Speaker 1I took a break this week from going through boxes of stuff from my mom's apartment. I've been feeling a little overwhelmed and was reminded what my mom's friend, Wendy Goodman, said to me in the first podcast about pacing myself and not feeling like I have to go through everything right away.
Speaker 2Gloria would have said, I mean, I'm sure she did say it to you, Anderson, let's go forward, go forward. And you've done a job to honor her and you've done a job that she knew you could do and would do. So don't feel rushed. Don't feel pressured. Give yourself time with it all so that once this is done, you can think in a different way about all of these things.
Speaker 1This grief stuff, it's hard. It sneaks up on you sometimes. It has for me this week. Even when you know what you should do or feel or what your loved one who's died would want you to be doing or feeling, it doesn't mean you can, does it? It doesn't work like that. I've been reading your DMs on Instagram and your notes have been incredibly moving and I want to thank you for reaching out. There really is this deep ocean of grief out there and the currents are strong. At times I still feel like I'm on a little life raft alone, but doing these interviews and hearing your stories as well, talking about it, it helps. I've been wrestling with how much longer I should keep doing this podcast. A big part of me doesn't want to stop having these conversations. I've been wrestling with how much longer I should keep doing this podcast. They feel really meaningful to me, but it's also painful at times and yeah, overwhelming. That's the word I keep coming back to. I don't know. We'll see. But there'll definitely be at least two more episodes in this current series. So let's get started because I really can't wait for you to meet Laurie Anderson. This is all there is. My mom first introduced me to Laurie Anderson's music when I was 15. Specifically, it was a called Big Science that Laurie released in 1982. And there's a song on it called Oh Superman that I love. The song is more than eight minutes long. So I recommend you listen to the whole thing online if you want to. Laurie Anderson is 75 now and seems like she's constantly in motion. Her work is it's hard to describe. She's an artist, but she works in a lot of different ways. She's a composer who's won a Grammy for a chamber music album about Hurricane Sandy. She plays these strangely wonderful violins of her own design and she tells stories in songs and words on stages and films on canvases and in virtual reality. She just had a big exhibition at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. Laurie was partners with rock legend Lou Reed for 21 years.
Speaker 3The last eight of them as husband and wife. She says, Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side, said, Hey, honey, take a walk on the wild side.
Speaker 1Walk on the Wild Side was just one of the many songs that Lou Reed wrote in his long career. He was 71 when he died from liver disease in 2013. Laurie also experienced the death of her beloved dog, Lola Belle, in an accident. She was also the first woman in the U.S. to die from liver disease. In 2015, she made a moving and fascinating film about life and loss called Heart of a Dog.
Speaker 4But finally, I saw it. The connection between love and death. And that the purpose of death is the release of love.
Speaker 1Laurie Anderson, thank you so much for being here. Laurie Anderson: It's great to be here. As you know, I love you, and I think you are.
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: I love you, too. So here we are.
Speaker 1Your husband, Lou Reed, died in 2013.
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: Yeah, almost 10 years ago.
Speaker 1And you live in the apartment that you shared together.
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: Yes. I'm one of those people who isn't moving on. I just like it the way it is. So a lot of the stuff is kind of more or less where I put it. The concept of moving on feels like something you don't have to do. You just have to do it. You just have to do it. You just have to do it. Laurie Anderson: Yeah, I love it. Laurie Anderson: I love the idea of moving on a refrigerator magnet. You know, it just doesn't make any sense to me. I like objects that have a presence, especially things like somebody's phone or things that they touched a lot. Lou had a lot of weapons. And so those are the things... He was a martial artist. Laurie Anderson: Yeah. Not a gun holder. Laurie Anderson: Not a gun nut, no.
Speaker 1He was a martial artist.
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: It's swords and spears and jaggedy things. So I imagine that your mother has left some of those. Laurie Anderson: Tons of those things.
