"another day in america" - laurie anderson

Recently the moon has been incredible, huge and glowing, lighting up the garden, lighting up the kitchen, where I sometimes sit, late at night, just looking up at the sky. A week or so back, just to the left of the moon, was an extra bright dot in the sky. That was Jupiter, more than 100 times bigger than our Earth. How amazing to see that!

I love looking up at the stars, the more you look, the more you see. It's astonishing to think that these stars are so many millions of miles away, lightyears away, bafflingly vast distances, yet we can still see them, though they are completely untouchable and unknowable.

On her wonderful 2010 album Homeland, (an album that everyone should have a copy of), Laurie Anderson has an amazing track called "Another Day In America". Narrated by the Voice Of Authority, Fenway Bergamot, (a pitch shifted Laurie, speaking in a newsreader type voice) over indescribably sad, thoughtful swirls and drones, this always makes me very reflective and oddly calm. 

After touching on such weighty topics as "what are days for?" (the answer, "to put between the endless nights") or Kierkegaard's theory that this world can only really be understood if life was to be lived backwards ("which would entail an incredible amount of planning... and confusion..."), Laurie then talks about the stars. In these violent and turbulent times, I, like Laurie, find it comforting to look up at the stars, celestial bodies that are forever, permanent, regardless of what madness goes on, down here on Earth.

But she concludes that bit of the piece with these words that I find deeply ominous and desperately sad...

"And you know the reason I really love the stars is that we cannot hurt them.
We can't burn them or melt them or make them overflow.

We can't flood them or blow them up or turn them out.
But we are reaching for them.
We are reaching for them."