I met Laurie Anderson in the fall of 1980, when I interviewed her for a cover story in the Soho News after I was blown away by Part 2 of her work-in-progress magnum opus United States, which she performed for a week at the Orpheum Theater on Second Avenue. When the entire cycle had its premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, I interviewed her again for the New York Times Magazine. Over the years, I would run into her and we would have meals and take walks together — in Paris, in Minneapolis, in San Francisco, and on the home front in New York City. It’s been a treat to build a friendship with someone whose wide-ranging work has thrilled me for decades — her albums, her shows, her films, her books, her collaborations. So it was a special honor when she invited me to be a guest on “Party in the Bardo,” the biweekly radio show she’s been producing during the pandemic for the Wesleyan University campus radio station WESU-FM. We spent two hours playing music, reading poems, and talking about life. The show premieres at 4am on a Friday morning, and it’s archived on the station’s website. You can also listen to it on Soundcloud. Check it out here and let me know what you think.
another eye opens 