Speaker 1Laurie Anderson: All over the place. Laurie Anderson: All over the place. Drawers full of just things. But everything my mom had, it's not that it was incredibly valuable. And I'm sure some of the things have value, but they were all things that had history with her, that had been with her for, you know, the 95 years of her life, had been with her for decades and decades.
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: There's nothing more valuable than that, history.
Speaker 1Laurie Anderson: Yeah. I find all these objects are infused with so many memories. And because all of the family that I grew up in, the little, family of my father, my brother, and my mom, I'm the last person who knows the memories of all these objects. So in throwing them away or giving them away or whatever, it's like extinguishing that memory.
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: Well, yeah, you're our last man standing here. Laurie Anderson: Yeah, exactly. Laurie Anderson: It's true. But it could be really interesting instead of feeling the heaviness of that too. I found that it helped me a lot to give things away. And for a while, I gave away a lot of, loose leather jackets. And then I'd see them walking around on the street, and my friends, I was like, give me that jacket back. Wait a second. That was just a loan, really.
Speaker 1Laurie Anderson: Wait a minute. I remember recently, you emailed me, and you were giving away a lot of your books.
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: Oh, yeah. It was the same thing. I did get rid of a lot of books. And I think it helps to let them float off and have another life.
Speaker 1Laurie Anderson: I do like that idea of these things having a new life, that my tendency is to hoard everything in boxes, even if I'm not using it. But then I think, well, that's ridiculous. My brother and I used to play Dungeons and Dragons as kids. We were very nerdy, and the notes he kept for that game, I don't know what to do with them.
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: Well, I think rituals were made for stuff like this. When Lou died, as a Buddhist, and he was as well, it was really important to me to do this 49-day period of the bardo. And this bardo is this period of time when supposedly, according to Tibetans, the consciousness, let's say, they don't use words like soul or whatever, the consciousness shifts into another form. And so it's a period of great confusion. So the idea is to focus on that person in the time, not on yourself. Laurie Anderson: And put all of your energy into thinking of that person who's trying to make that transition. Because it's, according to the Tibetans, confusing. All your memories from all your whole life are like swirling around. It's like everything breaks, and you see sort of pure energy. So it's supposedly exhilarating and also very confusing. There's one guy who is my teacher at the time. Laurie Anderson: Name Bob Thurman. And he talks about that transition. So I just want to play you one little section of Bob Thurman's, and it's called Liberation Upon Hearing in the Between.
Speaker 6Bob Thurman: Okay, here we are in the between, in the between, dealing with the so-called Book of the Dead. First thing about it, of course, is that the title, The Book of the Dead, is totally wrong. Bob Thurman: Because the great insight of the Book of the Dead is that there are no dead. Nobody's dead. And there are no dead people. There's no such thing. It's like, who's in the door? Nobody's in the door. You're either in this room or in that room. The door is just, it's like a line, you know, it has no width. So nobody can ever be in it.
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: I love this. I'm going to tell you, the title is crazy because there are no dead people. No dead people. No dead people at all. What? So that woke me right up. And I was like, what did he mean by that? What does that mean? I actually feel that. I feel that. Bob Thurman: You do feel that. Laurie Anderson: Oh, yes, I feel that. That line is not, doesn't not exist. I mean, it exists as a line, which is an abstraction.
Speaker 1Bob Thurman: Do you feel Lou Reed is dead?
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: I feel those kinds of things. I feel Lou Reed is dead. I feel those kinds of things. Those kinds of definitions are no longer so clear for me, you know, dead, not dead. One of the things that this teaching is about is like that we are in a kind of dream state now that we're trying to wake up from. That rings a bell for me because some of the happiest, craziest moments of my life I realize are sort of outside of time. And I feel connected to things and people dead and alive, plants, fish, whatever.
Speaker 1Bob Thurman: That sounds like, it sounds confusing, but it also sounds wonderful.
Speaker 5Laurie Anderson: Well, it's kind of hard to describe this But I, for the last, especially 10 years, I...
Speaker 1Since Lou died?
