Customer Reviews

NIGHT LIFE

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If you buy this book it is because you enjoy Laurie Anderson's work. Don't buy it to interprete her dreams, buy it because you like her art and her work, and feel like maybe she has something to say. In this case her message might be more vague in in her other works but they're dreams, the playthings of the mind while it is sleeping. She writes that these drawing, this book was written out of "self-defense." It's just a piece of her. It's just art.

Expectations -- any Laurie Anderson fan knows that it's best to leave them behind. She will constantly surprise, amuse and intrigue. These images were first shown at the Sean Kelley Gallery in New York as part of an installation called "The Waters Reglitterized," a "kind of diary of dreams and their literal recreation as works of art."

As with all of Laurie's work, these drawings raise more questions than they do provide answers. They are a look directly into her subconscious and the process of how her dreams manifest as art. She has said that she began to draw these dreams out of self-defense, so wild and relentless the dreams had become.

It's fascinating to watch her chronicle her dreams during the course of a year on the road. The drawings are entertaining, haunting and beautiful -- headless singing squirrels, a visit to her childhood home, a mid-air collision and PR people. In her own words: "'Not every show needs a plot!' I keep shouting."

Most people who buy this book will buy it for the same reason: To get inside the quirky mind of artist and musician Laurie Anderson. What better way to gain an intimate understanding of her then to explore her dream life? I'm pretty good with dreams. For years I ran a dream interpretation website. However, when I read her mostly one line descriptions I didn't get the feeling that the universe was talking either to her or through her. If these were real dreams then she has left out all of the content you were hoping to read.

While Salvador Dali could go on endlessly about the dreamlike meanings of his paintings, Laurie Anderson gives most of her small scratchboard etchings little more than a title and never more than a bland description. "I stand on a balcony while Paris is Burning," is a good example, along with, "Everything I look at is dazzling." Even though I am a fan of her work, I only flipped through the volume once before shelving it. This roughly 7 by 9 inch book is only a little over a half inch thick making it a poor choice for your coffee table and given the price, your pocketbook as well.

What can be said about Laurie's work that don't use words like amazing, lovely, brilliant, delicate, elegant an so on? This book register her dreams, both on text and digital drawings made on tour far from home. It's the very source of her criativity and unique poit of view on the absurd and beautiful world around us. As we read it, we discover how rich and amazing is both her lifes - awaken and asleep. As allways, the multimedia artist reveals that any media can be used as an expression of her own soul and as a voice of expression. Sometimes a word, sentence or a drawing can say more than a concert, a music video or a performance. She ingeniously uses all channels of communication and expression to cleverly mark her statement on simple and complex things. Absolutly delicious from beggining to end.

There

is

something about

this storyteller

this

artist

this visionary

that

I

groove

with