"Say Hello" lyrics - LAURIE ANDERSON

A certain American religious sect has been looking at conditions of the world during the Flood.
According to their calculations, during the Flood the winds, tides and currents were in an overall southeasterly direction.
This would mean that in order for Noah's Ark to have ended up on Mount Ararat, it would have to have started out several thousand miles to the west.
This would then locate pre-Flood civilization in the area of Upstate New York, and the Garden of Eden roughly in New York City.
Now, in order to get from one place to another, something must move.
No one in New York remembers moving, and there are no traces of Biblical history in the Upstate New York area.
So we are led to the only available conclusion in this time warp, and that is that the Ark has simply not left yet.

Let's compare this situation to a familiar occurrence:
You're driving alone at night.
And it's dark and it's raining.
And you took a turn back there
And you're not sure now that it was the right turn,
But you took the turn anyway
And you just keep going in this direction.
Eventually, it starts to get light and you look out and you realize
You have absolutely no idea where you are.

So you get out at the next gas station and you say:

Hello. Excuse me. Can you tell me where I am?

You can read the signs. You've been on this road before. Do you want to go home?

Do you want to go home now?

Hello. Excuse me. Can you tell me where I am?

You can read this sign language. In our country, this is the way we say Hello.

SAY HELLO.

Hello. Excuse me. Can you tell me where I am?

In our country, this is the way we say Hello.
It is a diagram of movement between two people.
It is a sweep on the dial.
In our country, this is also the way we say Goodbye.

Hello. Excuse me. Can you tell me where I am?

In our country, we send pictures of people speaking our sign language in Outer Space.
We are speaking our sign language in these pictures.

Do you think that They will think his arm is permanently attached in this position?

Oh, do you think They will read our signs?
In our country, Goodbye looks just like Hello.

SAY HELLO.
SAY HELLO.
SAY HELLO.