The Art of the Straight Line by Lou Reed

[GeneChing]

Talk-It-Out Radio
03.19.23 - 7:00PM
Why and How Does the Chinese Art of Tai Chi Heal and Build Wellness?

Talk It Out Radio host Nancy Kahn interviews Stephan Berwick on: Why and How Does the Chinese Art of Tai Chi Heal and Build Wellness?

Nancy Kahn interviews the famed Chinese style marital arts teacher and researcher, Stephan Berwick about how Tai Chi healed and transformed the late rock music icon, Lou Reed in an exclusive discussion about his work bringing Reed’s dream book on Tai Chi, “The Art of The Straight Line. My Tai Chi” to fruition (and just published by Harper Collings), with Reed’s wife, artist Laurie Anderson”.

Lou Reed was a musician, singer, songwriter, poet, and founding member of the legendary rock band the Velvet Underground. He collaborated with many artists, from Andy Warhol and John Cale to Robert Wilson and Metallica. Reed had a groundbreaking solo career that spanned five decades until his death in 2013.

Reed was also an accomplished martial artist whose practice began in the 1980s. He studied with Chen Tai Chi pioneer Master Ren GuangYi. This book is a comprehensive collection of Reed’s writings on Tai Chi. It includes conversations with Reed’s fellow musicians, artists, friends, and Tai Chi practitioners, including Julian Schnabel, A. M. Homes, Hal Willner, Mingyur Rinpoche, Eddie Stern, Tony Visconti, and Iggy Pop.

“The Art of the Straight Line. My Tai Chi” features Reed’s unpublished writings on the technique, practice, and purpose of martial arts, as well as essays, observations, and riffs on meditation and life.

Stephan Berwick is a martial arts instructor, performer, and researcher, specializing in Chen Tai Chi and Chinese swordsmanship. As an original student of Master Ren, Berwick conducted primary research at Tai Chi’s birthplace in Henan, China over two decades ago. From that research, Berwick published the first English language profiles of the emerging Chen village masters, and other works on traditional martial arts. Before devoting himself to Chen Tai Chi, Stephan was one of the two first Americans – with Asia’s top action star, Donnie Yen – to train in Xian, China under its national martial arts champion, Zhao Changjun and his coach, Bai Wenxiang. With Yen, Berwick went on to perform in Hong Kong action films under the tutelage of the director, Yuen Woping, as one of the few Western martial artists to star in Chinese action films. Years later, he met and befriended Lou Reed in 2003 at a national martial arts event with Master Ren.

Follow the link to listen

[GeneChing]

EPISODE 1419 MARCH 20, 2023
Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson says she never made art to express herself, she didn’t care about having a “style,” and she sure didn’t think about building a “brand.” Laurie and Marc talk about her time in New York City as part of a booming art scene, her days hanging with Andy Kaufman, and her many musical collaborations. They also discuss Laurie’s role as the steward of Lou Reed’s legacy, including the new book she helped edit of Lou’s writing on Tai Chi.

Follow the link to listen

[GeneChing]

Laurie Anderson and Lars Ulrich on Lou Reed’s Love of Tai Chi
By Alex Weiss
May 12, 2023



When I think of Lou Reed, there’s a lot that comes to mind: his guttural voice, his bleached blonde buzz from the ‘70s, The Velvet Underground and Nico poster I had on my wall in middle school, the way he never sang “Sweet Jane” the same way live. To me, he was the epitome of rock ‘n’ roll, of New York Cool. I even chased him down 11th Street once in the mid-2000s, only to get too nervous to actually say something when I got close enough. It was a humid summer day in the East Village, and he was wearing a leather jacket. Nearing his 70s by then, he still walked like he owned the place. But there was something different about him than I had imagined; he seemed softer, more peaceful. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Reed had become a master of Tai Chi.

A new book, The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi, details his relationship with the ancient Chinese practice and gives readers a glimpse into how it transformed his life. Edited by Reed’s longtime partner Laurie Anderson and Chinese martial arts expert Stephan Berwick, with Bob Currie, and Scott Richman, the book is an inside look into Reed’s later life, featuring photographs, his intimate handwritten notes, and interviews with everyone from Iggy Pop and Julian Schnabel to Reed’s teacher Master Ren Guangyi and Lars Ulrich from Metallica. The drummer and his band collaborated with Reed on the 2011 record Lulu, an experimental heavy metal opus that took both Reed and Metallica out of their comfort zones. And while recording at Metallica’s HQ in San Rafael, the band and Reed did Tai Chi together. Below, Anderson and Ulrich reminisce about that time, the record, and their memories of Lou, illustrating how Tai Chi inextricably affected his work.—ALEX WEISS

———

LAURIE ANDERSON: How nice to see you.

LARS ULRICH: Sorry to leave you hanging. We’ve been in Amsterdam for… Today’s day 11, and the show is two days from now, the first show. And we’re way in over our heads.

ANDERSON: Really?

ULRICH: It always feels like that when you’re two days away from launching a world tour. Hopefully if I speak to you again in a couple days, I could tell you it all went fine. But right now it’s just like, ‘Oh my God, what have we gotten ourselves into?’ But we’re here now and it’s all good.

ANDERSON: It’s fantastic. It’s always shocking to me to hear that people are nervous. You’re such a master of this. How can you have any qualms about making just the greatest thing ever?

ULRICH: Thank you. But it’s because every so often, we completely throw away the playbook and start over.

ANDERSON: That’s so great.

ULRICH: So with this new tour it’s as much of a blank canvas as we’ve had for years, if not decades. The staging and the set lists and everything is completely just starting from zero. So, it’s really exciting, but it’s also, at the same time, daunting, because you’re a hundred percent out of your safe zone. And I think that it’s important, especially as you get older. You have to put yourself in that position.

ANDERSON: Yeah.

ULRICH: So it’s that combination of joy and excitement, but also, what the **** are we doing? It shifts back and forth every day, every hour, every minute.

ANDERSON: Oh my god. Well, hats off for that, because that’s fantastic. You don’t have to do that, so it’s even more incredible.

ULRICH: Believe me, there’s been many times in the last week where I think about it. [Laughs] Are you in the apartment on 11th Street?

ANDERSON: No, I’m down in my studio on Canal Street. And you’re in Amsterdam and you’re launching two days from now.

ULRICH: Yeah, we’re doing two nights in every city, and we’re doing a hundred percent different set lists each night. So no songs are repeated from the first night to the second night.

ANDERSON: You’re hilarious.

ULRICH: It seemed like a really good idea in an email like a year ago…

ANDERSON: It is! It’s great. So, I wanted to show you—here’s Lou with some of your bandmates. Tell me about this day.

ULRICH: That’s in Gothenberg, right? I was actually with Anton Corbijn last night who took that picture. Anton is a dear, dear friend, who’s been taking photos of Metallica for coming up on 30 years, and has done obviously some of the most iconic album covers, like U2’s Joshua Tree, Depeche Mode, and countless other stuff. So, when we were talking about putting the record [Lulu] out, we talked about who could take some pictures of the five of us, and I suggested Anton. I’m not sure Lou, at least right off the bat, knew who he was. But I showed him some pictures, some of his work, and Lou, of course—which one of the many countless things we loved about him—was not overly impressed. He was not overly impressed with anything. But he agreed to work with Anton who we felt very, very safe with and trusted, and had worked with, I guess at that point for probably close to 20 years. We actually talked about it last night. I was mentioning to Anton that I was connecting with you today, and we were talking about our day in Gothenberg, which was in between a couple of Metallica shows. Lou found his way to Gothenberg and we were there and we were out at the shipyards all day.