Speaker 5Yeah. Since, so for me, that was the first really intimate death because my parents had died, but it was different, you know. It was like we were partnered on this. It was a whole new thing for me.
Speaker 1You said of Lou's death, I've never seen the expression as full of wonder as Lou's as he died. His hands were doing the water-flowing 21 form of Tai Chi. His eyes were wide open. I was holding in my arms the person I loved the most in the world and talking to him as he died. His heart stopped. He wasn't afraid. I'd gotten to walk with him to the end of the world. Life, so beautiful, painful, and dazzling, does not get better than that. And death, I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.
Speaker 5I do kind of remember writing that. I do remember feeling it.
Speaker 1What does that mean that the purpose of death is the release of love? Because you said that also in your film about your dog, Lullabelle, who died. You said death is so often about regret or guilt.
Speaker 4Or guilt. Why didn't I call her? Why didn't I say that? It's more about you than the person who died. But finally, I saw it. The connection between love and death. And that the purpose of death is the release of love.
Speaker 5Yeah. I guess that I wasn't following any kind of script about what grief was supposed to mean or death was supposed to mean when Lullabelle died. And I know it's really dopey to talk about your dog's death, but, you know, unless you have a dog, you don't. If you have a dog, you get it. You get it. And otherwise, you're like, oh, get over it. Like when my cat died, I was like, I was fine. You know? So Lullabelle, her death was a... I felt an unexpected happiness. And I expected to feel like, oh, my gosh, he's dead. It's a pain. But, no, I tried to feel what I was really feeling as opposed to what... you know, grief was supposed to mean.
Speaker 1And happiness is the feeling that came to you?
Speaker 5It was almost unbearable happiness.
Speaker 1Happiness... I mean, this... Freedom. Like, whoa. You mean that she was out of pain?
Speaker 5I don't know. I don't know, out of pain, but... Just... It was a delirious sense of freedom. Like as if something exploded. Same with Lou.
Speaker 1Freedom for her, for Lullabelle.
Speaker 5For everyone. Just freedom, pure freedom. Like the way you see a movie about love, and it's not the person in love in the film. You're also in love, too, with that. And you just...
Speaker 1It ignites a feeling within you when you see a film about love.
Speaker 5The whole thing is like you get confused with the main character. You think, oh, you know, it's just like waking up from a film and you've been sort of like paralyzed. You've lost yourself. You're looking for your coat. You're going, where's my coat? What's my name? I don't even know where I am. Because the film took you somewhere. And you were that character. And you were that person in love. So we're capable of jumping into other creatures pretty easily and kind of doing that. And I did feel that. And it was really a shock to me. I was like, why do I feel a burst of energy and happiness when I'm supposed to be crying?
Speaker 1You have a Tibetan Buddhist teacher.
Speaker 5Yeah, Mingyur Rinpoche.
Speaker 1And he said to you, you need to try to master the ability to feel sad without actually being sad. That's my mantra. You told me this. I met you doing an interview with you on 60 Minutes. And that's something you said. And I've thought about it ever since. And when you first said it, the ability to feel sad without actually being sad, I was like, what does that mean? This is confusing to me. And I really have been thinking about it a lot. And I think it's kind of... It's kind of an amazing idea. It is.
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 1And I've been sort of trying to figure out how to practice it or just let it come to me.
Speaker 5I think you know how to do that. It seems to me because you're very engaged in the world without being defeated by it. And you are looking at it. And that's the whole point of what he said is, you know, if you push away things that are sad or tragic or horrible, you're kind of an idiot. Because they're all there.
Speaker 1It doesn't go away. No. You can't push it away.
Speaker 5And also...
Speaker 1I've tried to push it away for a long time. Or push it down, I guess. Push it down.
