I went to National Airport yesterday with Jefferson to pick up Laurie Anderson. She’s incredibly polite, gracious, and very, very quiet—and also funny, as you'd expect. For some reason, we ended up taking her on an impromptu tour of the National Arboretum. Why not?

Last night, she gave a lecture at the University of Maryland about some of the projects she’s worked on recently, and showed her film, Hidden Inside Mountains. The film was mostly atmospheric light effects—no actual lights used, mind you, just projections against billowing cloth, screens, figures, window frames.

The actors were all twins and triplets, all remained silent; text would flash on the screen in Japanese and English. Typical Laurie Anderson fare: Curious gnomic statements, sometimes dramatic, usually quirky, mostly in plain, everyday language. The soundtrack featured singer Antony’s bizarre androgynous warbling, as well as a lot of crackling feedback and drones, which are fine by me.

Anderson was disarmingly direct, claiming to have no answers, little insight into why she does what she does—mostly suggesting that people need to remember to enjoy themselves.