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[GeneChing]

Lou Reed practicing Tai Chi with Metallica, by Anton Corbijn

ANDERSON: Oh, nice. Tell me just a little bit—I know people who are reading the book get a certain picture of you and Lou, but can you just tell me a little short story about how you met Lou and what he meant to you at the beginning? Before you got to know him that much?

ULRICH: Yeah, the first time, Jann Wenner and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame crew threw a—I believe it was the 25th anniversary celebration of the Hall of Fame in, what are we talking, was it ’09?

ANDERSON: Yeah. I think it was ’09.

ULRICH: Yeah. At Madison Square Garden. And so the idea that they came up with was that three or four artists would host a segment, and I believe U2 hosted a segment, I think Springsteen hosted a segment. And then we were asked to host a segment representing harder rock. So we started coming up with artists that would fit into our world. We picked Dave Davies [from The Kinks], Ozzy [Osbourne], and Lou.

ANDERSON: Oh what a crew!

ULRICH: Listen, first of all, we—Metallica—were wondering if they had sent the invitation to the wrong people, or wondering how we ever ended up in that esteemed and respectful company. But obviously we were super-psyched and just looking at it as an incredible opportunity to connect with so many people that we respected and had idolized and who had inspired us for decades. So we were down at, I can’t remember—it was a rehearsal studio somewhere in Manhattan, and I can’t remember what order we did. But all three of them came in and when Lou came in, there were a lot of amplifiers and a lot of speakers and a lot of gear. And he came in, and things were terribly loud, and there was just a lot of stuff everywhere. I remember he just started like, “Why is all this gear here?” and would just instantly challenge everybody, which was great, because nobody ever questioned anything that was going on. He was like, ‘What are we doing here? Why is it so loud?’ And then as we started talking and trying to figure out exactly what material we were going to hone in on, somebody—I can’t remember who—said the word medley…

ANDERSON: Oh, god. Medley.

ULRICH: Yeah, exactly! Lou said, “I don’t do medleys.”

ANDERSON: I’m sure.

ULRICH: It went south from there and continued going south. I think he actually walked out, and I took it upon myself to go find him, and connect with him. He and I had a one-on-one for, I don’t know, maybe it was 10, 20 minutes, and we connected in a very nice way, and I encouraged him to ride it out, and to understand that however this was going to play out, that we would make it work for everybody, medleys or not. And as you know, more than anybody, within a short amount of time, it was a 180 and it was the beginning of a love affair and this incredible relationship. A few days later, we ended up playing this incredible set in front of Madison Square Garden and the world, and as we were parting that night, down in the bowels of Madison Square Garden, in like, underground level 23, as we were all going in a separate directions, Lou said, “Let’s work together one day on something in the studio, maybe make a record or something.”

ANDERSON: I remember that so well. I was there and I remember how excited he was. He was really like an eight-year-old boy. He was like, “Oh my god, these guys are so amazing.” That was the biggest thrill for him, yelling out to you like that.

ULRICH: Yeah, I’ll take that one with me forever. It was priceless.

ANDERSON: Tell me a little bit about Lulu, because that, for me, was one of the most intense parts of my life with Lou, when he was working on that record with you, and digging this stuff from way down at the bottom of his heart, things about his father, things about men and women and love and hate and spite… That record scared me. I just remember a conversation that I had with David Bowie and he said, ‘Make no mistake, this, in 25 years, will be considered Lou’s best work. This is so dangerous. And that’s who he is. People just don’t ever understand him, and they don’t get that they don’t understand him. They don’t get that he’s ahead of his time.’ I was really struck by that.


Training with a spear at home on the roof, photographed by Ren GuangYi

ULRICH: Sometimes it’s also easier to not understand it because it may require more work to try to actually envelop yourself in it.

ANDERSON: A lot of work. And painful work. It’s not fun stuff. If you are really listening on many levels, you could hear it as this incredible sound force field coming at you. But on another level, when you listen to “Junior Dad,” for example… Woah.

ULRICH: It’s incredibly powerful, and it’s incredibly naked. All the emotions are literally right there. There’s nothing—no filters, no masks, nothing that’s separating the artist or the sound of what’s coming out for the listener. You’ve got to proceed with a lot of caution.

ANDERSON: Yeah.

ULRICH: I don’t think we had really understood the intensity of the work and the scale of it, until probably somewhere towards the end of finishing it, when Lou and James [Hetfield, Metallica’s lead vocalist] and I started our coast to coast conversations about jumping into this project. James and I, and the rest of the band, were trying to figure out our role in it, to try to serve Lou, but also to bring to life what the musical bedrock could be to everything that was coming out on top of it. It was instinctive in the beginning. And for us, it was those kinds of impulsive and momentary musical reactions were not something that we had ever really done before, because with our own records and with our own process, it’s quite labor-intensive. And we do a lot of analyzing, we remove ourselves from the creative process to try to get some space, and an understanding of what it is we’re doing. But everything with Lou was about the moment, and that was something we weren’t prepared for, but when it happened —

ANDERSON: You recognized it.

ULRICH: It was so ****ing liberating. It took a day or two, as we were going through those moments, and we were trying to come up with something that would work for Lou and for the scale of the project. And as we were working our way through the ideas and feeling them out, Lou said, ‘That’s great.’ The first couple of times it was like, ‘Well, thank you for that, let’s now go out and make it happen.’ But he would say, ‘No, no, no, that was great.’ As in, that was it.

ANDERSON: I know. He was a one-take guy.

ULRICH: The first couple of times it happened, it was just like, ‘What?’

ANDERSON: It’s shocking.

ULRICH: We were so unprepared for that and didn’t quite know how to react. And obviously, since we had not worked together before, we knew that part of the attraction was the unpredictability. But we didn’t know what that meant, Like, ‘Are we good for today, but then we’ll come back tomorrow and try again?’

ANDERSON: Nope. Not Lou. That’s it. We’re done.

ULRICH: Yeah. We definitely had to feel our way through it as the days went on. But again, circling back to the trust element that I mentioned, as soon as that trust was there, and as soon as we knew that we were all going to be safe, there’s a freedom that comes with that, and you just liberate yourself from all the **** that weighs you down. That was when we really just went into overdrive at a completely different level, and all this music and noise, and all these waves of craziness came out. Then Lou put these incredible words, and poetic thoughts, and lyrics, or however you want to characterize it, on top of it. The work was given birth to in two, or maybe three weeks of recording.

ANDERSON: Yeah, I remember how fast it was. But he’s a one take guy, and a lot of times, it’s strange to go with it. To have the trust in your intuition like that. I had a feeling that you guys really did it that way, because it felt really intuitive.

ULRICH: Yeah. It’s something that wasn’t in our arsenal until then, but we embraced it quickly. And like I said, there was an incredible—and I know this word is overused so much—but there really was just a freedom to it. Liberating is maybe a better word, because we just set ourselves free and trusted in the moment. There was no reason to go back to continuously readdress what had just happened.

ANDERSON: Yeah, that’s the way he lived. He wasn’t rehashing the past and he wasn’t trying to perfect it ever. It was just really rough and so honest. There’s a picture in the book of you, and it looks like you’re doing Tai Chi. Did he teach you some standing mountain moves or did he try to?