Speaker 5But to actually let yourself, allow yourself to feel that as intensely as you can. And that's really difficult. I think to feel suffering of other people, to walk by someone and see them lying in the gutter and you're just going to go, what would that feel like to be there in that body right now? That's empathy. What would it feel like to be running away from a tsunami? And put yourself in that. Really let yourself feel it. Not like it's some kind of thing that's happening to someone else, but it's something that's happening to you. But the most important part of this teaching is the second part, which is do not become sad yourself. This is what I love about Tibetans, you know. Like, they have chosen that. And we have that choice, too. So, I mean, I'm an optimist only because I've chosen that. We don't know what's coming up. We just do not know. You know, so this gloomy sort of, you know, apocalyptic pornography in a way that's, you know, everybody's going, oh, this is really going down. This ship is sinking. This is it. Okay, it's bad. It's not looking good. But I have chosen to... be optimistic for one reason. And that's not based on reality at all. It's based on you'll have a happier life if you're an optimist, period. That's definitely true. Full stop, you know. So, choose that. It's your choice. You really don't have to be pulled the other way. So, I highly recommend that, you know, because it's just more fun.
Speaker 1It is the one thing I think I've learned, by years of traveling and traveling in places that were horrible things were happening. And, I mean, it sounds weird to even talk about it out loud, but it's like you are exploding into all that is around you.
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 1You feel the horror of it and you're bearing witness to it. And yet, you're also working and documenting it. And so, you're able to function. It does not destroy you. You feel the sadness. You feel the sadness of everything. But you're also able to operate and work in it.
Speaker 5And articulate it. Yes. And witness it. Yes, witness it. And I think of you as a painter, you know, that you're showing these enormous scenes. I mean, they're really very big and very complex. And you're affected by it, but you are able to describe it really well. So, to put yourself in the position of seeing not much suffering, and be able to give an account of it is pretty awesome, you know. So, I mean, I imagine that in your personal life, you know, that kind of skill could come in kind of handy.
Speaker 1It does, yeah.
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 1Definitely. After the break, more of my conversation with Laurie Anderson.
Speaker 5So, what are you going to do with these things, do you think? Of your mother's?
Speaker 1So, I'm not exactly sure. First of all, I'm interested in just going through them and kind of discovering all these things about my mom. Like, all the things, I mean, I knew my mom extraordinarily well. But to actually see the mountain of, you know, my mom did not have much of a concept of money and saving. And when she had money, she spent it. And when she didn't have it, she spent it. And so, I found decades of bills. And I've thought of almost papering the walls with them in some strange way. I love a room papered with bills. That's a really great idea. Like old Christian Dior bills from the 1950s.
Speaker 5Oh, that would be a fantastic room. I do like the idea of shrines, you know. And we do have a lot of shrines in this country. It's just a nice thing to do for somebody that you love to make a place where their sort of spirit is.
Speaker 1Well, that's one of the things that you are doing. Obviously, it's a different way. But you have created, with the University of Australia, an AI program, an artificial intelligence program. You give them everything you've ever said or sung or written. And also everything that Lou Reed ever said, sung or written. And they put it into a supercomputer. And you now can open up your laptop and write a question to Lou Reed.
Speaker 5I'm not under the illusion that I'm collaborating with my dead husband. This is not a Ouija board, the supercomputer. computer. This is style. This is like Lou had a certain style. of writing. And now with AI, you can use their vocabulary, their images, and you can have the algorithms that make these associations for you. You can also collaborate with yourself. Just think of just your email were put into a supercomputer, and you would have a fairly good picture of how you react to certain things, what your thoughts are, what your associations are, how you compare things, how you analyze them, how you feel about them. So if you have that in a giant database of all of the ways that you react, then when you write something, it wouldn't just be on that certain day. You would be collaborating with your whole self of bad days, good days, great days, sad days. And it could be very interesting. It's a big expanded mind.
Speaker 1When we did this for 60 Minutes, I gave you a photo of my son, Sebastian, who had just been born. And you put it into the program, and immediately out came a poem, an AI Lou Reed poem essentially of the photo. And I just found it extraordinary. And it made me suddenly think, well, my God, people could do that with their dead father or brother or mother and have a dialogue such as it is with the AI. Yeah. It's like a version of their loved one.
