This is my dream body,,the one I use to walk around in my dreams.,Ln this dream, I’m in a hospital bed.,It's like a scene from a movieyou've seen a million times.,The doctor is holding a small pink bundle.,And he leans over the bed,and he hands me the bundle.,"It's a girl," he says.,"Isn't she beautiful? Look.",And wrapped in the bundle,I see the little face of my dog,,a small rat terrier named Lolabelle.,And no one says anything like,,"You know, this is not a human baby.,You just gave birth to a dog.",But I’m so happy.,I put my head to her foreheadand look into her eyes.,And it's almost a perfect moment,,except that the joy is mixedwith quite a lot of guilt.,Because the truth was,I had engineered this whole thing.,I had arranged to have Lolabellesewn into my stomach,so that I could then "give birth" to her.,And this had been really hard to do.,Lolabelle wasn't a puppy.,She was a full-grown dog,and she had really struggled.,And she kept barkingand trying to get out,,and the surgeons kept tryingto push her back in,and sew things up.,Lt was really a mess,and I felt really bad about it,,but it was just the way,you know, things had to be.,Anyway, I kissed her on the head,,and I said, "Hello, little bonehead.,I'll love you forever.",(train clattering on tracks),LAURIE: I’m standing in the room,where she was dying.,She's talking in a high new voice,I've never heard before.,'Why are there so many animalson the ceiling now?" she says.,What are the very last thingsyou say in your life?,What are the last things you saybefore you turn into dirt?,When my mother died,she was talking to the animals,that had gathered on the ceiling.,She spoke to them tenderly.,"All you animals," she said.,Her last words, all scattered.,Different trains,,places she'd always meant to go.,"Don't forget you're in the hospital,",we kept saying.,She holds up her hand. "Thanks so much.,No, the pleasure is all mine.",She tries again. "It's been my privilegeand my-my honor,to be part of this experiment,,this-this experience with youand your - and your family.,And-And it's - it's been -,It's been -,Tell the animals," she said.,"Tell all the animals.",ls it a pilgrimage?,Towards what?,Which way do we face?,Thank you so much,for having me.,LAURIE: As a child,I was a kind of a sky worshipper.,This was the Midwest,,and the sky was so vast,it was most of the world.,I knew I had come from there,and that, someday, I would go back.,What are days for?,To wake us up,,to put between the endless nights.,What are nights for?,To fall through time,into another world.,I live in downtown Manhattannext to the West Side Highway.,Ln September 2001 ,after the Trade Center fell,,everything was covered with white ash.,For months, lines of trucksmoved up the highway,,carrying the twisted metal debrisfrom the towers.,Out at the end of the pier,,there's a strange,Assyrian-looking building.,And during this time,,FBI speedboats began to dock out there.,Lt was the beginning of the time,when cameras began to appear everywhere.,And everything was so loudand such a mess.,I tried to get out of townas much as I could.,I decided to go to California,up to the northern mountains -,-(slide projector clicking)-with my dog, Lolabelle.,The idea was to take a tripand spend some time with her,and do a kind of experiment,to see if I could learn to talk with her.,I’d heard that rat terriers,could understand about 500 words,,and I wanted to see which ones they were.,Lt was February,,and the mountains were coveredwith tiny wildflowers.,And such a huge tall sky.
    and very thin, pale blue air,and hawks circling.,Every morning,we walked down to the ocean,,which took most of the day.,And what happened was, more or less,,beauty got in the way of the experiment.,Lt was just so beautiful up there,that I forgot the whole project really.,Lt just slipped my mind.,Most days, the walk to the oceantook several hours,,and we would just goof around and lie down,and have snacks of carrots.,Now, rat terriers are bredto protect borders,,so Lolabelle was always on the job.,She would trot in front of meon the trail,,doing a little advance work,a little surveillance.,Now, occasionally,out of the corner of my eye,,I’d see some hawks circlingin this very lazy way,,way up in the sky.,And then one morning,suddenly - for no reason -,they came swooping downright in front of me.,Dropping down through the air,,their claws wide open,right on top of Lolabelle.,And then they swooped back upand dropped back down.,I realized that they were in the middleof changing their plan.,This little white thingthat had looked like,a tiny white bunny from 2,000 feet up,was turning out to bejust a little too big,to grab by the neck.,And they were making their calculations,,figuring it out.,And then I saw Lolabelle's face.,And she had this brand-new expression.,First was the realizationthat she was prey,and that these birds had come to kill her.,And second was a whole new thought.,Lt was the realizationthat they could come,from the air.,"I mean, I never thought of that.,A whole 1 80 more degreesthat I’m now responsible for.,It's not just the stuff down here -,the dirt, the paths,the roots, the trees -,but all this too.",And the rest of the timewe were in the mountains,,she just kept looking over her shoulder,and trotting alongwith her head in the air,,her eyes scanning the thin sky,like there's something wrong,with the air.,And I thought,where have I seen this look before?,And then I realized it was the same look,on the faces of my neighbors in New York,in the days right after 9/1 1 ,,when they suddenly realized,,first, that they could come,from the air.,And, second, that it wouldbe that way from now on.,And we had passed through a door,,and we would never be going,back.,LAURIE: What is the nameof those things you see,when you close your eyes?,I think it's "phosphenes" -,the reddish patterns,the little stripes and dots,and blurry little linesyou see floating around,when you close your eyes.,And no one really knowswhat they are or what they're for.,Sometimes they seem to bebrought on by sound,or random electrical magnetic firing.,(electricity crackling),Sometimes phosphenes are calledprisoner's cinema -,some kind of eternal, plotlessavant-garde animated movie.,Or maybe they're just screen savers -,holding patterns that just sit there,so your brain won't fall asleep.,♪♪ (woman singing, indistinct),♪♪ (man singing, indistinct),LAURIE: When Lolabelle got old,she went blind.,She wouldn't move. She froze in place.,The only place she would runwas on the edge of the ocean,because she knew there would benothing to run into there.,And so she went running full speed,into total darkness.,Around this time, her trainer, Elisabeth,,decided to teach Lolabelle to paint.,And so Lolabelle began makingseveral paintings every day -,bright-red abstract works.,And she would scratchon these plastic sheets,using static electricity.,She also made small sculptures,by pressing her pawinto lumps of Plasticine.,She made a huge number of these things,,and I didn't really knowwhat to do with them.,I thought maybe they couldbe snack trays or,little clogs,,like the ones Japanese dogsmight wear in the rain.,You know, we could sell themon the Web site.,-♪♪ (art rock)-MAN.. ♪ Hey ♪,♪ Hey ♪,Lolabelle sat in the studio with me,through lots of different record projects.,Rat terriers have really good hearing,......