ULRICH: No, I learned from Kirk [Hammett, lead guitarist of Metallica], and Rob [Trujillo, Metallica’s bassist], but especially Kirk. He connected with Lou on that a lot.

ANDERSON: Maybe I’m making this up, but I see Tai Chi moves in your playing. Just these incredible moves you do… That’s Tai Chi. That’s power. Lou loved that about you so much—what you put physically into your playing.

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[GeneChing]

Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, and Ren GuangYi at Wallse, NYC, by Scott Richman

ULRICH: Thank you. That means the world to me. Once this body gets warmed up, which obviously, increasingly as I get older, takes longer and longer, but once it gets warmed up, and the music takes over, and you start getting in the zone—it does get pretty physical. I do liken it to growing up in a very athletic family. My dad was a tennis player, his dad was a tennis player, my uncle was a tennis player. They’re all tennis players. I’m actually the first one that didn’t really pursue tennis.But I did imagine for many years that I was going to follow in their footsteps. And so I’ve always likened my playing to tennis, and I think this is where it overlaps with Tai Chi—it’s about balance. The core element in tennis is just balance and centeredness. How you move—the forehand, the backhand, the rest of it, it’s always back to that center point, and it’s the same thing, or similar, in drumming. There’s a center point. Not to get into the crazy technical elements of it, but I do feel that it’s all just about balance.

ANDERSON: But also, power. As I’m watching you describe this and use your hands, you’re doing all of these moves that look like serves. And when you watched Lou play, his hands had this softness to them, and a very relaxed feeling, but also power. That always blew my mind because in Tai Chi he also was able to use his hands in a way that was strong and soft at the same time. I think that’s what makes the hands of a musician. And I see that in you, even just when you’re describing stuff. But Lou, in the last page of the book, he goes, “My Tai Chi has protected my body.”

ULRICH: Diving into it this last week, one of the main themes is about the physical strength that Tai Chi gave him and how obviously vital it was to him. But was it important for him to feel physically strong from a mental point of view?

ANDERSON: Those were very linked—his mental state and his physical state—and he knew that if he was feeling just awful, he would try to practice. We also didn’t do too much with meditation in this book, but he was a really awesome meditator and he knew a lot more about that than I thought. I came across a notebook of his recently—it’s like all these notes that Lou has left me somehow. I’m just walking around my house and find one I have never seen before. It’s like he’s talking to me all the time. I know he’s not, but it seems like that because he’s so… He was such a powerful person. But like you were talking about, he also was always looking for the center. He had a meditation about centering that I put in the book, it’s just a little bit of a mantra. It goes, “The center of your body, the center of your heart, the center of your spirit, your mind, your essence. Empty your mind and listen to the center of your body, the center of creation.” It’s written by an artist who understands Tai Chi meditation, and power, and music.

ULRICH: Exactly.

ANDERSON: But I think the body for him, and being old, he was very, very conscious of how to do that well, and with a lot of understanding. He faced his death that way as well, and he was very clear about it. That pretty much blew my mind and changed my life, to see him face that. I just came across this quote about getting old—it was Toni Morrison, and she was being interviewed by Oprah. Oprah said, “Toni, how does it feel to be so old?” And Toni said, “I hope you get to live long enough to find out.” Because it really is an adventure out there. And Lou understood that, and had a great sense of humor about it, too. He was such a grand old man, and it was just magnificent to see.

ULRICH: How did your relationship with change, or blossom, or evolve because of Tai Chi and his involvement in it?

ANDERSON: I don’t know where people’s motivations come from and how they change—I barely know how I change—but in being with him for 21 years, I saw him soften in many ways and become much more open, especially with difficult relationships in his life, like with his parents. I’m thinking of the song “Junior Dad” again, because that was a big feature in our relationship. When I first met Lou, he was like, “You’re never going to meet my family.” I asked him why and he said, “Can’t stand ’em.” So, I saw many difficult relationships go through a lot of phases, and gosh, it just sounds like cheap psychology when I say this, but I do think Tai Chi helped him a lot. I think meditation helped him a lot. I know it helped me to see things in a more relaxed and just more observational way. That’s what really surprised me about Lulu. I mean… Nobody does rage like that. And it just didn’t fit in with the image of the grand old man that I was building. But I’ll never forget that feeling of watching him be so true to himself and not trying to be nice to anyone.

ULRICH: The way you’re describing it, and I didn’t think of it at the time, but I think the whole record really was cathartic. It felt like a lifetime of rage, and a lifetime of being ****ed over, and a lifetime of questioning oneself and one’s place in all of this, and that rage that you carry towards the end of your life. Then this record comes, and at least to some degree, played a cathartic role in what came after.

ANDERSON: I don’t know if it was catharsis, but I know that it was really brave. It’ll take me a long time to really understand what that was, but I think about it so often, about what you guys did. It was like King Lear or something.


Notes from Shelley Peng’s meditation tape for Reed

ULRICH: I have a couple other questions for you. You write about the struggle that Lou had to finish this book, despite it probably being the subject that was closest to him. Was that because the importance of Tai Chi, maybe transcended writing about it? Is there something in there that practicing it was really the true path and to write about it or try to explain it somehow was contradictory to the path forward?

ANDERSON: There were many unfolding reasons. At the very beginning, it was Scott Richman who said, ‘You should write a book.’ And Lou said, ‘I’m a white guy, I’m a musician. I’m from New York. This is an entirely different culture. What can I say about it?’ Gradually, he began thinking of how he could individualize it. And it’s an amazing story, because here’s an American musician who learned about this tradition—a martial arts tradition from the other side of the world—and took it to heart. And it changed his life doing that. For him, I think it was really about showing it to people – about, “I’ll be Your Mirror.”

ULRICH: Since he didn’t write a memoir, this seems to be as true of a biography as you could probably find. Would you agree? Was this his way of trying to connect his experiences to a story that could eventually be put out there without the cheesiness and the self-importance of an autobiography?

ANDERSON: Yeah. He didn’t want to do an autobio. We tried to make this like a handbook, a how-to, because he really wanted people to do this. He genuinely wanted to help people. He was really driven by this need to make things better. Even on the smallest level, he was always asking, “How am I going to make things better?” He tried to make everything as big, beautiful, and fantastic as it could be. He tried to hide it a little bit, but that’s who he was. He was always trying to make it better.

It was good to see Master Ren at TCEC.

[GeneChing]

Click the link for the podcast link.

Lou Reed’s Tai Chi



Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Lou Reed, musician, rock icon, poet, leader of the legendary Velvet Underground, was obsessed with tai chi — the practice, the community, the health and spiritual benefits. Lou had been writing a book about this ancient martial art that was unfinished when he died in 2013.

Lou’s wife, the artist and musician Laurie Anderson, looked at Lou’s unfinished work and decided the book needed to be completed, that there was something important to be shared in Lou’s long, life-altering journey with tai chi.

She turned to three of Lou’s friends to help her with the project. By the time the book, The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi by Lou Reed, hit the stands in the spring of 2023, they had spoken with nearly 100 people and created a riveting portrait of Lou’s spiritual, medical and musical life, beckoning readers to enter the world of tai chi.

The Kitchen Sisters read the book and we kept thinking, these conversations must have been taped. We asked Laurie if there were recordings. There were. Dozens and dozens of them from rock stars, to tai chi masters, to doctors, to family….

