Bowing at the altar of Laurie Anderson

FW: You’ve produced an amazing amount of work. What keeps you going?

Anderson: I don’t mean to sound shallow, but it’s the best way to have fun, you know? For me it’s just sort of goofing around. It really is – it’s like “Oh I think I’ll make a cartoon today. No, I think I’ll make a song.”

You know, so when you call yourself this amorphous mutlimedia artist thing, you just do whatever you feel like and people go “oh that’s your work, ok fine,” and that’s how it is.

FW: One last question. As someone who’s been incredibly successful with their work, do you have any advice for those of us living here, holding down three jobs just to pay the rent and trying to find the time to make art?

Anderson: You know when I started being an artist I had this friend who said really irritating things to me. I would say “Look Richie, you don’t understand. I really wanna do my work, but, I’ve gotta pay my rent.

And he would just kept saying “Just do your work.”

And I’d say “No no, Richie, come on, it’s just not practical, I mean I have my rent is due in like a week, I have to be practical.”

And he would just keep saying “Do your work.”

And it made me so mad, but I finally realized what he was saying. He was talking about priorities. What do you really want? What do you put first? If you do your work, and you put all of your best energy into that, everything else will fall into place. And, you know, if you make paying your rent your very first priority, well then it will be harder to do your work. If you want this amazing apartment that looks like an artists loft or whatever, you’ll get that, but you might not be able to do any work because you’ll be putting all your energy into getting that place.

I found that at times very hard to take, but it’s really true. Because you know, it’s trusting yourself. That you have something good to say, and that it’s worth saying. That’s what you have to do as an artist. Nobody else’s really going to do it, everything comes from you.

[free williamsburg]