Laurie Anderson. Photo: Wolfgang Tillmans
Ebullient on the Zoom screen, wearing space-age caramel-coloured glasses, Laurie Anderson is calling me from Los Angeles, looking forward to her first-ever gig in Wales in two weeks’ time.
“Where shall I go afterwards? I have a day!” At 79, the pioneering avant-garde composer, performance artist and accidental one-hit wonder (after her astonishing vocoder-led epic, O Superman, became a UK No 2 hit in 1981) barely sits still. I suggest the National Museum of Wales’s fabulous art collection, or an hour’s drive to a mountain. “What a good idea!”
Anderson’s show in Wales, Friends and Teachers, will be a one-off as part of Llais, a four-day celebration of the voice, at the fortnight-long Cardiff Music City Festival. These days, her concerts are whirligig combinations of analogue and electronic music, storytelling, philosophy and politics. She’s thinking of including Marcus Aurelius (“who wrote Meditations, a very powerful book”), Cornel West (“who said justice is what love looks like in public, which is a very powerful thought”) and Donald Trump, although, unsurprisingly, she’s not a fan.
She’s been watching him this week at the UN talking about how "we aren’t allowed to use [the term] artificial intelligence now, but super-intelligence, but he doesn't say what the punishment would be … that’s how I get inside [who he is], thinking about how a mad king [uses words] can tell us a lot about language.”
With eight studio albums, numerous films, and multiple theatrical works, soundtracks and art installations under her belt – as well as a 2024 Grammy lifetime achievement award – Anderson was also Lou Reed's life partner from 1992 until his death in 2013. She said about him in her 2015 film Heart of a Dog “that the purpose of death is the release of love”. Reed was another artist who eschewed celebrity culture. Anderson tells me about someone she just spotted in her hotel parking lot before we called – a teenage influencer talking to her camera. “When I was her age, a camera was used to do something goofy. Now people post like celebrities. I wanted to say ‘this is taking a big bite out of your psyche. It’s not a good idea to do that’!”
She says all this with a sweet smile on her face, and kindness in her tone – the ultimate friend and teacher, peering through her glasses like a rock star.
The arts are under threat in the US today. What do you think about Trump’s threats to demolish the Kennedy Center?
His rage is about his insane jealousy of Kennedy. That’s what it's really about… I don't wish that he would be assassinated, but I do wish, of course, that he would be retired [laughs]. But yes, Trump despises the arts. He despises science. He despises anything except money. And people know that [what he says] is a series of delusional lies – they really do – but the power that comes with it is just so freakishly powerful that it's very hard to combat.
What can artists do to protest?
I don't think direct action is working very well, frankly, because our government has learned so much about protests that they won't let that happen. Denying free speech and muzzling everybody is working fairly well. But I think that all [artists’] work, however small, that has a basis in curiosity and love and openness will survive in some way, even if it's just to inspire a couple of other people to say “I maybe can't change things, but I can certainly change my mind about how to think about it”. And I'm not saying this to discourage people from doing actions. My action is to make work, and I think many artists feel the same – by making something beautiful and very startlingly true.
Your work is playful and peaceful. How do you resist anger?
I like to think of the teacher [American nun] Pema Chödrön, who would say: analyse your anger. Go to the bottom up, to the roots of it, and you will always find the same thing at the root of anger: a broken heart. Try to look at what these forces are, and understand them, before you just fight them.
'I’m not about hope or fear. I've tried to stop myself from being in the future.' Laurie Anderson
Where do you have your best ideas?
I would have to say it’s more when, and it’s when I’m the most calm, and that would be often in the morning, when I'm not trying to have an idea. When it's not connected to my own ego, when I don’t tend to relate it to me, when I’m not thinking “this would be a great thought or a great project for me”, then, very clearly, I can analyse this thought, which is not connected to my desire so much, but my curiosity.
Who do you talk to when you are feeling low or need inspiration or guidance?
I realised recently I had a real sudden need to talk to young women, and so I just called up my old college [Barnard College in New York, where Anderson studied art history from 1966 to 1969], and I said: “Hey, I'd really like to come in the spring.” A teacher I hope to talk about [in the Cardiff gig], Barbara Novak, taught a course called American Light, and she had a kind of cult following because we really loved how she was thinking about things. She also got us jobs as college writers at Artforum and ARTNews under pseudonyms. It’s good to speak to people!
Is there anything you wish you had known at 18 that you know now?
[Laughs] I knew a lot when I was 18. Actually, I didn't have a lot of experience, so I guess I wished I’d had that! No, I'm happy with what I knew then and what I didn't know, and I was glad to get a chance to be an idiot. To think of my older self coming along and saying: “Oh, if you'd only known that, then I wouldn't have made all those interesting mistakes.” You know, I don't mind making these blunders. I learned a lot through blunders. I am not trying to live a perfect life.
Is there a piece of art that you've really been inspired by recently?
Oh, just non-stop things! At the top of my list would be Solvej Balle’s novel On the Calculation of Volume. Whoa! Ten pages into it, I’m seeing things differently, in a very vivid way.
Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson in New York. Photo: Lawrence Schwartzwald
Tell us about something that's given you hope over the past few months.
I’m not so much about hope or fear. I've tried to stop myself from being in the future. I’m trying to be more in the present, more understanding of things now, rather than hoping for them to change. I do hope for them to change, of course, because I think we have a lot of very difficult problems right now, but I think that there's always been a lot of suffering.
Do you have any regrets?
Oh, regrets! [sings] I’ve had a few! But really, I’m trying to have more sympathy for myself, and I know that a lot of people, myself included, are so self-critical to the point of absurdity. You accuse yourself and say things to yourself that you would never say to anyone else. Like: “You're such an idiot, how could you?” You wouldn't say that to someone else. That would be considered extremely rude. So don't do that to yourself. Cut yourself a little more slack than that.
Laurie Anderson performs Friends and Teachers at Llais, part of the Cardiff Music City Festival, at the Wales Millennium Centre on 8 October. Tickets are available here