Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog

"You get your story and you hold onto it, and every time you tell it, you forget it more."

This is another one of those films that I can't get out of my head.

"You should try to learn how to feel sad without being sad which is actually really hard to do." 

I've been holding off on posting this as I was hoping to be able to post the Q and A with Laurie at the Hammer Museum last week but alas, the museum did not record it (Laurie asked them not to.) At one point an audience member asked a question (which I can't remember what it was) and Laurie answered it with a very long period of intense silence that lasted at least two minutes, if not longer, where it felt that Laurie was looking right at you (I'm sure that folks in the back even felt it.) I've been to lots of Q and A's but never have I experienced anything like that. It was almost magical, for lack of a better term. 

"To live in the gap between the moment that is expiring and the one that is arising. luminous and empty... And when you close your eyes, what do you see? Nothing. Now open them."

As I watched the film, it didn't surprise me to later find out that some of her favorite films are Chris Marker's La Jetee,  Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi and Jean Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language (which I wrote about here.) I could see the connections and the influences of these artists in her work.  

"And finally, I saw it, the connection between love and death. And that the purpose of death is the release of love." 

Heart of a Dog is not a film about a dog. It's a film about life told through a collage of images, music and story. It's a film that will break you open and reassemble you. It will bury itself deep within you and you will find yourself thinking about it at the oddest moments of your day. It's one of those rare films that won't let go.


"Every love story is a ghost story." David Foster Wallace