Laurie Anderson Radio Show

Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson, is a new radio show that premiered yesterday on WESU Middletown 88.1FM yesterday, on the artist's 72nd birthday.

The episode begins:

"It's June 5, 2020, and we are in a national emergency, with no boundaries, an emergency that keeps shifting from day to day, as marches and protests demanding racial equality and justice for George Floyd happen all over the country and all over the world," Anderson says in her introduction to the debut episode. "The pandemic has kept many people isolated for weeks or months with no definite end in sight. And what's amazing is that what finally brings people flooding out into the streets is not anger or greed or fear. It is a tremendous surge of empathy.

It is a passionate and shared and long overdue outrage, a huge and global cry for justice. And this is being met by the President of the United States not with gratitude for the sense of fairness in the American people. No, this movement of empathy and fairness and solidarity is being met with tanks and threats. It's almost as if the surge of goodness itself cannot be tolerated, because it cannot be understood.

"Of course, many things happen around this moment that cloud the picture: The movement is leaderless; many marchers have no experience with provocateurs, or self-defense, or what to do if attacked or arrested. The movement has many sides. Some people are forced out of isolation by hunger; many are out of work, suddenly homeless. There's looting and aggression by people who want to create chaos and fear. We are polarized. And here we are in the Bardo, in the pause between two realities, in a time when nobody knows what's next."


“Since the early ‘80s, I’ve dreamed of ... having a radio show in the middle of the night” said Anderson, in a press release. “When time slows down, where the lines between sleeping and waking, between dreams and reality, are getting blurred, and when people’s defenses drop away, and logic just seems to be very limiting.” The first episode is dedicated to music producer Hal Willner, who died from COVID-19 in April.

For more information and to find upcoming episodes as they become available, visit wesleyan.edu.