I'm a Real Researcher!

I'm having a geek moment. The Wisconsin Historical Society is going to give me special access to high-resolution digital maps for my Pike Creek project! *bounces*

Laurie Anderson's "Bright Red"

I listened to Laurie Anderson's "Bright Red" on the way to Evanston on Thursday evening.

I wasn't sure whether to expect something more like "Big Science" or "Mister Heartbreak." Instead, I got a little of both and a lot of neither. For those who don't know her music anyway, that probably doesn't mean much.

There was so much rememberance in this album. Death and rememberance and forgetting and connection and loss and family and childhood gone. I'll admit that a part of the appeal of the other two of her albums I own is the novely. The strangeness, the otherness and difference. I feel more deeply touched, penetrated, by Bright Red in ways I didn't expect. Words from "World Without End" settled down into my mind, finding a not entirely comfortable place to call home.

"When my father died, we put him in the ground. When my father died, it was like a whole library had burned down. World without end. Remember me."

I think of my grandfather when I think of these words. And others, living and dead, but a lot of my grandfather is there, who I did not know as well as I would have liked. But can you ever?

Tightrope has some lyrics that caress deep parts of my psyche as well.

Remember me is all I ask.
And if remembered be a task, forget me.

Anyway, I don't write much about music. I feel like it's probably not of much interest to most of my readers. But there is enough of an emotional connection here for me to want to share it.