Spoken Word: Language Is a Virus

Laurie Anderson: Language Is a Virus

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What does this song mean? Laurie Anderson likes to string together words and phrases that we, the listeners, recognize as English. But she leaves what you might call “cognitive space”. It falls to the listener to connect the dots and find a meaning, and what you take away from this one might be very different from my impression. Likewise, Anderson’s music often suggests a musical genre with being quite of that genre. Language Is a Virus is the suggestion of funk, but it definitely cooks, whatever it is. This all sounds terribly abstract, and like a lot of work. Maybe it is, but Anderson’s sly sense of humor makes it go down easy.