We listened to the raw interviews, this remarkable trove of sound and story, and created a podcast that goes deep inside the making of this book. Voices heard in the story include Laurie Anderson, Iggy Pop, Julian Schnabel, Hal Willner, Anohni, Master Ren and many more, plus archival recordings of Lou Reed.



Lou Reed’s Tai Chi was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) in collaboration with Caroline Champlin, Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. Mixed by Jim McKee.

Special Thanks to Laurie Anderson, Scott Richman, Stephan Berwick and Robert Currie and to A.M. Homes.

Thanks also to Jason Stern and Jim Cass. And to Bill Berger, Iggy Pop, Master Ren Guangyi, Leung Shum, Robert Wilson, Anohni, Julian Schnabel, Sarth Calhoun, Peter Morales, Tony Visconti and the late great Hal Willner, all interviewed for the book, The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi by Lou Reed published by Harper One, an Imprint of HarperCollins, available in paperback, e-book and audiobook.

The music heard in this story includes Street Hassle, Open Invitation, Walk on the Wild Side, Future Farmers of America from Time Rocker, The Raven, Hudson River Meditation and The Power of the Heart all by Lou Reed. Heroin by the Velvet Underground. Little Dog by Lou Reed and Metallica. I’m in Love by Anohni and the Johnsons.

Funding for The Kitchen Sisters Present… comes from Susan Sillins, The Kaleta Doolin Foundation, The Texas Women’s Foundation, the slew of bowlers at Bowling with Grace 2023 and listener contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions. Thank you all for your support.

The Kitchen Sisters Present… is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a lively network of story-driven, richly produced, independent podcasts that expand and illuminate your world.

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Lou-Reed-Tai-Chi-Day

[GeneChing]

Laurie Anderson on Steering Lou Reed’s Legacy: “It’s a Wild Way to Be With Your Partner”
The famously *****ly “Heroin” singer spent the last years of his life chasing natural highs through martial arts. With a new release of ambient music recorded to accompany tai chi sessions, his longtime partner continues to shed light on a side of the rock-and-roll animal that the public rarely saw.

BY MIKE HOGAN
JANUARY 12, 2024


Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson in 2002.BY RICHARD CORKERY/NY DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES.

It’s always been somewhat obvious that Lou Reed’s sneering persona and transgressive antics were cover for a sensitive soul. This is a man who escaped the stultifying suburbs of 1950s Long Island, found a place at the Warhol Factory, and then helped revolutionize rock and roll by telling the stories of junkies, drag queens, street hustlers, and other denizens of New York City’s underbelly, first as the leader of the Velvet Underground and then as a solo artist. For all his aggressive posturing, and sometimes genuinely bad behavior, Reed was a purveyor of empathy above all. He helped the rest of us understand what it’s like to be on, or beyond, the edges of society.

But the persona made quite an impression, especially since he was such a ubiquitous New York character until his death in 2013 at age 71. I met him a few times, and he was always suitably grumpy. The one time I interviewed him, for this magazine, he hung up on me. I don’t think he was offended by anything I said. He was just being “Lou Reed.” Obviously, I was flattered.

If anyone could bring out Reed’s softer side, it was his wife and partner of 21 years, Laurie Anderson. A renowned musician and performance artist, Anderson is as cheerfully Midwestern as Reed was snarlingly New Yawk. And the choices she has made as the keeper of Reed’s legacy are slowly, steadily sanding off the edges of his bad-boy image.

According to Anderson, Reed devoted the bulk of his time and energy in the last eight years of his life to the practice of tai chi. Last year, Anderson published The Art of the Straight Line, a book collecting Lou’s reflections on the form alongside testimonials from his many teachers, students, and friends. Among its more poignant revelations comes from the musician and artist Ramuntcho Matta, who remembers Reed weeping with remorse in 2011 over the damage he’d done to his body in his druggy heyday.

And now comes Hudson River Wind Meditations, a collection of hauntingly beautiful ambient tracks that Reed released in 2007 to accompany tai chi sessions with his longtime teacher, Master Ren Guangyi. Anderson describes it as “a quiet version of Metal Machine Music,” Reed’s 1975 noise album, which was so blisteringly panned that RCA pulled it from shelves after just three weeks. Naturally, it, too, is now the stuff of legend.

I’ve always been curious about the shockingly functional relationship these two mavericks seemed to share, so I jumped at the chance to interview Anderson about the new release. Over a delightful hour, we talked about everything from Kung Fu magazine, to Barbie and Gen Z feminism, to the trans dimension of “Walk on the Wild Side,” to Lou’s “cartoon” persona, to her exceedingly dim view of biographers.

Vanity Fair: I’m really excited to talk about this…I don’t know, can we call it a record?

Laurie Anderson: Let’s call it a record. Why not?

Okay, this record. I wanted to start by asking how it was made.

He made this late at night by sticking the microphone out the window and processing all of the sounds of the Hudson River. I thought it was such a good idea. You’d think you’d hear more traffic, but with a directional microphone you can pick up a lot of sloshing and surface noise. There’s a lot going on in that river, the current going up as well as down. And the wind currents around it are also pretty complicated. The way the water responds to the wind is…I just feel it in there.

He filtered that a lot and just made it as a quiet version of Metal Machine Music, in a way. He really made it for his teacher, Master Ren Guangyi. And they tried to use it in class, and people hated it. But they kept playing it, and then they realized this is the best tai chi music ever.

I don’t know if you’ve played it in the background at all, but it’s a really interesting thing to have going on in a room quietly. It definitely works its magic on you after a while. He put it on his website. It wasn’t a secret. But we decided finally, Let’s do a vinyl thing. I’ve fallen in love with vinyl again. I like the process of putting a record on. It’s a slightly ceremonial thing, to put a disc onto a record player. Do you listen to records?

It’s funny, all of my vinyl is hidden away now. I have a three-year-old, and I know what I did to my parents’ vinyl collection when I was a little kid. But I think I can bring it back out soon. She’s not ripping things apart presently.

I think for kids, records are really magic in a way that sound coming out of speakers and laptops isn’t. Because you see the physicality of the needle and the weirdness of the sound being embedded in those grooves.

When you say Lou was taking this sound and manipulating it, how did he do that? With pedals?

Mostly pedals. He had something called the Death Pedal that he ran audio through, and it was really scary. It was all kinds of delays and crunches and things that would bring out various aspects of those sounds. But he also was really looking for something that was not the classic Chinese erhu-style music that is often used in tai chi. I learned tai chi with that music, and I had the same resistance to this piece of music when I first heard it. But eventually—I can’t do tai chi without it, basically.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

MASTER REN GUANGYI.

Can you tell me a little about the role tai chi played in Lou’s life?

Well, it was huge. He went to China a couple of times to the Chen village where this form originated. And he’s more well-known in China as a martial artist than as a musician, which I think people do not know. He was really thrilled to be on the cover of Kung Fu magazine. That was a big, big accomplishment for him.

I remember when he said, “I’m going to spend all my time now doing tai chi.” This was around 2005 or so. He did some wonderful music in that time. He did Berlin and Lulu, and a lot of other projects and tours. And he wrote new songs. But his main focus was tai chi. And I so admired that. A lot of people say what they’d like to do if they had all the time in the world, but it’s hard to put that into action. He did.

