The Ugly One With The Jewels (Live Album Version) - Laurie Anderson

作词：Laurie Anderson/Ben Fenner/Laurie Anderson/Laurie Anderson/Laurie Anderson/Stewart Lerman

作曲：Laurie Anderson/Ben Fenner/Laurie Anderson/Laurie Anderson/Laurie Anderson/Stewart Lerman

In 1974 I went to Mexico to visit my brother who

Was working as an anthropologist with Tsutsil Indians

The last surviving Mayan tribe

And the Tsutsil speak a lovely birdlike language

And are quite tiny physically

I towered over them

Mostly I spent my days following the women around

Since my brother wasn't really allowed to do this

We got up at 3am and began to

Separate the corn into three colors

And we boiled it ran to the mill and back

And finally started to make the tortillas

Now all the other women's tortillas were 360

Perfectly toasted perfectly round

And after a lot of

Practice mine were still lobe-sided and charred

And when they thought I wasn't looking

They threw them to the dogs

After breakfast we spent the rest of the day down

At the river watching the goats and braiding

And unbraiding each other's hair

So usually there wasn't that much to report

One day the women decided to braid

My hair Tsutsil-style

After they did this I saw my reflection in a puddle

I looked ridiculous but they said

Before we did this you were ugly but now

Maybe you will find a husband

I lived within in a yurt a thatched structure

Shaped like a cob cake

And there's a central fireplace ringed by sleeping

Shelves sort of like a dry beaver down

Now my Tsutsil name was Lausha

Which loosely translated means

The ugly one with the jewels

Now ugly OK I was awfully tall by local standards

But what did they mean by the jewels

I didn't find out what this meant until one night

When I was taking my contact lenses out

And since I'd lost the case I was carefully

Placing them on the sleeping shelf

Suddenly I noticed that everyone was staring at me

And I realized that none of the

Tsutsil had ever seen glasses

Much less contacts and that these were

The jewels the transparent

Perfectly round jewels that

I carefully hid on the shelf

At night and then put for safekeeping

Into my eyes every morning

So I may have been ugly but so what

I had the jewels

Full fathom thy father lies

Of his bones are coral made

Those are pearls that were his eyes

Nothing of him that doth fade

But that suffers a sea change

Into something rich and strange

And I alone am left to tell the tale

Call me Ishmael