Ask Laurie Anderson what her inspiration behind “Delusion” is, and she lets out a big sigh.
“If I could sum it up in words then I wouldn’t do a multimedia show,” she says. “I can’t say it’s a straight essay about life and death. It’s dedicated to my mother. I admired a speech she gave where she was talking to everybody and everything, and you could hear language ripping apart, a mind fracturing but trying to say something. It’s about how difficult it is to sum things up in words.”
Anderson is probably best known for her 1980s musical rumination, “O Superman,” but this intriguing artist’s appetite for creating works and bringing them to the public makes her something of a superwoman.
Though “Delusion,” which includes segments from her latest album “Homeland,” was originally co-commissioned by the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Anderson says the piece has continually evolved since then, and grown into a simpler, more personal piece.
“The first version at the Vancouver Winter Olympics had lots of music. I started thinking about it and realized I didn’t know what it was about. The music sort of buried it,”?she says. “Now it’s supporting the ideas and not overwhelming them.”
Those ideas, or themes, she says, include fertility and expectation.
“It has lots of people, lots of situations,”?she says. “It’s a weird meditation about these mechanisms, which are ways to get through life. There are ways to see things through many filters. It’s about how we deal with life and expectations.”