Do you think it helped him find peace? Honestly, there’s something I’ve been dying to ask you about for a long time. There’s an idea that Lou’s relationship with you was very healing for him, and that somebody who had some really dark times got to a much lighter place. I’m curious what you think about that, and how you think your relationship played into that, and how tai chi played into that.

I’m not somebody who necessarily uses that language, and I am not able to go into somebody else’s mind to say what changed them or what their motivations were. I don’t even know that for myself, so I would never try to do that for somebody else. I can say that when I met Lou, he was a super-angry person in many ways, and also very, very generous. Very complicated person. And in my observation, I would say that as he grew older, for whatever reasons, I just noticed the more charitable parts. For example, if we’d go to see a play or something, I would be the one going, “I thought that was a piece of junk.” And he would go, “But think about the score.” He was very generous to other artists, because he knew how hard it was to make things. He had real respect for people who did that.

For whatever reasons, all of us change a lot. I think people tend to think their personalities are more stable than they are. I think people are also encouraged not to change too much. “That’s just not like you. Why are you doing that?” If you had a brand that you were supposed to stay inside of, why can’t you just do something that’s way out of what you would normally say or do or be?

But he did have a brand, right? He had an image as an angry, dark guy.

But that was a cartoon. None of his friends believed that for one second. It was a joke, really. And one that he was happy to just keep doing. I think a lot of people fell for that, but nobody who knew him did.

Do you think tai chi offered him a healthier way to get to interesting places mentally and psychologically than the drugs he used early in his career?

I think tai chi has many similar effects to a very powerful drug. It takes you into another world very, very quickly. And by your own volition, rather than just being taken for a ride by heroin or something, so you get to be the boss. And Lou was enough of a control freak to want to be the boss. Free rides are cool sometimes, but I think tai chi for him was a way to be in a power situation. His music was also about being able to have a huge amount of power. It’s a big power chord, really. And that’s the rush he got from tai chi.

He did get a rush, and that’s what he was going for. It wasn’t that you’re going to lull yourself into some other state. It’s the thrill of being able to do something you didn’t think you could do that had so much chi, so much force. I would say force, power, and on the other side grace were what he loved about it. Lou didn’t really do sports when he was a kid. This was the first time he could carry a sports bag and really be one of the guys. Kind of.

So it wasn’t like meditation for him. He approached it as a martial art.

It was a combination. He loved the meditative part of it as well. He was very proselytizing with tai chi. He’d say, “What is wrong with your shoulder? You’ve got to do some tai chi.” He was a wonderful observer of people. His songs were about people, and they all had names. He’s not a songwriter sitting in his room going, “I’m so lonely.” It’s like, “Stand up, walk out your door, and you’d be a lot less lonely. You’d write songs about something else.” He did walk out his door and he wrote songs about Little Joe and Candy from the Island. I really felt he had a Shakespearean cast of characters. And of course, what meditation and tai chi both have in common is observation.

You mentioned “Walk on the Wild Side,” and it’s funny how a song that was once about the Warhol Factory now, in our current moment, feels almost like a pioneering song about the trans experience.

The Warhol Factory was trans. It was almost 100% trans. I think that it’s not surprising to me so much that it’s back as much as how incredibly conservative and staid and judgmental our culture has become. It wasn’t like that in the ’60s. You think, Are we going backwards? We seem to have slid back into the ’50s. But the good thing about the ’50s is that the ’60s are coming next.

There you go.

Although I said that to somebody who said, “Oh, no, you’re wrong. This is not the ’50s. This is the ’30s.” And I was like, “Oh, boy.” I don’t know where we are, and whether it’s cyclical. It feels cyclical. But anytime I see music or art that has a certain freedom and audacity, I get very, very happy. That’s what I personally want more than anything, is to be free. When there are people who remind you that it’s possible, that you don’t have to be stuck in somebody else’s idea of what you should believe. And I think Lou’s work was always about that.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

© STEPHANIE DIANI.

It’s terrible that we lost him too soon, but I can’t help thinking that he’s fortunate to have you as the keeper of his legacy. I’m curious how you think about that.

Frankly, at first, I felt it as a huge, overwhelming responsibility that I was not at all prepared for. Because we never, for one second, talked about his death, his not being there. We just didn’t talk about it. Not that he was in denial, but we just didn’t talk about it. I was like, wait, I’m responsible now? Oh, my God. And it was, for a while, very heavy. But it’s so much fun thinking of him and his work, and getting a chance to read it and reread it and think about it in different ways. It’s a wild way to be with your partner. You learn certain things about them. And I didn’t do that when I met him, I didn’t do any research. I just met him as a person.

Is it true that at that time you didn’t know who he was?

I had heard his name, but I thought he was British, for example. That’s a stupid thing. I’m not proud of that. You’d think everybody in New York knows everybody in New York in their field, but music is huge in New York. It’s composed of 100 different scenes that don’t necessarily intersect.

I’ve actually been thinking about the power of these legacy releases. Around the time you and Lou met, I was in high school and a friend of mine got hold of that CD box set of the Velvet Underground with all the albums and outtakes. I bought a copy, and it was almost life-changing. It really became foundational music for me.

It’s funny how generations forget things. When I went to the Barbie movie—I liked the movie. It’s not a great movie, but what was great about it was the girls there. Feminism was news to them. I was like, “That’s why I should keep these ideas percolating, because there are kids who’ve grown up in such a different world that they don’t even know any of that.”

And of course, they have to make it their own anyway, and they have to figure out all of that for themselves. But it’s also nice to know that, before you, there were some people who thought that through. And it was mind-blowing to me that those were new concepts. And these are 13-, 14-year-old kids. And I thought, I feel such great solidarity with these girls. It was wonderful. Yeah, I think introducing music from 50 years ago to kids who are trying to figure out, like you were, what is music? And here’s something that comes floating in a box. And they go, “Whoa, where did that come from?” It’s amazing.

I do think there’s value in reminding people of the great things that humans have done, great movies they’ve made, great books they’ve written, beautiful sculptures. Lou and I used to go to The Metropolitan Museum and look at the weapons collection.

Really?

In New York, we live in a city of incredible treasures. And it’s all things that we can go and have a look at and go, “Who made that for what?” You forget that culture isn’t just what’s coming down the pipeline into your laptop. I’ve been rereading Ginsberg lately, and just having my mind opened up to some of the great things that he…I knew Allen, and so did Lou, and we both liked him, but he had this way of bumping heads that we both hated. He would see you and he’d knock your head.

Physically bump your head?

Yes. It was a Tibetan greeting. And he would, like, boom. I was like, “Oh, stop doing that.” But for some reason we just…maybe it was because we were friends or we were too close to see what a genius he was, what incredible works of art he made. And then when you see it from another perspective, “Howl” is like the national anthem. What an incredibly rich history we have as Americans, as people who’ve made really just insanely great things. And so being part of the engine that keeps things coming out, I’m really, really happy to help do that a bit.

Is there anything you can share about what else you’re planning to release?

There are a bunch of things that we found in the archives that we’re going to put out. The Lou Reed archive is at the New York Public Library, and anybody can go in and hear anything they want. They can hear the first Velvet Underground rehearsal. It’s all free. You can just go in and geek out. And that, to me, was very important. It’s not a white-glove thing. And people really use it.

