[00:00.000] 作曲 : Laurie Anderson
[00:01.157] I wanna tell you a story – about a story.
[00:05.932] And it's about the time I discovered that most adults have no idea what they're talking about.
[00:13.996] It was the middle of the summer, when I was 12.
[00:16.850] And I was the kind of kid who was always showing off.
[00:20.432] I have seven brothers and sisters,
[00:22.794] and I was always getting lost in the crowd.
[00:25.570] And so, I would do practically anything for attention
[00:29.359] So, one day I was at the swimming pool,
[00:33.038] and I decided to do a flip from the high board.
[00:37.160] The kind of dive when you're temporarily, magically, suspended mid-air.
[00:43.648] And everyone around the pool goes
[00:46.175] "Wow! That's incredible. That's amazing!"
[00:52.167] Now, I'd never done a flip before.
[00:54.258] But I thought: "How hard could it be?
[00:56.681] You just somersault and straighten out right before you hit the water."
[01:02.047] So I did. But I missed the pool.
[01:08.115] And I landed [THUNK!] on the concrete edge.
[01:12.080] And broke my back.
[01:14.541] I spent the next few weeks in traction, in the Children's Ward at the hospital.
[01:19.860] And for quite a while I couldn't move or talk.
[01:23.426] I was just sort of... Floating.
[01:26.416] I was in the same trauma unit with the kids who'd been burned.
[01:30.745] And they were hanging in these rotating slings, sort of like rotisseries or spits.
[01:36.717] Machines that would turn you around and around.
[01:40.546] So the burns could be bathed in these cool liquids

。
[01:45.181] Then one day, one of the doctors came to see me,
[01:47.603] and he told me that I wouldn't be able to walk again.
[01:50.585] And I remember thinking:
[01:51.975] "This guy is crazy. I mean, is he even a doctor? Who knows?"
[01:58.064] Of course I was going to walk.
[01:59.974] I just had to concentrate.
[02:01.664] Keep trying to make contact with my feet, to convince them – will them – to move

.
[02:07.220] The worst thing about this was the volunteers,
[02:09.907] who came every afternoon to read to me.
[02:12.787] And they'd lean over the bed, and they'd say: "Hello Laurie."
[02:16.690] Really enunciating each word, as if I'd also gone deaf.
[02:23.009] And they'd open the book.
[02:23.901] "So, where were we?
[02:26.220] Oh yes... The gray rabbit was hopping down the road,
[02:29.718] and guess where he went? Well, nobody knows.
[02:33.559] The farmer doesn't know... The farmer's wife doesn't know..."
[02:38.060] Nobody knew where the rabbit had gone -
[02:40.664] but just about everybody seemed to care.
[02:43.464] Now, before this happened,
[02:45.916] I'd been reading books like A Tale of Two Cities and Crime and Punishment.
[02:51.214] So the gray rabbit stories were kind of a slow torture...
[02:54.780] Anyway, eventually I did get on my feet.
[02:58.885] And for two years I wore a huge metal brace.
[03:02.175] And I got very obsessed with John F. Kennedy.
[03:05.553] Because he had back problems too.
[03:08.089] And he was the President
[03:11.787] Much later in my life, when someone would ask what my childhood was like,
[03:17.177] sometimes I would tell them this story about the hospital.
[03:20.982] And it was a short way of telling them certain things about myself.
[03:25.122] How I'd learned not to trust certain people.
[03:28.700] And how horrible it was to listen to long pointless stories.
[03:32.849] Like the one about the gray rabbit

.
[03:37.516] But there was always something weird about telling this story,
[03:40.895] that made me very uneasy.
[03:43.524] Like something was missing.
[03:45.692] Then one day, when I was in the middle of telling it,
[03:49.225] I was describing the little rotisseries that the kids were hanging in.
[03:54.083] And suddenly, it was like I was back in the hospital.
[03:58.788] Just exactly the way it had been.
[04:01.304] And I remembered the missing part

.
[04:04.378] It was the way the ward sounded at night.
[04:10.718] It was the sounds of all the children crying and screaming.
[04:18.576] It was the sounds that children make when they're dying.
[04:25.563] And then I remembered the rest of it.
[04:29.759] The heavy smell of medicine.
[04:31.456] The smell of burnt skin.
[04:33.933] How afraid I was.
[04:37.967] And the way some of the beds would be empty in the morning.
[04:40.948] And the nurses would never talk about what had happened to these kids.
[04:44.500] They'd just go on making the beds and cleaning up around the ward.
[04:49.089] And so the thing about this story –
[04:51.461] was that actually I'd only told the part about myself.
[04:55.187] And I'd forgotten the rest of it.
[04:57.681] I'd cleaned it up, just the way the nurses had.
[05:00.868] And that's what I think is the creepiest thing about stories.
[05:06.389] You try to get to the point you're making – usually about yourself or something you learned.
[05:13.013] And you get your story, and you hold on to it.
[05:18.277] And every time you tell it, you forget it more.