Laurie Anderson Talks About Fleeting Freedom and America Turning 250

Laurie Anderson is performing a show titled “Republic of Love” at Central Park SummerStage on June 26, as part of the 40th-anniversary season of the City Parks Foundation’s outdoor concert series. She’ll be backed by Sexmob, a downtown jazz band that grew out of the free-improv scene around the Knitting Factory in the 1990s, and she’ll be singing songs of hers in the midst of other contributions by fellow American visionaries like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, John Cage, Gertrude Stein, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg in what she’s calling “a celebration of freedom.”

From her home in Greenwich Village, Anderson spoke with ARTnews about the evolution of her show and her thoughts about a country marking its 250th birthday soon.

What is the origin story of “Republic of Love”?

There is a guy named Milo Rau, a wonderful character who does a lot of political actions. He came to New York and wanted to meet with me. We were supposed to meet for breakfast, but he called me up and said, “I’m at a demonstration in Times Square and I’m going to be an hour late. Sorry but I have to rush…” He showed up later, out of breath and wearing a sandwich board calling for artists’ freedom. I asked him how the demo went and he said, “Well, it was just me.” I thought: I’m in love with this guy!

Hs invitation for me was to go to Vienna for a festival called Republic of Love to give a talk about the rise of fascism at ORF, which is the radio station where Hitler announced the annexation of Austria. It was kind of obvious why we might know about the rise of fascism in the United States. It was a creepy place: a bunker, more or less, with all these old microphones and a really creepy ‘30s vibe.

That talk was long, so I went very far afield. I was reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, a book I love so much. His advice to people is like: “Don’t let people jerk you around like a puppet”—it reads like he wrote it yesterday. So I did that talk and then wondered: Where else can it go? What could it become? I started thinking of Americans who’ve talked about government and freedom, so this show has guest ghosts in a way. It starts off with Cornel West, who said, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Then there’s Bob Dylan, Gertrude Stein, William Burroughs, Arthur Russell, Pema Chödrön. And Allen Ginsberg, who wrote “America why are your libraries full of tears?”

How do those figures work along with your songs?

I combined these American ghosts with some old songs of mine. Many have horn lines, because I love Sexmob and they can really do that well. I wondered what some songs, like “Big Science,” would sound like now. When we started playing it, I was like: That sounds exactly like now, with the lyrics “every man for himself.” The song “Language Is a Virus” is about what happens when language spins out of control and you can say anything—like “the Reflecting Pool is blue.”

So that’s what this show has become. It includes a couple of things from the last show I did with Sexmob. One is a song that Lou [Reed, with Metallica] wrote called “Junior Dad,” which is one of my all-time favorite songs about fatherhood—and connects to a Founding Fathers theme. It’s going to be a 90-minute show that I’m going to try to adapt to New York—if we can figure out what’s going on here.

You mentioned Arthur Russell—are you going to be performing a song by him?

I would say it’s a little homage to him. He joins as a kind of voice in the background. Arthur was in my first band, and he was just the greatest guy. He wrote songs that were so simple and beautiful, like “It’s a lovely day …”—that’s it, that’s the song! His songs [reflect] different approaches to living. You can be really theoretical and political, or you can just kind of go look out the window at the day.

How are you feeling about our country around its 250th birthday?

I was asked by Tanglewood to do an event about the 250th celebration of that document, which is now seriously compromised. Rather than directly talk about that, because we talk about it endlessly, I’m writing something that we’re going to do in August with some string players. It’ll be step past the Republic of Love when we look at what happens when you really find it very difficult to change things. It’s hopefully more of a celebration than a dirge, because it is really dire what’s going on—there’s no nice way to say it. As an analyst of what’s going on, I really try to think about it, but endlessly writing sad songs about it isn’t something I want to do either. Time is limited.

My last show was more about my teachers and how most of them really emphasized joy. Robert Thurman was a wonderful teacher for me who I went to Tibet and had a lot of adventures with. I’ve listened to Liberation Upon Hearing in the Between: Living with the Tibetan Book of the Dead, his teaching about the Bardo, probably 100 times. It’s so profound, and now that he’s actually in the Bardo, it’s really intense for me. Another thing about that is it’s this 49-day period of a shift in consciousness. When does that end for him? It’s on August 3—his birthday. So he’s born again on his birthday. Who has the wherewithal to figure out timing like that? It was an incredible stroke of genius that only Bob could pull off.

I’m trying to study those kinds of things now. I’ve been spending time in dark retreats, where you go to a place in complete darkness for many days. My next one is going to be double the length. That is kind of where I’m going mentally and emotionally and intellectually, into situations where you can really can confront stuff. Though I can’t say the last one was like that—it was more like a series of amazing hallucinations. Anyway, I don’t really know how to talk or write about it, but that is what I’m doing now.

Do you have memories of Central Park SummerStage?

I love it. It’s really fun, and I love being outside in the park—though there are ticks, so whoever’s going, bring some tick spray. They finally came to the city. Everyone in New York would gloat about all those people in the country with their houses getting ticks. Now we need tick spray and to look at every square inch at the end of the day.