(Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, conducted this interview with Laurie Anderson on April 14 for Progressive Radio. You can listen to the whole 28-minute interview here.)

Laurie Anderson: Not that many people can really focus on the war. And that to me is really strange. We’re in the middle of an election and candidates talk about the war in certain ways. They talk about other things related to it. Education, health care, global warming. But no candidate is really saying look: We have a bigger military than the rest of the world combined. This is monstrous. I mean, what are we doing? It’s like we can’t focus on that, even though it really sets the tone for all of the other things we’re trying to do or prevents us from doing it because we’re just spending that kind of energy and amount of resources on this, which I feel is very misguided. And as an artist, I don’t think that art is the best way to do politics. But I can’t help it now. It’s invaded too much of my own life, and it’s invaded it in a way that’s very basic, which is on the level of story telling.

Q: How so?

Laurie Anderson: Just think back to when was it? Last November, and there was all that saber rattling about Iran, and George Bush was actually telling the story about an evil dictator and weapons of mass destruction. You’re going: That’s a very familiar story. Stories are magic. Stories can start wars. They are so powerful, and here he was using a story, that was a very old story, and it wasn’t a true story, but it was a good story because it had a coherent villain, and it had some dangerous material in it, so there it was being recycled, and people didn’t . . . there just wasn’t any outrage. There was, but it was also quelled very quickly because we live in a very, very story savvy, our government is story savvy. They’re spinning it beyond what other people are doing. OK, I thought, here are these journalists who are doing entertainment. How about if entertainers start doing journalism? I don’t feel any, you know, compunctions about it. It’s fair because it’s in the realm of what kind of story are you going to tell about what will happen.

Q: So would you consider “Homeland” a journalistic enterprise in a way?

Laurie Anderson:Partly. Yeah. I really do try to open my eyes. You don’t have to make anything up. All you have to do is point over to various things that are
happening. There are already amazing events. So I would say it’s something that was born out of real frustration: Of like, How come people are not talking about this? . . . I just look at myself frantically trying to answer my e-mail, entranced by every little shiny, smart gadget that comes along, and I’m on this economic treadmill that means I have to get the update for that computer and this and that and spending all your money getting this stuff and a lot of energy. So when you actually take a second to look around and say, wait a second what’s going on here, what are we really doing this for? That was my opportunity to try to write something about it. So that’s what this show is, Homeland, this record.

Q: Do you think aside from being distracted by toys and gadgets and things, some artists have been reluctant to oppose the war? At least after 9/11, some artists were afraid to oppose Bush for fear of being ostracized.

Laurie Anderson: Same with politicians. Same with people who worked at the Post Office. A lot of American citizens really weren’t sure about what is the right way to go. Now pretty much people think that was a big mistake but aren’t really willing to engage in how to really get out of it. To me, you know what it seems like? I think the last election was about voting in an anti-war group of people. War hasn’t stopped. And you think, it’s not the government that’s running it. And you look at how much of it has been sourced out. And what happens to other things that begin to be financed by people who kind of are in it, like a lot of American corporations, to make money. The best example probably is prisons. You look back ten or fifteen years ago there were like 350,000 people in prison. And now there are almost 3 million Americans in prison. That’s the most hair-raising statistic. One in 100 people in prison. Why? Not really because there are suddenly a whole lot more bad guys and bad girls. It’s been privatized. And businesses need customers.

Q: And war is being privatized.

Laurie Anderson: And the war is being privatized. And you look around at what else. Education is being privatized. It really is a very, very different landscape. And I think it’s causing a lot of suffering really. To suddenly go, well, the bottom line is making money. I remember turning a corner when I saw that film “The Corporation.” The basic premise of this film was that a corporation has all the rights and responsibilities of an individual. If so, what kind of an individual is this corporation? They did a kind of personality profile: Doesn’t care about others, works only for its own benefit, yada, yada, yada, yada. They came up with the personality profile of a psychopath. It suddenly made sense: America is being run by psychopaths. Now it makes sense. People aren’t being treated fairly. It’s every man for himself.

Q: . . . .As you say in Homeland, “It’s a good time for business, especially
if your business is war.” At the same time, Our freedoms, that allegedly or ostensibly, the war is supposed to be protecting, are being taken from us. . . .

Laurie Anderson:It’s hard to say that lightly. . . . My first reaction to this, of course, is outrage. But I don’t want to, and I never did in my whole life, want to be kind of a knee jerk person: OK, they’re taking that away, and it must be wrong. I am trying to really keep my eyes open to not just how my city is changing but how the world is changing. And that does include threatening things. Not to be paranoid, but 9/11 was real. That was actually thousands of people pulverized. Instantly. Not to be a fear monger, that’s a reality of our world. And how do you really look at that responsibility without just screaming, “I don’t want to lose my freedom.” I don’t want to be two year old about this. You know, I want to be an actual adult. But that’s why I truly do resent the way that our government has done things very secretively. Just impulsively. Very crudely. And without giving people a chance to say, “OK, what should we do?” Open it up for a debate. You know what? I’ll tell you, I don’t hear those voices. I don’t hear, now that Susan Sontag is gone, who’s speaking up? Where are the American intellectuals, the American artists, standing up and saying things. I just don’t hear it. It’s like a deafening silence.

Q: Is that one of the reasons you wanted to come forward with “Homeland”?

Laurie Anderson: I don’t have this kind of impulse to be a hero. I am someone who describes something. I am describing a silence right now.