'Moby Dick' Questions and Answers

Dallas, TX, 1999: the creators and performers of 'Songs and Stories from Moby Dick' talk about the making process of the piece and provide a clinical demonstration of the Talking Stick, a huge batonlike MIDI instrument Laurie created as a support for her love letter of Melville's book:

The 'Moby Dick' crew:

Anthony Turner - Standing Man
Price Waldman - The Cook, Second Mate, Running Man
Tom Nelis - Ahab, Noah, Explorer
Miles Green - Falling Man
Skúli Sverrisson - bass, pepared bass, samples, percussion
Laurie Anderson - Pip, The Whale, narration + visual design, music and lyrics

"Deals with the Spiritual Issues of Our Time"

"I don't actually believe in angels but I do believe that we are them."

(Laurie Anderson at Columbia University, 2011)

Listen to how Laurie Anderson navigated her way through the sometimes elusive / dim / intangible subjects of spirituality, faith and religion in a public conversation held at Columbia University on February 10, 2011 - thanks to the CU Institute for Religion, Culture & Public Life website, the conversation can be downloaded as a podcast:

• 'Refiguring the Spiritual' with Laurie Anderson (audio length: 61 mins 35 secs, file size: 28.1 MB)

It's almost impossible (and unnecessary) to list all the topics touched upon - just to name a few: Melville and the Biblical symbolism of Moby Dick; silence, pain and meditation; being a spy as an artist, Laurie's pentecostal missionary grandmother, Capitalist Realism, making freeform fiction out of Egyptian architecture; John Cage, NASA's poetic projects, pressure of technology; pitch and prayer; How to Be Idle, the School of Life, what is an artist, etc. etc. etc.

You can find a bunch of great reviews of the conversation on ircpl.org by Elizabeth Kipp-Giusti, Courtney Bender, Shelly Silver, María Cristina Fernández Hall, Kali Handelman and Nora Griffin.

Twitter's archive has also got a series of enthusiastic tweets from the event by keith_wilson and saletteg. :)



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