The Cultural Ambassador (Live) - Laurie Anderson
Anyway I was in israel as a kind
Of cultural ambassador
And there were lots of press
Conferences scheduled
Around the performances
The journalists usually started things off
By asking about the avantgarde
So what's so good about new they'd ask
Well new is interesting
And what they would say is so
Good about interesting
Well interesting is you know it's interesting
It's like being awake you know
I'm treading water now
And what is so good about
Being awake they'd say
Finally I got the hang of this
Never answer a question
In israel always answer by asking
Another question
But the Israelis were vey curious
About the gulf war
And what americans had thought
About it and I tried
To think of a good question to
Ask and answer to
This but what was really on
My mind was that the
Week before I had myself
Been testing explosives
In a parking lot in tel aviv
Now this happened
Because I had brought some
Small stage bombs
To Israel as props for this
Performance and the
Israeli promoter was very interested in them
And it turned out that he was on weekend duty
On one of the bomb squads and bombs were
Also something of a hobby during the week
So I said
Look you know these bombs are
Nothing special just just a little smoke
And he said well we can get much
Better things for you
And I said
No really these are fine and he said
No but it should be big theatrical
It should make an impression I mean
You really just the right bomb
And so one morning he arranged to have
About fifty small bombs delivered to a parking lot
And since he looked on it as a sort of
Special surprise
Favor I couldn't really refuse so
We are on this parking
Lot testing the bombs and after
The first few explosions
I found I was really getting pretty interested
They all had very different characteristics
Some had fiery orange tails and
Made these low paah
Paah paah popping sound others
Exploded mid air
And left long smoky slinky trails
And he had several
Of each kind in case I needed to
Review them all at the end
And I'm thinking
Here I am a citizen of the world's largest arms
Supplier setting off bombs with the world's second
Largest arms customer and I'm having a great time
So even though the diplomatic part of the trip
Wasn't going so well at least
I was getting some instruction in terrorism
And it reminded me of something in a book by
Don deLillo about how terrorists
Are the only true artists
Left because they're the only ones who are still
Capable of really surprising people
And the other thing it reminded me of were all the
Attempts during the gulf war to outwit
The terrorists and I especially
Remember an interesting
Liist of tips devised by the us embassy in madrid
And these tips were designed for americans
Who found themselves in wartime airports
The idea was not to call ourselves to the
Attention of the numerous foreign terrorists
Who were presumably lurking all over the terminal
So the embassy tips were a list of mostly don'ts
Things like don't wear a baseball cap
Don't wear a sweat shirt with the name of
An american university on it don't wear
Timberlands with no socks don't chew gum
Don't yell ethel our plane is leaving
I mean it's weird when your entire culture
Can be summed up in eight giveaway characteristics
And during the gulf war I was traveling around
Europe with a lot of equipment and all the airports
Were full of security guards who would
Suddenly point to a suitcase and start yelling
Whose bag is this I wanna know right now
Who owns this bag
And huge groups of passengers would start
Out for the bag just running around in circles like a
Skud missile on its way in and I was carrying
A lot of electronics so I had to keep unpacking
Everything and plugging it in and demonstrating
How it all worked and I guessed
I did seem a little fishy
A lot of this stuff wakes up displaying led program
Readouts that have names like adam smasher and
So it took a while to convince them that they
Weren't some kind of espionage system
So I've done quite a few of these sort of impromptu
New music concerts for small groups of detectives
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