Apr 4, 2011

What about That Dress?




"Not a story my people tell."


"One of the things that people have remarked on having seen [the 'Home of the Brave' concert film] was "now what about that dress?" Well, it is a chain metal dress that weighed about 70 pounds - that I were in 'Langue d'amour' - I could hardly hoist myself up onto this platform to walk back and forth and tell the story, so I had to wear sneakers, too. Well, if I had worn heels - what you really should wear with a dress like that - I would have been pile driving the spikes into the beam and just completely destroying this thing.

The song 'Langue d'amour' is of course about a woman and a snake, so I tried to be both narrators in that song: the gloves were supposedly the head and tail of this long snake who keeps slithering around.

[...]

I felt that since this was a story about the Garden of Eden - and this was a woman's story if there ever was one, I mean she initiated this action, Adam really just kinda stood around - so I figured since she was the main person in that story, she should tell it, so that's why I departed from my usual - as they say, androgynous - look to something more appropriate to that story."

(Laurie Anderson, 'Home of the Brave' promo interview, 1986)