On March 2, which is his birthday, we’re going to do an event there. Lou started most of his concerts with drones. He and his guitar tech would have a whole array of amplifiers, and then he’d lean the guitars against them and the feedback would just be crushing. It was Metal Machine Music to the max. So we’ve done that in many places—in churches, cathedrals, caves, venues, festivals, music festivals. And this year we’re going to do one at the New York Public Library

At the risk of departing entirely from Vanity Fair–friendly topics, can we talk a little bit about drones? In 2022, you released a collection of Lou’s demos called Words & Music, May 1965, where we hear him singing “Heroin” in a folky style reminiscent of Bob Dylan. Fast-forward two years and we get the album version with John Cale sawing away on an electric viola. My assumption was that John Cale had brought the drone to Lou from the world of classical music, but is that right? Is this something that you ever discussed?

We did. We did a lot. Because to tell you the truth, drones were everywhere then. Mostly, it was La Monte Young, but everybody was doing drones. It wasn’t anything new. Charlemagne Palestine was starting to do things around then. Terry Riley. Drones were in. They were how you did music. And I don’t think anybody would say, “I invented the drone.” It would be crazy. Lou was at La Monte’s things, and so was John. They were getting that from there, and they were getting that eventually from ragas. La Monte had spent a lot of time in India. That’s really where it came from. It came from meditation. It came from India. It came from ragas. Endless, very loud brainwaves. And so it’s gone full circle, in many ways.

Do you think he was frustrated by the critical reception to Metal Machine Music at the time? Or did he think it was funny that he’d freaked everyone out?

On the surface, I think he loved to be the bad boy, but he was hurt that people didn’t get it or like it. He wanted people to like what he did. It meant a lot to him to make it, and he wanted it to mean something to people who listened to it. He cared about that a lot. I think he pretended he didn’t, but he did.

Will Hermes recently published a biography of Lou. How did you feel about that?

Well, I don’t really talk to any of the journalists who write these things, and I don’t read them. Although I did read a couple of things in here, because supposedly he was quoting me. And it did sound like he had talked to me. I never talked to him. I am in the school of Oscar Wilde, who said, “Biographers are the body snatchers of literature.” He also said, in a much harsher way, “Some people have a lot of disciples, but only Judas writes the biography.”

I have read biographies of people, and Catherine the Great was a great biography. I can’t read them about Lou because they’re all so wrong. Unless you really were with somebody, even the greatest active imagination will not get you there. That’s all I have to say about it. I know people write biographies, but I myself don’t read them. I don’t especially like being quoted in them.

[Will Hermes responds: “Laurie declined to be interviewed for this book for reasons I totally appreciate—a lot of people were writing books about Reed after his death. I did interview Anderson for my first book, Love Goes to Building on Fire, and for a New York Times feature a while back, and I quote her from those interviews. She and her team were helpful and encouraging during the years I worked on this book, and I make a point of stating clearly in the book that it’s not an ‘authorized biography.’”]

Do you feel that you have an obligation to tell the story the right way, in a sense?

No, this is not a contest. And there is no real right way to tell somebody’s life story. And I appreciate the impulse of wanting to tell someone’s story. I really do. I can’t say I admire it, but I appreciate the idea. Why wouldn’t I want to tell this person’s life story? It could be interesting to people. All of that’s true, and all of that means that I also don’t want to read it.

What about Todd Haynes’s Velvet Underground documentary? Did you see that?

Yeah, I thought it was okay. I wish there was a—yeah, no, it was fine.

Before I let you go, can you tell me what you’re up to? Because you obviously have your own incredible career and artistic practice.

Well, I’m working on finishing an orchestra piece about Amelia Earhart. And I’m working on a new big work for next fall about the end of the world. And let’s see, what else? A couple of books and some exhibitions. All kinds of things. I’m making a movie.

What’s the movie?

The movie is kind of a bunch of stories strung together.

Well, listen, I really appreciate you talking to me about this. I love the record, and I’m going to make it the first thing I put on the turntable with my toddler.

Good luck with that!

Having Lou on the cover was a big, big accomplishment for us too.

[GeneChing]

LAURIE ANDERSON on Lou Reed & "Hudson River Wind Meditations"
New Podcast Episode
Jan 15
31 min 40 sec

Episode Description
The Jokermen are joined by the great Laurie Anderson to discuss Lou Reed, his artistic practice, and the extraordinary reissue of his final solo record, Hudson River Wind Meditations, available now from Light In The Attic.

A new interview with Laurie Anderson about his final solo record which was Tai Chi based. I just posted the Spotify link above but here's the Jokermen link tree for other platforms.

[GeneChing]

I'm excited to be part of this and hope to see some of you there.

Thursday, January 25

The Kitchen Sisters Present "Lou Reed's Tai Chi"
A live, free, in-person event featuring a presentation of the story "Lou Reed's Tai Chi" with the Kitchen Sisters
By KALW Public Media

Date and time
Thursday, January 25 · 5 - 8pm PST
Location
220 Montgomery St

220 Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA 94104
Show map
Agenda
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Doors and drinks

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM

The Kitchen Sisters present "Lou Reed's Tai Chi"

7:00 PM - 7:15 PM

Gene Ching leads Tai Chi exercise

About this event
3 hours
Mobile eTicket
The Kitchen Sisters give a live and free presentation of their latest story, based on oral histories with the people closest to the rock and roll hall of famer.

It's a Podcast Listening Party with The Kitchen Sisters (Davia & Nikki). Come hear their new episode “Lou Reed’s Tai Chi,” along with a Zoom conversation with Lou’s widow, the artist and musician Laurie Anderson. Afterwards, Gene Ching, publisher and editor of Kung Fu Tai Chi Magazine, longtime tai chi practitioner, and friend of Lou Reed, will lead an introductory tai chi session with the group.

It's also a celebration of the 2023 book, “The Art of the Straight Line: Lou Reed’s Tai Chi,” which will be available for purchase onsite from Medicine for Nightmares bookstore.

Snacks and drinks will be provided on site.

Drop ins welcome.

5 p.m. — Doors and drinks

6 p.m. — The Kitchen Sisters present "Lou Reed's Tai Chi" and Laurie Anderson joins via Zoom

7 p.m. — Gene Ching leads a tai chi exercise

Please note:

The event space is just to the left of the main entrance to the Mills Building at 220 Montgomery Street
We recommend taking BART/MUNI, exiting at Montgomery, and walking two blocks north
If you drive, there are several garages within two blocks of the event location
Ride shares can easily drop you off and pick you up right out front

[GeneChing]

The Kitchen Sisters Present "Lou Reed's Tai Chi"

Thursday, January 25 · 6 - 7:15pm PST

A live, free, in-person event featuring a presentation of the story "Lou Reed's Tai Chi" with the Kitchen Sisters

It's a Podcast Listening Party with The Kitchen Sisters (Davia & Nikki). Come hear their new episode “Lou Reed’s Tai Chi,” along with a Zoom conversation with Lou’s widow, the artist and musician Laurie Anderson. Afterwards, Gene Ching, publisher and editor of Kung Fu Tai Chi Magazine, longtime tai chi practitioner, and friend of Lou Reed, will lead an introductory tai chi session with the group.

It's also a celebration of the 2023 book, “The Art of the Straight Line: Lou Reed’s Tai Chi,” which will be available for purchase onsite from Medicine for Nightmares bookstore.

Snacks and drinks will be provided on site.

