If the future was yesterday, then, when is tomorrow?

"Standby. You're on the air. Buenos noches Senores y Senoras. Bienvenidos. La primera pregunta es: Que es mas macho, pineapple o knife? Well, let's see. My guess is that a pineapple is more macho than a knife. Si! Correcto! Pineapple es mas macho que knife. La segunda pregunta es: Que es mas macho, lightbulb o schoolbus? Uh, lightbulb? No! Lo siento, Schoolbus es mas macho que lightbulb. Gracias. And we'll be back in un momento.

Well I had a dream and in it I went to a little town And all the girls in town were named Betty. And they were singing: Doo doo doo doo doo... Ah desire! It's cold as ice And then it's hot as fire. Ah desire! First it's red And then it's blue. And everytime I see an iceberg It reminds me of you. Doo doo doo doo doo... Que es mas macho iceberg or volcano? Get the blanket from the bedroom We can go walking once again. Down in the bayou Where our sweet love first began. I'm thinking back to when I was a child - Way back to when I was a tot. When I was an embryo - A tiny speck. Just a dot. When I was a Hershey bar - In my father's back pocket. Hey look! Over there! It's Frank Sinatra Sitting in a chair. And he's blowing Perfect smoke rings Up into the air..."

- Lyrics from Smoke Rings by Laurie Anderson, from her 1986 soundtrack album Home of the Brave. Inset right is a photo found here.

(New, 11/8.)  In the video Anderson utilizes two instruments she actually invented: a tape-bow violin (which she uses at the end of the performance)*, and a "talking stick," which is the second microphone she occasionally sings into at certain moments during the piece which distorts her voice so eerily.

Note one other eerie thing: the set of numbers that suddenly appears on the screen in the background at the end of the performance. 911. When I first saw those numbers (appearing after a large "SOS"), I figured that maybe it was a reference to 9/11/01... but, no, the video was allegedly shot in 1987. Prescience? Or, am I just missing something? 

(Later note: Actually, I'm not missing something as much as forgetting something! I believe 911 is the emergency phone # in New York, the rest of the USA, and many countries!  Well, duh.)

***

Well, "the times, they are a changing" and quite literally. It's DST here in the states and we've just gained an hour... just in time for an interlude post hosted by that enigmatic woman in the video above, Laurie Anderson, a time-traveler (to be sure), whose amazing performance took place almost 40 years ago... and the world has, yet, to catch up with her.

Case in point, from 1981, O Superman. Ditto. While we're almost there, she's one step ahead of us... which is just as well, as the prognosis is not all that fluffy. On the other hand, when it comes to War - the Great Destroyer - time seems to stand still, or, maybe civilization just gets stuck in the same trench-like groove...

But, never the artist! The video above is from 2018, Anderson's collaboration with the Kronos Quartet.

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* “I used this instrument to play lots of sounds... initially car crashes, saxophones, and barking dogs. Later I began to work with audio

palindromes, words that produce different words when reversed. Audio palindromes are not predictable like spelling inversions. ‘God’ is always ‘dog’ backwards. With a lot of experimentation, I produced songs for this instrument that could be played forwards and backwards."

- Laurie Anderson via this .pdf page. More information can be found on this German site, and in the BBC article: Oksana Linde and the Forgotten Pioneers of Electronic Music.