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 1After I interviewed you a couple months later, I talked to a guy who runs a very serious AI organization. He was like, oh, we've done this with people. And in many cases, it took them to a very dark place because it was people who were grieving and so missing the person that they ended up sort of staying at home a lot just...
Speaker 5Yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 1...training with this, you know, this traces of their...
Speaker 5Yeah. You know, I miss you so much. And staying at home, first of all, is a mistake. It's why so many of these songs, love songs are like, twang-a-twang-twang, I'm sitting in a room, a little missing. I wish I could find someone to love me. Well, put your guitar down, walk out the door, and stop writing songs about that. You know? And I'm not saying, like, you shouldn't cry. I mean, who am I to say that? Everyone has... We're all so different. Every single person's death is different.
Speaker 1But do you, I mean, do you cry about...
Speaker 5I cry when I see something really beautiful. When was the last time I cried? Just a couple of days ago when I saw something... Oh, no. It's funny. It was, I cried when I heard a song that Lou wrote that we're just putting out again. It's a song in the voice of a little girl.
Speaker 3An old maid, an old maid, an old maid I'd be.
Speaker 5And this is Lou singing as a little girl, and singing also about, I don't want to be somebody's widow. And I'm like, who is this? What is he singing about? Where did this come from? What kind of ghost wrote this? We're all ghosts of our later selves, you know, as you... Kind of suddenly see when you look back at your own self from many, many years ago and go, who is that person? We get a chance to see that and sort of celebrate that in this particular record, which was, it's one of the craziest things I've ever heard. But one thing I would say, like for people who have a lot of stuff from dead relatives, is to not let it fall on top of you as a mountain, but just to see it as a lot of treasures that you can wander in. And look at once in a while and not feel the obligation to go now.
Speaker 1It does feel to me like a mountain.
Speaker 5Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just overwhelming.
Speaker 1Like I could end up one of those people who ends up like crushed by all the newspapers that have fallen on them in their whole department and are found six months. If you don't hear from me for like six months, I'm probably in the basement under a crush of newspapers from 19...
Speaker 5Or you make a little paths through the house with the stacked up papers. Yes, exactly. Yeah, no, don't do that. You wouldn't want to do that to somebody else, have them go through your stuff. Endlessly, right? I mean...
Speaker 1Talking about stuff, I read somewhere, you said that amongst Lou's archives, amongst all the things he left behind, there's nothing about his study of meditation. There's no physical trace of that in his archives. And you said that idea that there's no physical trace of this thing that was such an important part of his life. You said, that's kind of thrilling to me that so much of life can't be captured. It can't live anywhere. It just lives in your mind and dies with it. And it's... It's inspiring that you can't hold on to a lot of things. You can't hold on to the most important things. And when I read that, I sort of gasped. I was like, wow.
Speaker 5Yeah, yeah, that's definitely how I feel. Because right now, there's a big exhibition of Lou's things. Walking through this show is extremely difficult for me, because now it's very, very public. And everybody kind of goes, oh, yeah, now I really know Lou Reed. And you're like, oh, boy, because I don't... I see his work in there, but I don't see him. And so I, in a weird way, just, it's awkward for me. You know, I'm very happy that it's there. And some of those objects still have that strange resonance.
Speaker 1It's interesting, though. I wonder if over time, for me, if the objects will lose the... Their charge. The charge and the weight of them.
Speaker 5They do. They go back to being regular phones. They go back to being a regular notebook with some writing on it. And it's still very interesting, and it's still made by somebody you love, but it's not like, whoa. And I suppose that's a good thing, because otherwise, we'd live in such a highly charged world of everyone who's ever lived here. It would be unbearable.
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5So you have to just let it go off on a breeze, you know?
Speaker 1My latest thought is maybe I'll just sort of photograph all these things, these piles of bills, and put them into a book or something that's for me. And, you know, the people who are still alive who knew my mom and loved her.
