ATDTDA Playlist Addition

[Keith]

'Dance of Electricity (for Nikola Tesla)' - from "United States I-IV"  
by Laurie Anderson

A while ago, I got a call from the Tesla Institute in Belgrade, long  
distance. The voice was very faint and it said, “Understand do we  
that much of your work has been dedicated to Nikola Tesla and do we  
know the blackout of information about this man in the U.S. of A. And  
so we would like to invite you to the Institute as a free citizen of  
the world ... as a free speaker on American Imperialist Blackout of  
Information .. Capitalist resistance to Technological Progress ...  
the Western World’s obstruction of Innovation. So think about it.” He  
hung up. I thought: Gee, really a chance to speak my mind, and I  
started doing some research on Tesla, whose life story is actually  
really sad.
    Basically, he was the inventor of AC current, lots of kinds of  
generators and the Tesla coil. His dream was wireless energy. And he  
was working on a system in which you could plug appliances directly  
into the ground. A system which he never really perfected.
    Tesla came over from Graz and went to work for Thomas Edison.  
Edison couldn’t stand Tesla for several reasons. One was that Tesla  
showed up for work every day in formal dress--morning coat, spats,  
top hat and gloves--and this just wasn’t the American Way at the  
time. Edison also hated Tesla because Tesla invented so many things  
while wearing these clothes.
    Edison did his best to prevent conversion to AC and did  
everything he could to discredit it. In his later years, Edison was  
something of a showman and he went around on the Chautauqua circuit  
in upstate New York giving demonstrations of the evil effects of AC.  
He always brought a dog with him and he’d get up on stage and say:  
“Ladies and gentlemen! I will now demonstrate the effects of AC  
current on this dog!” And he took two bare wires and attached them to  
the dog’s head and the dog was dead in under thirty seconds.
    At any rate, I decided to open the series of talks in Belgrade  
with a song called “The Dance of Electricity” and its beat is derived  
from an actual dance--an involuntary dance--and it’s the dance you do  
when one of your fingers gets wedged in a live socket and your arms  
start pumping up and down and your mouth is slowly opening and  
closing and you can feel the power but no words will come out.