main concert hall are decorated with dozens of masks. There are hand-painted tiles in the women’s bathroom. I’d never been there before, and I’m startled by how art and affluence reassert themselves in its every corner. The carpet is still clean. The building is massive. And for comic relief, the walls that flank the stage resemble the criss-cross webbing of green and white lawn chairs. As the performance begins, black and white symbols flash on the screen: TV sets, palm trees, lightning bolts, jets. The insignia from the cover of Mister Heartbreak have come to life. Then a slight figure, ‘gesticulating wildly, dances onto the stage. There's a moment of doubt — “Who is it really?” — since the audience suspects, but doesn’t know for certain yet that this is Laurie Anderson. She wears a baggy white man’s suit, and her head is covered by a ski mask with stylized features, her feet clad in hot-pink shoes that point like animated arrows. The crowd is aroused; her dance is spasmodic, like break dancing. This is the palpitating core of music that really exists at its best here, as a multi-media assemblage. “Listen to my heart beat," Tuh- duh-duh-duh. There’s rhythm to this smart, pop sound. Anderson likes to tell how she once got billed as some kind of country fiddler at a Houston bluegrass bar. The regulars loved her, and she — who had an MFA in sculpture from Columbia, had taught art history and “Egyptology” at City College, and had grown up in Wayne, Illinois, expecting to be a librarian — realized for the first time that she “didn’t have to play to only art audiences, that other people get it perfectly well.” There’s no condescension here, When she pulls off the mask, she’s still in disguise. Her first words have the intonation of a male professor, giving a mathematics lecture. “I want to talk about the numbers Zero and One. Nobody wants to be a zero, a nobody, a nothing ... On the other hand, everybody wants to be Number One. The thing that bothers me is, there’s not much room in between those. There’s no room for everybody else." In a way, it’s a metaphor for her relationship to the audience; she’s abolished the inequality and put it aside with a laugh. She goes on to construct a new, digital framework where 0 and 1 become a language that can en- ■ code all kinds of representations: part of her phone number, a phrase in an obscure Swahili dialect. The numbers 0 and 1 proliferate on the screen behind I was already tired of discussions about whether L aurie A. nderson was a musician or a performance artist, a wizard, an actress, a comedian, a poet, a feminist or a fdmmaler, because I didn ’/ really care- she dad so much to say and she spoAe in the voice of a close friend. her, reaching absurd proportions. The concert has just begun, but the storytelling is well under way. My puzzlement about the lyrics to Mister Heartbreak is abating as they are supplemented by Anderson’s anecdotal style, the gestures of the backup vocalists, props that float down from the ceiling, and, of course, the music. “Performance” is really a more correct description of what Anderson does, than “concert.” The context is the same as a rock concert, but the format and the way the crowd behaves are not. Until the standing ovation, the audience remains seated. Nobody wants to miss anything. It’s something to sit back and watch. A continuous film accompanies the songs. The show is carefully synchronized; parts of it are pre-recorded. Despite the pre-arranged program, and the fact that the Eugene concert is probably pretty much like the Seattle one and all the other shows on this tour to promote her new album, it still has the energy of a direct and unconstrained communication with this particular audience. At one point, she plays her own body like an instrument. She hits herself in the head, and sound comes out. Slapping her knee, her shoulder and various other places, she coaxes out a whole percussive symphony. The effect is as though she had live mikes hidden all over and was totally wired for sound. But nobody’s sure how she does> it. It could be David Van Tieghem behind her. It could be that the whole thing is on tape, and she’s faking it. As always, she's full of tricks. What’s different about this concert tour and the new album is the musicality of it. From somebody who claims not to listen to rock and roll, and who formerly eschewed guitars because they were too “twangy,” an album that features guitarist Adrian Belew of King Crimson is a step in a new direction. Peter Gabriel, Phoebe Snow, David Van Tiegham, and Nile Rogers are also on the album, and there’s a whole spectrum of exotic instruments — electronic conch, Cameroonian double bells, lyas, Ikonkolos and She- keres — as well as the surprisingly standard guitar, bass and drums. Before I saw the performance, this scared me; I was afraid that instead of gaining a band, we’d lost a raconteuse. CSQ: Mister Heartbreak is more musical than documentary, so isn’t something lost, some of you? L.A.: In lots of ways I continue to change and experiment. So I don't know what my next album will be like. I’m sure it will be very different. Despite her reassurance, I persisted. CSQ: Has the collaboration with musicians like Adrian Belew arid Peter Gabriel been entirely positive? L.A.: Oh yeah. I learned a lot from both of them. It was amazing to watch somebody else work, to see how they get things done. Both musicians are very intuitive. Peter would be sitting there working on a phrase that I thought would never work, and eventually it would . .. We were coming at things from such different angles. David Van Tieghem is there in Eugene, doing the percussion, and the chorus plays the part of the “little girls” who sing, “Oooeee Sharkey. He’s Mister - Heartbreak.” Sharkey begins to symbolize, not so much evil, as Everyman. To me, he’s modern man, alienated from nature and stuck in a precarious position of his own making: “He’s a whole landscape gone to seed.” Anderson’s subject matter hasn’t changed. She talks about America — “home of the brave,” she calls it — with criticism and affection. Much of the material for her previous album was taken from the United States l-IV performance series, a bulky eight-hour work in four installments that explored themes of transportation, money, politics, and love. Those themes are still present. The epic scale and ambition, even the unwieldiness of United States reminds me of Gertrude Stein’s first novel, The Making of Americans. CSQ: Who do you admire in the visual arts and in literature? L.A. Well, Thomas Pynchon, of course. Actually, all my likes are on the album: Bill Shakespeare, William Burroughs [the author of Naked Lunch actually performs on Mister Heartbreak; it’s his 70-year-old voice that chants “Hey Kemosabe” in the song, “Sharkey’s Night”] . .. Herman Melville I like a lot Are you finding more whysin your path than your present maps show? Perhaps you should try Quest Bookshop for some new maps. PARTNERS IN TIME puest V BOOKSHOP 323-4281 12-6pm daily Celebrate Circulation! at NEW SEATTLE MASSAGE Swedish Massage • Shiatsu • Reflexology Catt 632-5074 for an appointment. Open seven days a week. 4214 University Way N.E. Gift Certificates Available Specializing in exceptional antique and semi-antique city and tribal rugs, contemporary Oriental carpets and dhurries. We also offer an unequaled selection of British and Scandinavian pine, Oriental furniture and antique oak. A large selection of decorative accessories, primitives and collectibles are also available to complement these pieces. 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