Speaker 5I think it's really worth doing those kinds of things. That's not going to capture the whole person, but nothing can. So that's okay. I made a violin out of my dog's ashes, you know? Wait, what? Yeah, it was not a playable violin, but it's a clay violin and made of her ashes and clay.
Speaker 1I love that. Because again, with ashes, too, it's what do you do? What do you do with those things? Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 5I think people turn into other things. They turn into music. Sometimes they turn into, sometimes a hobby. I think I was mentioning once when I was coming into Prague that I saw, oh, Václav Havel International Airport. And Havel was a friend of ours. And I thought, how did he turn into an airport? Well, people do. They turn into other things. They turn into ideas, you know, sometimes their idea is the name of a whole philosophy. They turn into love, you know, of like, oh, Wow, I loved my grandma and so much. She was so sweet. And then that love is inside you. So that's it. That's the monument of that person. And that's enough. It's a lot.
Speaker 1Well, one of the things that you said that really struck me, and again, I've also been thinking about it a lot. You said that when you tell a story too many times, every time you tell it, you forget it more.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1And some of the other folks we've talked to talk about the stories that we tell ourselves and that you can actually change the story you tell yourself. You don't. You don't have to get stuck in the narrative that you have been telling yourself. I feel like I've been telling myself this narrative of my life and the death of my dad early on and my brother and what that means to me. And I realize I can change that story. And as I grow in age, I can view the story differently. And there's a real power in that.
Speaker 5Yeah. It is very important to realize that you can get stuck in what I was referring to as your script. And I'm the person who does that. And that gets reinforced sometimes by other people who go, you're the person who does that sort of thing. We're much more free than that. So I think to free yourself from your own stories is exhilarating. Okay. Let's say I have no story. Or I'm just bored with repeating the same dreary thing about who I think I am or who other people say I am.
Speaker 1I wonder if one can do that with loss and grief.
Speaker 5You can definitely change it. But I think more important than that is to see how. How do you really feel? You know, forget the story and the narrative. Go farther back into yourself and go, how do I actually feel about this? And then out of that will probably come another story or maybe not. Or maybe you'll think, maybe I won't articulate this into some prefab story. I'll just try to feel it.
Speaker 1Well, it's like when you were saying when your dog Lola Bell died, realizing you felt this happiness. Yeah.
Speaker 5I didn't expect to feel happy. And everyone's going, oh, you're going to be crying. You're going to like, you'll never want another dog. It wasn't like that at all.
Speaker 7You got another dog.
Speaker 5Yeah, I did get another dog. And my first worry was that I was not feeling it enough, that I was heartless, that I was just pushing it away. No, I feel really happy about this. I feel like just everything I see is so resonant and beautiful. It was a kind of euphoric situation. It was weird. I was walking in a love cloud for five years, and now I can invoke that again. I can find how things are luminous, and they're not what I think they are.
Speaker 1Five years was the time.
Speaker 5My first five years of being a widow and grieving, and I got to do all of these things for Lou and celebrate his life. At the same time, his death was partly mine, as it is when a loved one dies, part of you dies. It was that person. That little child dies. The little child your mother loved is dead. And so you're like, whoa, where did that little boy go? No one remembers him that way anymore. So he dies.
Speaker 1I hadn't thought of that.
Speaker 5Yeah. So, I mean, love becomes a thing that floats around. It's all shifting around. And you realize it's not all me. It was your mother's love for you that was just between the two of you. And now her feeling for that has shifted.
Speaker 1That's really interesting what you just said. I haven't been able to articulate it in that way, but that's absolutely what I feel. Like that little boy who my dad knew and my mom knew and my brother knew. He's dead. Yeah. No one else knows that little boy.
Speaker 5Yeah. No one does.
Speaker 1Yeah. There's not anyone around from that time who knows him.
