Aye, Dickey Mo!

[The Great Quail]

I, too, was at Laurie Anderson's "Moby Dick," and I have a slightly 
different story to tell than our esteemed Chris K; who nevertheless 
wrote quite an entertaining broadside.

First of all, I am a pretty big LA fan; but I lean towards her 
earlier, more experimental stuff. Though "United States Live" can be 
a touch pretentious at times, I still think it's brilliant, and I 
liked "Home of the Brave" as well. I am less fond of her more 
traditional sounding songs, such as the stuff on "Strange Angels." 
Her recent works seem to me either hit-or-miss, and Moby Dick was 
*very* hit-or-miss, all in the same work. I think parts of it were 
some of the best work she's done in years, whereas some parts were 
embarrassingly bad.

My major concern is that it lacked focus -- the piece was all over 
the map, both stylistically and musically, and it lacked a firm 
enough vision to pull it all off. Technological exuberance and sheer 
chutzpah go a long way when performing about the Digital Age or 
modern (oops, postmodern) society; but to drive a performance opera 
about a classic of literature, I think the artist needs to have a 
firm grasp on what her piece is trying to say; and that was sorely 
lacking.

I think the strongest parts were at the beginning, when there was an 
almost reverent, largely non-verbal approach to the text and its 
images. The projections were quite good -- the text and music 
relationships were done very well, similar to Reich's recent (and 
similar) works like "The Cave" and "Hindenberg." At its best, the 
music accompanied the text and images to produce a near mystical 
feeling, creating more a syncretic meditation/celebration of the 
work, as opposed to a musical translation or any form of real 
analysis. And her work with the new "Talking Stick" was pure Laurie 
Anderson -- I could have had more of that. (The Talking Stick is a 
new digital instrument which functions very much like her classic 
magnetic tape bow.) I also warmed up to the costumes and some of the 
musical/choreographed theatrics, occasionally very reminiscent of 
Robert Wilson.

My main problem was with the "production numbers." Many of the songs, 
readings, and dances were given to other performers; in fact, Laurie 
Anderson was only onstage half the time. Now a few of the numbers 
worked for me -- all the ones that focused on Ahab, for instance. I 
though those songs had more fire and originality. But there were 
about three major numbers that just came off terribly -- a bunch of 
people singing bland songs with cheesy back-up vocals and 
choreographed dance moves. It was far too "Cats" for my taste, and to 
make it worse, Laurie Anderson's strengths as a songwriter do *not* 
lie in penning melodies or chorus-numbers, so the music itself was 
fairly limp and insipid. I mean, at least you can remember and *sing* 
most Andrew Lloyd Weber tunes! So these few pieces almost embarrassed 
me -- she seemed so out of her element. I was actually reminded of 
those cheesy production numbers that they inflict upon us during the 
Academy Awards. And to make it worse, one of the singers, a large 
fellow with a permanent smile and a gospel-hammy way of dancing, 
looked more like he was in a production of "Hurray for Everything!" 
than a Laurie Anderson piece.

I was also uncomfortable with some of her monologues -- I normally 
like Laurie's stories, but some of these seemed labored, hurried, and 
lacking in any real depth. (There were a few good ones, though -- I 
especially liked the piece about "caught fish" vs. "free fish.") And 
a few of her songs, well, they seemed same-old same-old. The whole 
"Pip" sequence was fairly uninspiring.

Now, for those of you that have bothered to make it this far, allow 
me to bend your ear some more by responding to Chris:
 
>     Call me unorthodox, but I'll admit it didn't bother me too much that
>     Captain Ahab wore Abe Lincoln's hat, had two legs and could break
>     dance on, uhm, crutches.

I think that was just fine! The crutches were obviously symbolic of 
his missing leg, and the way the actor manipulated them worked 
perfectly for me. The crutches, along with the Lincoln hat, gave the 
Ahab character a grotesque and nearly monstrous appearance, and yet 
one that can also inspire pity. For instance, in the "Make Me into a 
Mechanical Man" song, he looked purely demonic, the symbol of total 
obsession and the imperialistic drive of Western society. Whereas in 
his monologues against the whale, he seemed broken and crippled, an 
object of pity as well as terror.
 
>     Instead, she told a moronic story about a moronic song she
>     breathlessly revealed was a pointless timewaster in the 1930 Barrymore
>     film version.  Oh, ho ho, isn't that amusing, she chuckled, the
>     filmmakers just stuck it in there AND IT WASN'T IN MELVILLE'S NOVEL!
>     They made it up!  How Hollywood, we all agreed, scandalously bemused.

That piece also made me uncomfortable, because it was here that I 
began to think that the work was drifting in both focus and quality. 
But in the other hand, if that would have been an isolated incident, 
it would have worked. Not to sound precious, but it did serve as a 
deconstructive reading of the sea shanty. Out of place because, while 
not in the book, it was added to the movie for popular entertainment 
value. So Laurie incorporated it and pumped it up into a 
Hollywoodized production number. Alas, it was only a taste of what 
was to come! In fact, Laurie had a few genuinely lame production 
numbers of her own to serve up, which undermined the shanty's ability 
to be read as irony or parody.
 
>     Even worse, she had the half-baked temerity at one point to use a
>     snippet of Alan Ginsberg's glorious reading of "America" to illustrate
>     for the cognoscenti her idea of poetic lineage.

Now, that I think is unfair. She has a history of using readings as 
modulation fodder for her instruments -- Burroughs provided several, 
for instance. I think her Ginsberg snippet, used on the Talking 
Stick, was one of the better moments. Now, how it related to Moby 
Dick, I am not so sure. . . .

>And
>     tried to score points for coolness in the program notes with a
>     context-less retelling of her hoary old Pynchon story.  (That he'd
>     give her permission to do a musical version of GR, but only if she'd
>     score it for solo banjo.  Har har, me matey.)  Blech!!  Yuck!!  Ugh!!

Well, as you say, it did lack context. But it was an amusing story, 
and I don't think it was unwelcome. As far as it being name-dropping 
in an attempt to be cool, well, first of all, the name "Thomas 
Pynchon" doesn't win as many cool points in the mundane world as we 
on the List may think. And second of all, Laurie is a genuine Pynchon 
fan, having written the song "Gravity's Angel," and having desired to 
even write an opera about GR. It seems a bit harsh to fault her for 
reading and enjoying a work we all love; not to mention a work that 
most people cannot even get through. Personally, I would love to see 
her do an opera based on GR -- that is, if she would drop the 
show-tune touches and dig deeper into her bag of creativity. Perhaps 
that bag is running dry; but I can say that the Laurie Anderson of 15 
years ago might have done a bang-up job, and there was a lot in Moby 
Dick that was still inspired.
 
>      It's the kind of shit that gives performance art a
>     bad name.

No, Laurie Anderson gives "Performance Art" a good name. What's the 
alternative? Karen Finley or Lydia Lunch?

Just my thoughts,

--Quail
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Great Quail, Keeper of the Libyrinth:
http://www.libyrinth.com

"Countlessness of livestories have netherfallen by this plage, flick 
as flowflakes, litters from aloft, like a waast wizzard all of 
whirlworlds. Now are all tombed to the mound, isges to isges, erde 
from erde . . . (Stoop) if you are abcedminded, to this claybook, 
what curious of signs (please stoop) in this allaphbed! Can you rede 
(since We and Thou had it out already) its world? . . . Speak to us 
of Emailia!"
          --James Joyce, Finnegans Wake