Dog-Seeing Eye: The Cinematic Work of Laurie Anderson

The first time I saw my dog dreaming I took it for some kind of fit. She had been napping, stretched out on her side at my feet—a small sign of comfort in those early, wary days. It began with a flick of one paw, then a second; soon all four tapped out an arrhythmic beat. Her tail brushed awake and thumped at the floor. Her little face drew in tight: her eyes squeezed shut, her muzzle rolled in spasm, the line of her mouth danced over pointed teeth. Her brows jerked and wriggled; her nose—the small, black apex of her being—appeared to yank apart from itself. The shuddering spread down her body, and this most silent of dogs began to puff, whinny, and occasionally let out a long, rolling woof.

Newly under my domain, she was lost to a greater maestro. Whether she was playing a tune or being played upon, the music had her. I lowered to the floor with an odd sense of stealth. The dog rocked harder, whimpered louder. I called her name—the third she had been given in as many years.

No one warned me. No one tells you dogs dream, and no one can say what dogs dream about. Witnessing it ever since, I still get spooked, though of course I leave her be: What first appeared as haplessness is now powerful evidence of self-rule. I get spooked, I suppose, because, although I missed the part about their dreaming, I long ago absorbed the prevailing canine myths and metaphors, most of which amount to the idea that a dog is hardly a dog before it enters a human’s life, at which point it receives a history, an identity, an emotional life—all the makings of a moral and narrative arc. The dog becomes the basis of a sort of ultimate dream, more insistent than any squirrel-bound reverie—the very human fantasy of unconditional love.

Heart of a Dog, Laurie Anderson’s first feature-length film since 1986’s Home of the Brave, is at once skeptical of and subject to what Anderson describes as “the creepiest thing about stories”—the stories we tell about ourselves, about others, about the past, about death, about terrorism, about “homeland security,” and even about our dogs. At seventy-five minutes, Heart of a Dog is an example of what critic André Bazin, writing about Chris Marker’s Letter from Siberia in 1957, identified as the essay film, or, as he put it, “an essay documented by film.” It is digressive, experimental, personal, associative; restless in tone, subject, and style, it is a rolling collage held together by Anderson’s plush (sometimes too plush), intimate, oddly syncopated narration. Watching it, I experienced a vitalized kind of indecision—about whether Heart of a Dog comprises a series of dreams connected by a larger story, or a series of stories bound inside a womb-like dream.

A painting by Laurie Anderson, from her 2011 Lola in the Bardo series, which appears in Heart of a Dog. (image courtesy of laurie anderson.)

The dog whose heart both eludes and belongs to Anderson is a rat terrier named Lolabelle. Small and white with black and tan markings, Lolabelle lived a very downtown-Manhattan life, filled with fancy treats, music lessons, art projects, West Village walks, and nuzzles from Julian Schnabel. Once Lolabelle cut a Christmas album, Anderson tells us, and it was “pretty good.” Lolabelle learned to play the piano after she went blind, and performed at the occasional charity event. As listeners, it is believed, dogs prefer strings. Acting on this belief, in 2010 Anderson and her husband, Lou Reed, decided to put on a short concert for dogs in Sydney, Australia, as part of their participation in a festival there. It was a mix of strings, beats, and high-frequency noise, brief numbers composed in dog-favored fifths. Anderson performed as well, reading from a dictionary...