Speaker 5Yeah. So you experience your own death in that way because we've changed so many times. There's so many times in our lives, you know, that we have to kind of remember that that's a really important emotional part of experiencing that. And so maybe something that would celebrate that part that's gone would be a thing to do.
Speaker 1For you, being awake, being aware, that seems to be the, I don't know if it's the most important thing. It is. It is. It is. Absolutely. Being awake, being aware.
Speaker 5Absolutely. Yeah. I had a really interesting couple of years over the pandemic working with a couple of Tibetan translators on something called the Root Verses of the Bardo. And we tried to put the Tibetan language into colloquial. Colloquial. Colloquial. English. It took us 10 years to do like maybe 30 lines. No, maybe not even that. Wow. But it really helped me a lot. But it really does involve death. So it, you know, it's instructions in everyday English about what to do when you die. Because I think grief is also really very much about your own death and what is that going to be and how is it going to work. So it goes, listen, now when you see that death can come at any time, don't be lousy. There's no time to lose. Learn, reflect, and meditate without distraction. You'll see that everything is the Buddha. Now, at last, you're a human being. Don't get lost.
Speaker 1That's the sort of colloquial translation of Tibetan.
Speaker 5Yeah. And by saying like, recognize that you're the Buddha is kind of essential to this. You're the one in charge of all of this. It's you. Yeah. You know, you're not. You're not reporting to some Mr. Big up there who's calculating what you did good and what you did bad and kind of your punishment or your reward. There is nobody there doing that, according to the Buddhists. It is your consciousness that this is about.
Speaker 1You were in a plane crash.
Speaker 5Yes.
Speaker 1I mean, a plane crash where people died. Yeah.
Speaker 5It was a twin engine plane. It was like a commuter plane, like 40 people. So several people died. The pilot died. I had nothing wrong with me. We walked away. So we joined a crash club. So we talk about your crash endlessly. And you become an expert on different planes, different airlines, their safety records, different pilots. You get like really down into it. And you tell your story until you can't tell that anymore. You just, it's just like, okay. I've finished telling that story. And you sit around where other people tell their crash stories until it loses its power.
Speaker 1And did that change you in some way?
Speaker 5What happened to me was sleep came in. And I had every flight that I took for maybe three years after that, I would put a note in my pocket. And it would say, please wake me up when we get there. Because when I would get on the flight, and I had to get on the flight the next day after that crash, I would barely stay awake to get to the seat. I would just fall asleep before I even got the seat belt on. My mind goes, you're not here. You're not seeing this. You're safe. Don't worry. You know, it's not happening. You're safe asleep. So it was the overpowering. The overpowering need to sleep that saved me.
Speaker 1You should do one of those calm apps to have put people asleep. I want to sleep right now after that. You told me the story, and I'd love you to just tell. Because to me, the thing that stuck in my mind from the story is how words that one person says to another can change everything. Can you just tell the story of your brothers when you were little?
Speaker 5Okay. So a second of eight. I had eight kids. My job was to take care of the little ones, and I especially loved taking care of my twins.
Speaker 7Your twin brothers.
Speaker 5Yeah, and they had their own language. They were special little beings. They had their own language. They did, yeah. And they didn't speak English until they were, I don't know, five or something.
Speaker 1They communicated with each other in their own language. Yeah, and songs. I find that fascinating. Do you remember what it sounded like?
Speaker 5Yeah. It sounded like biblical names. They would have songs like, Me, Jack, get out of bed and go. They were talking. They were talking about Me, Jack, a bed and a go. What is that song? About the guys in the fiery furnace. Anyway, they picked up some stuff from church and knit it together into their own language. And, oh, my mother was terrified. She thought, I have these. They flunked kindergarten. So she was like, I have morons. And then, you know, she just took it really personally. And, in fact, you know, they were playing chess. They were check painting each other. They were Benson members. So, you know, they just lived in their own world. Anyway, I took them to. I took them to see a movie when they were little, like a couple of years old, two, in their snowsuits. It was really cold. We saw the movie and I was taking them home.
