatrical, I mean, you need just the right bomb." So, one morning, he
arranged to have about fifty small bombs delivered to this parking lot
and since he looked on it as a sorta special, surprise favor, I
couldn't really refuse. So, we're out in this parking lot testing the
bombs. And after the first few, I found I was getting . . . pretty
interested. I mean, they all had really different characteristics. Some
made these little "poomp, poomp, poomp" popping sounds and others
exploded mid-air and left long, smokey, slinky trails. And he had
several of each kind in case I needed to review them all at the end.
And, I'm thinking, here I am, a citizen of the world's largest arms
supplier setting off bombs with the world's second largest arms
customer and I'm having a great time.
So, even though the diplomatic part of the trip wasn't going so well at
least I was getting some instruction in terrorism. And it reminded me
of something in a book by Don DeLillo about how terrorists are the only
true avant-garde artists left because they're the only ones who are
still capable of really surprising people. And the other thing it
reminded me of were all the U.S. Government directives that have been
coming out about how to protect yourself from terrorists. And I got one
of these directives from the U.S. embassy in Madrid and it was a list
of tips designed for Americans travelling through international
airports. And the idea was not to call ourselves to the attention of
the numerous foreign terrorists presumably lurking all over the
terminal. So, the embassy tips were a list of mostly "don't"s. Things
like:
Don't wear a baseball cap. Don't wear a sweatshirt with the name of an
American university on it. Don't wear Timberlands with no socks. Don't
chew gum. Don't yell, "Ethel, our plane is leaving."
I mean it's weird when your entire culture can be summed up in eight,
giveaway characteristics.
War is the Highest Form of Modern Art
But during the Gulf War
I was travelling around Europe with a lot of equipment. And all of the
airports were full of security guards who would suddenly point to a
suitcase and start yelling, 'Whose bag is this? I wanna know right now
who owns this bag.' And huge groups of passengers would start running
around in circles like a SCUD missile was on its way in. And I was
carrying a lot of electronics so I had to keep unpacking everything and
plugging it in and demonstrating how it all worked. So I've done quite
a few of these sort of impromptu new music concerts for small groups of
detectives and customs agents. I'd have to set all of this stuff up and
they'd listen for awhile and then say "So what's this?" and I'd pull
out something like (VOICE ELECTRONICALLY DROPS ONE OCTAVE) this filter
and it would take me a while to tell them how I used it for songs that
were about various forms of control and they would say: Now why would
you want to talk like that? And I looked around at the swat teams and
undercover agents and dogs and the radio turned to the Superbowl
coverage of the war and I'd say, take a wild guess. (VOICE RETURNS TO
REGULAR PITCH) Finally, I got through. After all, it was American made
equipment. And all of the customs agents were all talking about the
effectiveness, no, the beauty, the elegance of the American strategy of
pin-point bombing. The high-tech, surgical approach that was being
reported on CNN as something between grand opera and the Super Bowl.
Like the first reports, before the blackout, when TV was live, and
everything was heightened, and it was so euphoric.

am 23. September 2001, 04:19

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