Silly Thinking

Been thinking about the 80's again, probably because my story on the subject finally found a home at the Infinite Matrix, and today I found myself humming the old pop tunes. Very happy tunes like '99 Luftballoons and 'oh Superman.' I thought I'd put up something about 'oh Superman' on the blog because of that, and because I'm a big fan of Laurie Anderson, and then when I type her name into Google the first thing I find is an article from January, coming out of Australia, and it's all about this endless war we're in, and the Twin Towers, and all of that.


There's a great interview with Anderson in last week's Bulletin magazine where she spoke of its refrain, "here come the planes", taking on an eerie new meaning post-September 11. "I wrote O Superman during the Iran/Contra scandal," she said. "Americans have short memories. They don't realise that this is the same war that's been going on for 20 years."

Anderson, who's touring Australia next month, performed in New York a week after September 11, and referred to the horror as an 'opportunity'.

"I thought about that word a lot. I really believe that when something big happens, whether it seems good or seems bad, it's a chance to jump out of your preconceptions. I was very disappointed that there was no dialogue in the year since then. I suppose instead of opportunity the word would be security because we're now just too afraid - or too lazy. These pools of freedom and fear are really interesting ones. It's a brand new question, what is it to be free and also afraid?"

Here come the planes.

They're American planes. Made in America.