laurie anderson – smoke rings

I watched Laurie Anderson’s Norton Lecture yesterday — the second in a series of six. She spoke on perception and memory, regular topics in Anderson’s oeuvre, and pushed the limits of a ‘Zoom lecture’ through shifting virtual spaces. At one point she became a creepy deep-fake John Cage. And, at another moment, she played the end of the concert clip above. That’s from the 1986 film Home of the Brave. There’s a trio of great artsy ’80s concert movies: Stop Making Sense, of course, but also Tom Waits’ Big Time and Home of the Brave. The first on that list is, of course, widely available. The second was missing until a couple of months ago when it unceremoniously appeared on Amazon Prime. Home of the Brave is sadly missing in action, only available in full via an illicit YouTube upload. I’d love someone like Criterion (who was involved with Anderson’s 2015 film Heart of a Dog) to step up to the plate and give a proper digital release of this gem.