"Three Walking Songs" lyrics - LAURIE ANDERSON

I saw an man on the Bowery and he was wearing ancient, greasy clothes and brand-new bright white socks and no shoes.
Instead, he was standing on two small pieces of plywood and as he moved along the block, he bent down, moved one of the pieces slightly ahead and stepped on it.
Then he moved the other piece slightly ahead and stepped on it.

There are Eskimos who live above the timberline. There's no wood for the runners on their sleds. So instead, they use long frozen fish which they attach to the bottoms of their sleds to slip across the snow.

I saw a photograph of Tesla, who invented the Tesla coil. He also invented a pair of shoes with soles four inches thick to ground him while he worked in the laboratory. In this picture, Tesla is sitting in his lab, wearing the shoes, and reading a book by the light of the long, streamer-like sparks shooting out of his transformers.