The Geographic North Pole
Laurie Anderson

The summer of 1974 was brutally hot in New York and I kept thinking about how nice and icy it must be at the North Pole. And then I though, €œWait a second, why not go?€ You know, like in cartoons where they hang going to the North Pole on their door knobs and they just take off.
So I spent a couple of weeks preparing for the trip, getting a hatchet, a huge backpack, maps, knives, sleeping bags, lures and a three month supply of Banic, a versatile high-protein paste that can be made into flat bread, biscuits or cereal.

Now I had decided to hitch hike and one day I just walked out onto Austin Street, weighing down seventy pounds of gear, and stuck out my thumb.

€” Going North? I asked the driver as I struggled into a station wagon.

After I got out of New York, most of the rides were trucks until I reached the Hudson Bay and began to hitch in small mail planes. The pilots were usually guys who'd gone to Canada to avoid the draft or else embittered Vietnam vets who never wanted to go home again. Either way they always wanted to show off a few of their stunts. We'd go swooping along the rivers doing loop do loops and baby ###080152. And they'd drop me off at an airstrip. €œThere'll be another plane by here couple of weeks; see ya; good luck.€

I never did make it all the way to the geographic pole; it turned out to be a restricted area and no one was allowed to fly in or even over it. I did get within a few miles of the magnetic pole though. So it wasn't really that disappointing. I entertained myself in the evenings, cooking or smoking, and watching the blazing light of the huge Canadian sunsets as they turned the lake into fire.

Later I lay on by back, looking up at the Northern lights and imagining there'd been a nuclear holocaust and that I was the only human being left in all of North America and what would I do then.

And then, when these lights went out, I stretched out on the ground, watching the stars as they turned around and their enormous silent ###080318.

I finally decided to turn back because of my hatchet. I'd been chopping some wood and the hatchet flew out of my hand on the upswing. And I did what you should never do when this happens: I looked up to see where it had gone and it came down €” fffooo €” just missing my head and I thought, €œMy God! I could be working around here with a hatchet embedded in my skull and I'm ten miles from the airstrip. And nobody in the whole world knows where I am.€

Daddy Daddy, it was just like you said
Now that the living outnumber the dead
Where I come from it's a long thin thread
Across an ocean. Down a river of red
Now that the living outnumber the dead
Speak my language


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Lyrics by Laurie Anderson

  A Curious Phenomenon   Another Day in America   Baby Doll   Babydoll   Bagpipe Solo   Beautiful Pea Green Boat   Beautiful Red Dress   Beginning French   Big Science   Blue Lagoon   Bodies In Motion   Born, Never Asked   Bright Red   Broken   Cartoon Song   City Song   Classified   Closed Circuits   Coolsvile   Coolsville   Dance of Electricity   Dark Angel   Dark Time In The Revolution   Day The Devil   Democratic Way   Difficult Listening Hour   Dream Before   EngliSH   Example #22   Excellent Birds   Falling   False Documents   Finnish Farmers   Four, Three, Two, One   Frames For The Pictures   Free Fall   Freefall   From The Air   Gravity's Angel   Hey Ah   Hiawatha   I Dreamed I Had To Take A Test   In Our Sleep   In Our Sleep [Instrumental][Mix]   It Tango   It Was Up In The Mountains   John Lilly   Kokoku   Language is a Virus   Langue D'amour   Late Show   Let X = X   Let X=X   Life on a String   Lighting Out For The Territories   Looking For You; Walking And Falling   Love Among The Sailors   Mach 20   Maria Teresa Teresa Maria   Monkey's Paw   Muddy River   My Compensation   My Eyes   My Right Eye   New Jersey Turnpike   New York Social Life   Night In Baghdad   O Superman   O Superman (For Massenet)   Odd Objects   On The Way To Jerusalem   One Beautiful Evening   One White Whale   Only an Expert   Over The River   Pieces and Parts   Poison   Poison [Instrumental][Mix]   Private Property   Puppet Motel   Ramon   Red Hot   Same Time Tommrow   Same Time Tomorrow   Say Hello   Sharkey's Day   Sharkey's Day (Single Edit)   Sharkey's Night   Slip Away   Smoke Rings   So Happy Birthday   Someone Else's Dream   Song For Two Jims   Speak My Language   Speechless   Speechless (The Eagle and the Weasel)   Statue of liberty   Steven Weed   Stiff Neck   Strange Angels   Strange Perfumes   Structuralist Filmmaking   Sweaters   Talk Normal   Talkshow   Telephone Song   The Beginning of Memory   The Big Top   The Cultural Ambassador   The Day the Devil   The Dream Before   The Dream Before (for Walter Benjamin)   The End Of The World   The Guests   The Healing Horn   The Hollywood Strangler   The Island Where I Come From   The Lake   The Language Of The Future   The Mailman’s Nightmare   The Mysterious "J"   The Mysterious \   The Mysterious "J"   The Night Flight From Houston   The Ouija Board   The Puppet Motel   The Rotowhirl   The Salesman   The Soul Is A Bird   The Stranger   The Ugly One With The Jewels   The Visitors   Thinking Of You   Three Songs For Paper, Film And Video   Three Walking Songs   Tightrope   Time And A Half   Transitory Life   Turning Time Around [Lou Reed]   Voices On Tape   Walk The Dog   Walking & Falling   Walking & Falling   Walking Falling   Washington Street   White Lily   Word Of Mouth   World Without End   Yankee See

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