Speaker 7You were eight years old.
Speaker 5Yeah, I was eight.
Speaker 7And you took two-year-olds to see a movie.
Speaker 5Yeah, and parked them. It was a different world. It was a safer, sweeter world in the Midwest. And you could just roll your little brothers around. We lived next to a lake, so it was frozen. It was winter. I was taking them across the lake. I thought, I'm going to take them to this island so they can see the moon. Because the moon is so beautiful. So I was pushing the stroller to the island. I almost got there. And then I heard this. The ice cracked. The whole piece of ice cracked and the stroller sunk into the water. Their little balls on top of their hats disappeared. I was like, whoa. My very first thought was, mom's going to kill me. So I took my jacket off. I dove down. I pulled Craig out and I threw him on the ice.
Speaker 1You're in the water. Under the ice. Yeah. Trying to search under the water.
Speaker 5And then I, okay, that's one. I got to get the other one. I dove down and I couldn't find the stroller. And I was really panicking because Phil was there. And I tried again. And I found him much farther down. I was able to get him unstrapped from the stroller and pull him up. He was screaming. And Craig was just blue. So they were both like, whoa. We lived next to the lake. So it wasn't. It wasn't that far. It was about three blocks where I'm running over the ice and then into the door. I put these guys down. My mother looked at them and I told her what had happened. And I'm waiting for this, like, you almost killed your brothers.
Speaker 1I would have expected her to be screaming.
Speaker 5Are you out of your mind? You know, it's so dangerous there. And Stitchy said, you know, I didn't know you were such a great swimmer and such a good diver. I didn't know you were such a great diver. I didn't know you were such a great diver. I didn't know you were such a great diver. I didn't know you were such a great diver. I didn't know you were such a great diver. I didn't know you were such a great diver. I didn't know you were such a great diver. And I was like, I kind of froze because I thought of all the things that she could have said. It literally changed my life to be thanked for something like that. I mean, I did do my best. And she saw that, actually.
Speaker 1Her making you the hero of the story changed your life. It did.
Speaker 5It did. I thought, I can do things. Somebody just recognized that. I can do things. And this person gave me this, the benefit of the doubt, you know, and gave me so much in that one sentence. Much later, I really thought, if I could ever do that for someone, I will.
Speaker 1Laurie Anderson, thank you so much.
Speaker 5It's always fun.
Speaker 1Next week, I speak with poet, writer, mother of two, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Alexander, about the sudden death of her husband, Ficre, 10 years ago. talks about raising kids without him and her experience holding her husband at the end.
Speaker 8And it took me powerfully by surprise to be having this profoundly spiritual experience where I knew when his soul was there and I knew when his soul was gone and it was palpable.
Speaker 1One more thing. I mentioned at the start of the podcast that I've received a lot of really poignant and powerful messages from many of you on Instagram. I'd love to try and incorporate some of your thoughts about loss and grief into one of the next two podcasts. My producers have set up a voicemail box where you can leave a brief message. Perhaps there's something that you've learned or something that's been helpful to you in dealing with loss that you think would help others if they heard it. I can't promise you that it'll make it into a podcast, but if you'd like to try, you can call and leave your message at 631-657-8373. That's 631-657-8379. Again, I can't promise that it's going to get in the podcast, but I'd love to hear your thoughts and anything you think might help others. All There Is with Anderson Cooper is a production of CNN Audio. Our producers are Lori Gallaretta and Rachel Cohn. Sonia Tan, Audrey Horwitz, and Charis Satchel are our associate producers. Felicia Patinkin is the supervising producer and showrunner. Our technical... The director is Dan DeZula. Artwork designed by Nicole Pessarue and Jameis Alndrost. With support from Charlie Moore, Jessica Ciancimino, Chip Grabo, Steve Keel, Anissa Gray, Francisco Monroy, Tamika Balance-Kalazny, Lindsay Abrams, Megan Marcus, Alex McCall, and Lisa Namro. you
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