Best-known for large-scale theatrical installations and dynamic performances, acclaimed artist Laurie Anderson uses her gift for storytelling to create Night Life, a glimpse into her tumultuous dreams. On a 2005 tour for her performance piece The End of the Moon, Anderson's dreams grew increasingly bizarre as she moved from venue to venue, and in an effort to contain and perhaps exorcise them, she began to record them through drawings.

In Night Life, short descriptive texts accompany vivid illustrations. Like captions for melancholic cartoons, they contextualize the images to further reveal a wry humor and lively imagination, as well as the artist's daily preoccupations. In a dream from January 26, 2005, Anderson pretends to ice skate in the midst of an awkward production meeting — some of her colleagues find this annoying, while others enthusiastically follow suit. Several dreams incorporate bits of reality and reference rehearsals, archives, and performances — all common to an artist's life. But just as often, the dreams recall absurd fairy tales, with visions of Anderson asleep in a lumberjack's pocket, or headless squirrels participating in song.

Many of her drawings have a frenetic energy to them. Anderson's jagged, quick, and plentiful lines convey a restless state of mind, as well as her haste to set them down before they vanish. The dreams themselves are often unsettling and anxiety-ridden, and themes of destruction, chaos, cacophony, and loss recur throughout — the outpouring of crosshatches and marks is apt. Elsewhere, scenarios are rendered more minimally, with the expanses of space akin to an eerie white noise. At the end of the book, Anderson wonders about a night life devoid of dreams, and suggests that the resulting blankness would be unbearable.

Night Life captivates precisely because of these contradictions; Anderson's dreams are as amusing and poignant as they are disturbing. Each work is a glimpse into her psyche, but the collection as a whole cannot be taken as a revelation of her unconscious mind. As volatile and peculiar as her dreams may be, they attest to a creative mind alive and at work.

-Lisa Varghese