Laurie Anderson - Maria Teresa Teresa Maria lyrics

Last spring, i spent a week in a convent in
The Midwest i'd been invited there to
Do a series of seminars
On language they'd gotten
My name from a list in Washington
From a brochure that described my work
As "deals with the spiritual
Issues of our time" -undoubtedly a
Blurb I had written myself

Because of this
And also because men were not allowed to
Enter the convert they asked me to
Come out the night I arrived, they had a
Party for me in a nearby town
In a downstairs lounge of a
Crystal Lanes bowling alley
The alley was reserved for the nuns for their
Tuesday night tournaments it was
A pizza party, and the lounge was decorated
To look like a cave every
Surface was covered with that
Spray-on rock that's usually used for
Soundproofing in this case
It had the opposite effect
-it amplified every sound
Now the nuns were in the middle
Of their annual tournament playoffs
And we could
Hear all the bowling balls rolling very
Slowly down the aisles above us
Making the rock blob stalactites
Tremble and resonate

Finally the pizza arrived
And the Mother Superior began to bless the
Food now, this woman normally had
A gruffed, low-pitched speaking voice
But as soon as she began to
Pray her voice rose -
Became pure, bell-like, like a child's the
Prayer went on and on
Increasing in volume each time a
Sister got a strike
Rising in pitch: "Dear Father in Heaven"

The next day I was scheduled
To begin this seminar
On language i'd been very
Struck by this prayer
And I wanted to talk about how women's voices
Rise in pitch when they're asking for things
Especially from men
But it was odd: Every time I
Set a time for the seminar, there
Was some reason to postpone it: the
Potatoes had to be dug out
Or a busload of old people would appear out
Of nowhere and have to be shown around
So, I never actually did the seminar
But, I spent a lot of
Time there walking around
The grounds and looking at all the crops
Which were all labeled and there was also
A neatly laid-out cemetery- hundreds of
Identical white crosses in rows, and there
Were labeled "Maria, "Teresa"
"Maria Teresa", "Teresa Maria"
And the only sadder cemetery I saw
Was last summer in Switzerland
And I was dragged there by a Hermann
Hesse fanatic who had never recovered
From reading Siddhartha and
One hot August morning when
The sky was quiet
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"