Auslander au Toilette

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Collaboration with Tony Van Den Boomen from The Library.

..and the only sadder cemetery I saw was last summer, in Switzerland, and I was dragged there by a Hermann Hesse fanatic, a very sincere Swede who had never recovered from reading Siddhartha. And one hot August morning, when the sky was white, we made a pilgrimage to the cemetery. We brought a lot of flowers, and we finally found his grave. It was marked with a huge fir tree, and a mammoth stone that said “Hesse” in huge Helvetica bold letters. It looked more like a marquee than a tombstone. And around the corner, was this tiny stone, for his wife, Nina, and on it was one word: “Auslander.” Foreigner. And this made me so sad, and so mad, that I was sorry I’d brought the flowers. Anyway, I decided to leave the flowers, along with a mean note. And it read, “Even though you’re not my favorite writer, by a long shot, I leave these flowers on your resting spot. ” (Laurie Anderson, reading from her book, Stories from the Nerve Bible)