KALW @ 220 Montgomery
Free
06:00 PM - 07:15 PM on Thu, 25 Jan 2024

Hope to see ya!

[GeneChing]

"We were scared to death about working with him": The Killers on the time they recorded a song with Lou Reed
Niall Doherty
Sun, January 21, 2024 at 5:50 AM PST·2 min read

The Killers have been involved in some first-rate collaborations in their two decades as Las Vegas’ finest purveyors of anthemic indie-pop. There has been team-ups with Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Marr, the Pet Shop Boys and Phoebe Bridgers from Brandon Flowers’ crew but perhaps the most impressive is the time they enlisted late rock’n’roll icon and the world’s grouchiest man Lou Reed to duet on their 2007 song Tranquilize.

The Perfect Day singer taught them to up their work ethic, the band told this writer a few years ago. “One of the more positive notes was he tried to impart some knowledge he learned from Andy Warhol,” Flowers explained. “He told us a story that Andy Warhol would ask him, ‘How many songs did you write today Lou?’ And he’d say, ‘I wrote one song’ and Andy would say, ‘Why didn’t you write five?’ He told us that the first day we were working with him and the next day we came in the studio and he said, ‘How many songs did you write today Brandon?’ Haha! So it’s instilled in me to keep trying and working harder and he wrote a lot, that’s why he was so good at it. We were scared to death about working with him.”

The thing that broke the ice, stated drummer Ronnie Vanucci, was Reed showing the band how to do Tai Chi. “He was really into Tai Chi,” recalled the sticksman. “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know how it came up but he was in leather pants doing these moves and showing me these squat moves and holding a leg out and all about the centre. It’s a pretty good memory for me. That’s the only time I’ve ever tried Tai Chi.”

Reed’s devotion to the martial art lives on – last year, a book titled The Art Of The Straight Line collated Reed’s writings about Tai Chi. Whilst The Killers didn’t take to it, they did pay attention to his other piece of advice. They’ve put out a lot of music since 2007, songs that have helped keep them near the top of the indie-rock pile. Listen to their collaboration with Reed below:

This sounds like it was just excerpted from his book.

[GeneChing]

Transmutations

Take a Walk on the Weird Side
By Charles Lighthouse

BERKELEY ALEMBIC
FEB 7, 2024

For this post, I asked Alembic regular and volunteer Charles Lighthouse to reflect on some events he has attended recently in the space and elsewhere. Charles is a San Francisco-based writer and organizer, and you can reach him at clearsightedmind@gmail.com. For TRANSMUTATIONS, he served up a sweet slice of Bay Area culture-making in perilous times. Going forward, we hope to hear more from Charles, but TRANSMUTATIONS looks forward to bringing in other Alembic voices as well. Stay tuned! — Erik

The world’s so weird right now, you might as well ask Philip K. Dick what he thinks about it. That’s what’s happening in Erik Davis’s Tuesday night class at the Alembic, where we’re reading The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch like an oracle. Erik says that Dick “prophesied what it feels like to be alive right now,” and there’s no better example than this 1964 novel in which transhuman, space-faring billionaires preside over an immiserated population mollified by consumer virtual realities and hallucinogenic drugs. Erik invites this prophetic reading to “allow us to see our own time under a more apocalyptic frame,” which he noted, “we don’t need to work very hard to develop.”

Starting the year with a five-week crash course in Phildickian paranoia seems like a smart way to start training for the Boomer Götterdämmerung election spectacle of 2024. Dick wrote this book while the postwar generation was just beginning to assert its cultural influence, but he envisioned a future completely devoid of the idealism the boomers expressed. But today, thinking about this stuff at a thriving bodymind center in Berkeley that’s “dedicated to experiments in transformation” tells me that the values that generation incubated here in the Bay Area aren’t dead yet. During her appearance at the Chalice last month, Maria Mangini pondered bringing a busload of Hog Farmers in to talk about their long and successful experiment in communal living. Kathleen Harrison, who will be speaking at The Alembic this weekend, spent the last fifty years developing structures for ethnobotanical fieldwork, conservation, and plant-person education with reciprocity built in as a core practice. Models are everywhere and change is always possible.

Lou Reed knew that. He said, “Change your energy; change your mind. You have more power than you know.” If a bunch of Berkeley “Dick-Heads” can consult PKD for guidance, then it’s not so weird that, across the Bay, sixty NPR addicts filled KALW’s downtown San Francisco pop-up for a panel and martial arts lesson inspired by Reed’s Tai Chi practice on January 25. Laurie Anderson and Bob Currie, editors of The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi by Lou Reed appeared via Zoom. Gene Ching, publisher of Kung Fu – Tai Chi magazine and self-described “psychedelic ranger” was there in person, alongside moderators Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, hosts of The Kitchen Sisters. A dancer fully clad in denim with a hot pink baseball cap, scarf, and KN95 mask spent the entire event skanking in the window outside the former copy shop, occasionally getting honks of support from the drive-time traffic. If this is what a doom loop looks like, I’m all about it.


Sifu Lou

According to Anderson, Lou Reed saw Tai Chi as “a way to access power and grace with your friends.” He told journalist Martha Burr he found it “philosophically, aesthetically, physically, and spiritually fascinating.” While Reed cultivated a fearsome presence as a performer, the interviews we listened to during the event portrayed him as a dedicated student and generous teacher who thoroughly devoted himself to practice and community participation. He would have fit in well at the Alembic.

While the audience was excited by Anderson’s appearance, the most perceptible upward lilt in the group’s attention came when Ching talked about his psychedelic ranger work with Rock Medicine. “I specialize in bad trips,” Ching said. He described an experience during a Grateful Dead show at the Greek Theater where he helped cajole a spun naked guy out of a trash can and back to his friends. “It’s Tai Chi in action,” he said, “it’s about reading and responding to energy.” After the Q&A, we all pitched in on folding up our chairs so Gene could lead a demonstration of basic Tai Chi forms.

Feeling buzzed from the panel, I walked up to North Beach to check out the Full Moon Trip Temple at Professor Seagull’s Smart Shop. When I got there around 10 PM, their regular display of nootropics, entheogens, books, and test kits was shoved to the edges of the store, making space for floor sofas and a big communal table. While I was there, a dozen people were drawing, painting, pulling tarot cards, or grooving to the jazz manouche melodies the Levitation Quartet played. It was a classic San Francisco scene that could have shown up in just about anything published by City Lights when Lawrence Ferlinghetti was around, but this wasn’t nostalgia or cosplay. This is just what it looks like when neighbors hang out in public and make stuff together. In a neighborhood full of bars, it was a nice illustration that there’s other kinds of nightlife models too.

After years of connecting digitally while streaming information and entertainment at home, people are experimenting with new ways to be creative together that look beyond prefab culture. The Psychedelic Sangha Bardo Bath performed at the Alembic on January 27 offers another vital model to consider. I’ve been jealous of my East Coast friends who’ve attended the dose-friendly, art and music-fueled Buddhist meditations that PS has been staging since 2018. The sold-out event at the Alembic was a pared-down version of those New York happenings. Fifty seekers -- a mix of focused meditators and seasoned psychonauts, who seemed to range from their late twenties to early sixties -- showed up for the event, producing a palpably excited buzz in the lobby as we waited to enter the ceremony space.

