Big Science, Hallelujah.
Laurie Anderson's album of 1982 seen through the lens of current events
In the 1980s as a budding art student I discovered Laurie Anderson’s album Big Science, comprising of songs from her United States I-IV performance art. The hypnotic “ah ah ah O Superman” song is a memorable entity that today seems eminently prescient. I was smitten by everything about it. Anderson’s unforced androgynous look, her smooth voice, the performance, the strange poetry of Big Science, its sounds, music and rhythms.
I recently listened to the album again being prompted by recent events which chime uncannily with its words and songs. The words echo current emergent technocracy, power, mass medication, with its ubiquitous anonymous electronic voices and the steady beat of dehumanisation. Indulge me as I review some highlights through today’s murky lens.
The album begins with a piece called From the Air which playfully satirises the experience of in-flight commands.
We are about to attempt a crash landing…
Place your tray tables in an upright, locked position..
You captain says…
Put your head on your knees
Put your head in your hands,
Put hands on your head,
Put your hands on your hips. Heh heh.
All accompanied by a rhythmic pulse of synthesised keyboards, drum beats and avant-garde sounds. It continues eerily:
Put your hands over your eyes
Jump out of the plane
There is no pilot
You are not alone.
Standby.
Already, I feel a dissonance between my younger self’s understanding and my current interpretation. The implication that we would follow silly orders without thinking is the point of the Simple Simon reference, which was funny then because no one in their right mind would do that would they? Only now, I suppose they would.
The album’s title track, Big Science is a melodic, dream-like evocation of modernity, creating images of loneliness and separation whilst navigating a strange, soulless automated city-scape. It suggests concrete structures, anonymised experiences, man-made synthetics and a distinct lack of nature.
As if to press the point, a voice declares:
“You know, I think we should put some mountains here.
Otherwise, what are the characters going to fall off of?”
The allusion to a Truman Show type pantomime of modern existence was ahead of its time.
The chorus chimes,
Big Science, hallelujah, Big Science, Yodellayheehoo.
The message is clear, whatever “Big Science” is, it is presented critically as a god-like entity to which society bows down unreservedly. There is no sense here that this is a good thing by any means.
The famous O Superman takes the listener further into a realm of power and impersonal messaging. All the way through, the beat of a human voice chanting electronically, “ah, ah, ah, ah,” in the background of what slowly builds into a six-minute piece. It begins:
O Superman
O Judge
O Mom and Dad, Mom and Dad
And then takes us straight into what was then the novel world of the telephone answering machine:
Hi, I’m not home right now, but if you want to leave a message, just start talking at the sound of the tone.
After some playful aspects, we move to something more sinister:
Well, you don’t know me, but I know you.
And I’ve got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
And I said, who is this really? And the voice said: This is the hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes.
And then, building to its strange monotonous crescendo we come to this:
“…when love is gone, there’s always justice.
And when justice is gone, there’s always force.
And when force is gone, there’s always Mom. Hi Mom!
The base note intensifies. It continues:
“So hold me Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms,
…Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.
In your electronic arms.”
The song concludes and fades.
Anderson satirises the American “Mom,” yet I wonder today who “Mom” really is. The song seems really frightening now. Please, Mom, whoever you are, take away those electronic arms. Revisiting the album again, I felt so firmly that Anderson had to be on the side of the sceptics and the questioners. After all, her projects always seemed to be about this very type of situation, the impersonal, technocratic, all powerful totalising threat. Having recently delighted in finding and following Laurie Anderson’s Instagram account, I reeled in horror at a post depicting her performing at a New York vaccination centre. I guessed the point was to entertain those about to be injected and to celebrate all that Big Science. How could she? What was she thinking? The sight of Anderson’s grinning face as she played her violin brought to mind an image from the film Playing For Time, based on the singer Fania Fenelon who played violin at Auschwitz to entertain the Nazis. I hope nobody was injured or killed at that New York performance.
O Superman’s original B side (remember those?) featured a witty piece called “Walk the Dog.” In it, Anderson satirises Dolly Parton’s voice and style, pondering who is going to walk her dog. However superior Anderson thought herself by comparison to Parton, their interests surely converged as they became wealthier. Parton is on record as having donated one million dollars to Moderna in the development of its vaccine, money I’m quite certain was not actually needed, but the allegiance and sentiment is clear. Virtue signalling and appearances trump all for both women.
I could not help but write a comment under that terrible Instagram image. Lost for words, I simply wrote, “death cult” before immediately unfollowing her. She is merely one of many crushing disappointments to be had in this horrendous of times. Who was the writer of that poetry that interrogated authority, anonymous power, the perils of automation, synthesisation and the absurdity of modern technological overreach? That person is long gone. Anderson’s former self was an original voice warning of the essence of the bureaucratic “banality of evil.” Now she appears as a self-congratulating celebrity bobbing around in a sea of banality.
Laurie Anderson will never know that I unfollowed her or wrote what I did. Why should she care? She has plenty of sycophantic adoring fans to keep her ensconced in her illusory world of Big Science! Halleujah! Yodellayheehoo! All hail the Covidian Cult! All in favour say aye.
All lyrics from Big Science by Laurie Anderson.
© Warner Music Group, New York, 1982.
Images by The Sideways Thinker.