Lyrics The Language Of The Future - Laurie Anderson

The Language Of The Future

Our pilot has informed us that we are about to attempt a crash landing
Please extinguish all cigarettes.
Place your tray tables in their upright,
locked position
Your Captain says: Please do not panic
Your Captain says: Place your head in your hands
Captain says: Place your head on your knees
Captain says: Put your hands on your head.
Put your hands on your knees!
(heh-heh)
This is your Captain
Have you lost your dog?
We are going down
We are all going down, together
As it turned out, we were caught in a downdraft and rammed into a bank.
It was, in short, a miracle.
But afterwards I was terrified of getting onto
planes.
The moment I started walking down that aisle, my eyes would clamp shut
and I would fall into a deep, impenetrable sleep
(YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THIS …
YOU DON’T WANT TO BE HERE …
HAVE YOU LOST YOUR DOG?)
Finally, I was able to remain conscious, but I always had to go up to the
forward cabin and ask the stewardesses if I could sit next to them: «Hi!
Uh, mind if I join you?»
They were always rather irritated--«Oh,
all right (what a baby)"--and I watched their uniforms crack as we made
nervous chitchat
Sometimes even this didn’t work, and I’d have to find one of the other
passengers to talk to.
You can spot these people immediately.
There’s one on
every flight.
Someone who’s really on _your_ wavelength
I was on a flight from L.A. when I spotted one of them, sitting across the
aisle.
A girl, about fifteen.
And she had this stuffed rabbit set up on her
tray table and she kept arranging and rearranging the rabbit and kind of waving
to it: «Hi!»
«Hi there!»
And I decided: This is the one _I_ want to sit next to.
So I sat down and we
started to talk and suddenly I realized she was speaking an entirely different
language.
Computerese
A kind of high-tech lingo
Everything was circuitry, electronics, switching
If she didn’t understand something, it just «didn't scan.»
We talked mostly about her boyfriend.
This guy was never in a bad mood.
He was in a bad mode
Modey kind of a guy
The romance was apparently kind of rocky and she kept saying: «Man oh man you
know like it’s so digital!»
She just meant the relationship was on again,
off again
Always two things switching
Current runs through bodies and then it doesn’t
It was a language of sounds, of noise, of switching, of signals
It was the language of the rabbit, the caribou, the penguin, the beaver
A language of the past
Current runs through bodies and then it doesn’t
On again
Off again
Always two things switching
One thing instantly replaces another
It was the language of the Future
Put your knees up to your chin
Have you lost your dog?
Put your hands over your eyes
Jump out of the plane
There is no pilot
You are not alone
This is the language of the on-again off-again future
And it is Digital
And I answered the phone and I heard a voice and the voice said:
Please do not hang up
We know who you are
Please do not hang up
We know what you have to say
Please do not hang up
We know what you want
Please do not hang up
We’ve got your number:
One …
Two …
Three …
Four