Buddhist scholar Doc Kelley served as bardo guide, opening the sit with a death meditation while musician Chris Dingman provided a sonic portal of vibraphone tones. Kelley vividly described the process of surrendering our physical and spiritual bodies; watching our flesh liquify and seep into the earth while our chakras burst into the infinite. He led us from our incarnated forms into the bardo space, where language ceased. Here Dingman’s vibes and wordless vocals intensified, layering and expanding, hitting tones that warbled in the ear and produced geometry behind some closed eyes. Aubrey Nehring’s animations slid across the wall, zoomed into hyperspace, and expanded into tryptamine skies full of bouncing, blobby figures. Yosuh Jones’s devotional paintings seemed to vibrate from within. Throughout, our death doula, Dr. Erika Rosenberg, sat at the foot of the stage, radiating kindness and safety. She called us back from the bardo by describing the new expressions of life emerging from the forms we surrendered at the journey’s beginning. She prayed, “May we all find ease. May we all find peace.”


Not dead yet: Chris Dingman, Erika Rosenberg, and Doc Kelley

It's hard to imagine ease or peace flowing from the Phildickish dystopia that forms the superstructure of consensus reality these days, but I experienced both sensations as I moved between these local events. They represent new expressions of Bay Area culture that empower the public to cultivate knowledge, practice, creativity, and skill in ways that nurture community over commodity.

After the Bardo Bath, I talked about this with Kati Devaney, the Alembic’s Executive Director. While beaming with well-deserved pride about the way the organization she stewards is developing, she also sees it as a duplicable model for other knowledge-centered community spaces to learn from. And the more of those that form, the better.

“The weirder it gets,” Kati said, “the smarter we gotta be.”


Good Vibes

Transmutations is a biweekly publication from the Berkeley Alembic, a transformational bodymind center that offers classes, workshops, retreats, and warm cups of tea.

I'm not sure how this became about my karma work, but there you have it.

[GeneChing]

Tai Chi Lessons From A Rock Legend
Authored by Josh Henkin

Anyone that really connects and falls in love with Tai Chi always seems to find that they change. They feel it and those around them generally notice as well. It can be difficult to explain, but I find comments such as “you seem calmer, more at peace” a common theme among such reactions.

Such personal changes often are greatly positive and something that is touted as why Tai Chi is such a impactful practice. However, explaining why or how this happens seems to be challenging at times. Trying to explain concepts like qi or going into the science can both go over people’s heads.



That is why I really appreciate books like Lou Reed’s “The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi”. Lou Reed was a famous musician, even though he was bit before my time, his songs have been quite iconic in pop culture. I think having an artist like Mr. Reed write about Tai Chi is quite perfect, as Tai Chi is an art form as much as a martial art. The book is not really written by Mr. Reed, but a collection of some of his thoughts about the practice and many great stories by people that knew him well. From his wife, to his martial arts teachers, and close friends, we get to see how Tai Chi impacted him in many ways.

Why didn’t Mr. Reed write the book himself? It is explained by many close to him that it was challenging for him to encapsulate all that Tai Chi has to offer in a book. Additionally, his friends comment about a very relatable issue where Mr. Reed didn’t think he was enough of an authority to really write a book about Tai Chi. Those of us that really love the whole practice of Tai Chi (the physical and philosophical aspects) can relate to such feelings. I appreciate when Mr. Reed says he is a student of martial arts while his teacher, Master Ren GuangYi, is a martial artist. That feeling is something that hits close to home for myself as well.

I’ll admit, this book may seem a bit abstract for someone who is generally interested in Tai Chi and even some of the descriptions of specific movements may not make sense if you are not currently practicing. Yet, there are so many valuable aspects of this book it should be part of anyone’s library who is practicing and the lessons can serve as valuable ideas to share with those who are intrigued by the practice. Just like Tai Chi, you have to go deeper on the stories and ideas, seeing them more as lessons than just interesting anecdotes.

One of the ideas that kept popping up in the book that I found highly intriguing was the consistent references to how Mr. Reed wanted to learn how to fight. While it was clear that literally, Mr. Reed wanted to learn how to fight, I think there was also a metaphor for battling many of life’s challenges. Mr. Reed fought problems with addiction and seemingly emotional demons as well. Many of the stories I hear of those that start practicing Tai Chi and even myself, are people that start because they are “fighting” physical and emotional challenges.


A Tai Chi post by Lou Reed (photo from Harper Collins)
Mr. Reed’s second martial arts teacher, Leung Shum, tells of Mr. Reed coming to him wanting to learn how use Tai Chi for fighting. The problem was that Mr. Reed was still using drugs and couldn’t stop shaking enough to learn the forms well. Mr. Shum told him unless he stopped using that he wouldn’t teach him Tai Chi. This story while a true one, I think can also be a metaphor about how one practices and why they practice Tai Chi. Unless we are willing to let go of those things that we are battling, you can’t really tap into completely what Tai Chi has to offer.

A quote in the book that struck me is “you can’t do Tai Chi angry.” Such a simple statement with a profound meaning as Tai Chi makes people go into themselves and learn to be more at peace with sometimes very difficult things. The practice itself helps that process and opens people to finding a better way of being and not always feeling the need to “fight”, but finding more joy in the present.

One of the statements that I found most true was, “Tai Chi is medicine”, I think those that not only practice the movements, but also the philosophy realize that this is very true. Tai Chi can be great medicine for the mind and the body. In fact, when one reads that Mr. Reed would practice for hours that might seem like something impossible to do in one’s own life. However, I think people should understand that Tai Chi was Mr. Reed’s best medicine for dealing with his addictions, his personal issues, and even his declining health. The idea of “grounding” and balancing one’s self is something that I believe was really behind the message of his lengthy time practicing.


A Tai Chi post by Lou Reed (photo from Harper Collins)
There is such an emphasis on practice and being intentional that I hope people don’t get caught up on the literal aspects of the stories, but rather the meaning behind them. One doesn’t have to practice for hours upon hours to feel the benefits of Tai Chi, but they do have to be willing to practice consistently and to do so with the right intent. Very much like life, it is what we do with the time that we are very mindful that makes the biggest impact.

Maybe my favorite part of the book overall was the consistent theme that Mr. Reed wasn’t perfect. Tai Chi didn’t solve all of his life’s problems, but the practice helped him find peace, his place in the world, deal with serious health challenges, and feel more connected to people and his music. Reading that Mr. Reed was literally practicing Tai Chi as he passed in many ways is very beautiful and sums up the power of Tai Chi.

All too often death scares us, we are full of fear, often regret, and it makes that transition of life so much more challenging. However, it sounded like when Mr. Reed passed, he wasn’t feeling those things, there was truly a peacefulness and openness about dying. Is there any better example of how Tai Chi helps us live better, when it also helps us with feeling connected to life when life as we know it is leaving us? A worthwhile book for anyone who wants to improve their own straight line of life (from birth to death) and find more meaning in the journey.


About the Author: Josh Henkin is a certified strength & conditioning specialist with 30 years in the fitness and performance industry. He is a highly sought after educator and presenter in the areas of functional training and corrective exercise, teaching in 13 countries and many national conferences. In addition, Josh’s work has been published in over 20 national publications including Men’s Health and the Wall Street Journal. The past couple of years Josh has practiced Tai Chi to help manage an aggressive form of degenerative spinal disease and is fortunate to be a student of Violet Li.

I imagine I'll see Violet at TCEC in two weeks.