Artist/Band:
Laurie Anderson
Lyrics for Song: Word Of Mouth
Lyrics for Album: Ugly One With The Jewels & Oth [1995]
In 1980, as part of a project called Word of Mouth,
I was invited, along with a living other artists,
to go to Panape, a tiny island in the middle of the
Pacific. The idea was that we'd sit around talking
for a few days and that the conversations would be
made into a talking record.
The first night we were all really jet-lagged but as
soon as we sat down the organizers set up all these
mikes and switched on thousand white light bulbs.
And we tried our best to seem as intelligent as possible.
Television had just come to Panape a week before we
arrived and there was a strong excitement around the
island as people crowded around the few sets.
Then the day after we arrived,
in a bizarre replay of the first TV show ever broadcast
to Panape, prisoners escaped from a jail,
broke into the radio station and murdered the DJ.
Then they went off on a rampage through the jungle,
armed with lawnmower blades.
In all, four people were murdered in cold blood.
Detectives, flown in from Guam to investigate,
swarmed everywhere. At night we stayed around in our
cottages, listening out into the jungle.
Finally the local chief decided to hold a ceremony
for the murder victims. The artist Marina Brownovich
and I went, as representatives of our group to film
it. The ceremony was held in a large thatched lean-to
and most of the ceremony involved cooking beans in
pits and brewing a dark drink from roots.
The smell was overwhelming.
Dogs ###040225 around barking.
And everybody seemed to be having a fairly good timeâ?¦ as funerals go.
After a few hours Marina and I were presented to the
chief, who was sitting on a raised platform above the
pits. We'd been told we couldn't turn our backs on
the chief at any time or ever be higher than he was.
So we scrambled up onto the platform with our film
equipment and sort of duck-waddled up backwards to
the chief. As a present I brought one of those Fred
Flintstone cameras, the kind where the film canister
is also the body of the camera,
and I presented it to the chief.
He seemed delighted and began to click off pictures.
He wasn't advancing the film between shots,
but since we were told we shouldn't speak unless spoken
to, I wasn't able to inform him that he wasn't going
to get twelve pictures, but only one, very, very complicated one.
After a couple more hours the chief lifted his hand,
and there was absolute silence.
All the dogs had suddenly stopped barking.
We looked around and saw the dogs.
All their throats had been simultaneously cut and their
bodies, still breathing, pierced with rods,
were turning on those pits.
The chief insisted we join in the meal but Marina had
turned green and I asked if we could just have ours
to go. They carefully wrapped the dogs in leaves and
we carried their bodies away.
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