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Artist Laurie Anderson on Her Late Husband, Lou Reed, and His Tai Chi Passion

The avant-garde pioneer discusses 'The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi,' a book complied from Reed's musings and conversations on the art form

By Sandra Ebejer

For much of his career, Lou Reed — the groundbreaking artist who was a founding member of The Velvet Underground — was known for his challenging demeanor and reckless lifestyle. So it might be a surprise to learn that from the 1980s until his death in 2013, Reed was an ardent practitioner of the Chinese martial art Tai Chi. He was so passionate about the art form that he studied under Ren GuangYi for hours a day, six to seven days a week, and often incorporated Master Ren and Tai Chi into his live performances.

Headshot of a person doing tai chi. Next Avenue, lou reed, Laurie Anderson, tai chi
Lou Reed practicing Tai Chi  |  Credit: “The Art of the Straight Line”/Harper Collins

Upon his death, Reed left behind notes and musings about martial arts, meditation and music, which he'd hoped to turn into a book. So his wife, Laurie Anderson — an iconic musician and artist in her own right — worked alongside three of Reed's friends, Stephan Berwick, Bob Currie, and Scott Richman, to complete the project. The result is "The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi," a collection of Reed's writings, past interviews and photographs, as well as conversations with those closest to him, including friends, relatives, medical professionals, Tai Chi practitioners and artists. (Among the more famous included in the book are musician Iggy Pop, magician Penn Jillette, Metallica members Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich, and actor Michael Imperioli.)

Anderson tells Next Avenue that the book is meant to be a handbook and an introduction to Tai Chi, rather than a memoir of Reed's life. She highly encourages readers to get both the physical and audio versions of the book, even though she admits the audiobook recording process was unusual.

"He was always trying to make things better, just make it better than it was, which is a pretty amazing attitude towards life, when a lot of people just kind of give up."

"We're all playing our own selves, which is really creepy, trying to reenact [conversations]. It's weird, but I think it came out fairly naturally. There were voice actors doing Lou, which was distressing to me [laughs], but I'm sure other people won't have that same feeling because it's very heartfelt and well done."

Anderson feels the audiobook enhances the information in the physical book, as does a poster that shows the various forms step-by-step. A version of it is available online, and Anderson says it will also be included in an upcoming album release. "We will have that poster in a record that we're going to put out in the fall. It's a reissue of the music that Lou made for Tai Chi called "Hudson River Wind Meditations." That's coming out with some other material, photographs and this and that, along with this poster."

In a recent conversation with Next Avenue, Anderson spoke of Reed, his love for Tai Chi and the benefits of physical movement.

This book is such a beautiful tribute to Lou, his life, and his passion for Tai Chi. At various points in the book, he's described as cranky, generous, a hard-ass, sweet. How would you describe him? Who was the Lou that you knew and loved?

All those things. But in terms of his love of Tai Chi, he was always trying to make things better — get a better sword, get better shoes — just make it better than it was, which is a pretty amazing attitude towards life, when a lot of people just kind of give up. He's like, "No. If it's bad, let's see what we can do to fix it."

You write in the introduction that Lou started this book in 2009 but it was "left as scattered notes when he died in 2013." What was the process of completing it?

I was talking to the editors about this last night. We thought we had been working on it since '17, but we've been working on it since '09, so it was a super long process. [Lou] just couldn't finish it, I think partly because he was doing a lot of things, partly because it's really hard to write a book. [Laughs] It's very hard to write one. We had a lot of other projects after he died, mostly putting his archive together and into the [New York] Public Library. That was our big effort. Then after that, we were able to focus on some other things, and that was when the book came into the fore again. So it was in a lot of stages, taking care of the material that he had.

Headshot of a woman. Next Avenue, lou reed, Laurie Anderson, tai chi
Laurie Anderson  |  Credit: Ebru Yildiz

Were there any surprises that came out of the interviews? Did you learn anything about Lou that you didn't know?

Many, many things. There were some people we interviewed who had a lot of insight into certain aspects of Lou. Maybe my favorite person [included in the book] is [musician, artist, Tai Chi practitioner] Ramuntcho Matta, what he wrote about Lou, because it's very abstract. I knew he and Lou had this very theoretical way that they looked at the practice. They also had an extremely nitty-gritty way of looking at it, too, like analyzing many of the stances and many of the forms in really excruciating detail. But also, if you look at images of the way Lou would stand on a stage when he was playing — very squarely and very centered, but very loose — and his hands and arms, same thing— very, very relaxed, but controlled — that's Tai Chi. I think a lot of people didn't quite understand that.

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That leads to my next question, because you write in the book that there's a move called Eagle Claw that allowed Lou to use his hands differently when he played guitar. How would you say Tai Chi affected his music, not only creatively, but physically?

Creatively? That's a bigger question I don't know the answer to because I'd have to crawl into Lou's mind to know that. But I think being more confident physically and relaxed physically really helps people think. I think it's very true that it has that effect.

The book is obviously about Lou and Tai Chi, but it's also about Master Ren, his Tai Chi teacher. Can you talk about their relationship and the impact it had on Lou's life as well as his music? Their performance on David Letterman was beautiful.

Well, he got to tour with his teacher, which was a really wonderful thing to be able to do. [Master Ren] gave him some really valuable and specific advice about how to do Tai Chi in small places. When you're touring, you're often in a hotel room and things are a bit more constricted spatially, so he designed a form called the 21 Form. This was something you could do in an elevator.

A person doing tai chi. Next Avenue, lou reed, Laurie Anderson, tai chi
Lou Reed  |  Credit: “The Art of the Straight Line”/Harper Collins

I think it's important to think of how you practice and not needing to have a specific place and time that you do that. I was just reading in the paper this morning about the violinist Hilary Hahn, who said, "I practice anywhere. I practice walking across the room, I practice when I'm doing this or that." That's, I think, a valuable thing to realize — that you can make it part of your life in a very specific, specific way.

What do you want people to get from this book?

I want them to be inspired to try Standing Mountain [pose]. Last night, we did an event at the Strand Bookstore (in New York City) and we decided we don't want to present this book with talking heads and people talking about Tai Chi, so we had Master Ren there and we had everybody stand up and try some things. It's a handbook, it's made for that. Hopefully, it will inspire people to find a good teacher, because that's very, very crucial. That's one of the things we emphasized in this book is that you don't just look for tidbits online [about Tai Chi]. It's a physical form, and you really need to look at somebody else's body to see how they're doing it. You need to do that in real time, real space. We all live in our heads all the time or online or in endless emails to each other, and [Tai Chi] is something else, a completely different thing.

For people who aren't sure where to begin, how do you suggest they find a good teacher?

I think you just try a bunch of different things and listen to your own physical responses to it. Just trust your own body. There are many different styles. There's Wu Style, Yang Style, Chen style, and they're all wonderful. What's right for you is maybe swimming [laughs], maybe it's not even Tai Chi. For me, physical activities — and swimming is one of them, actually — get [you] into this altered mental state, and for me, that's an interesting state. Golf is like that for some people, too. It's about distance and physics and energy. Anytime you can engage your body and mind in the process, I think it's a wonderful thing.

Book cover of "The Art of the Straight Line." Next Avenue, lou reed, Laurie Anderson, tai chi

I think one of the things Tai Chi has over things like basketball, football and so on, is the lack of competition, even though it is a martial art. When you see people doing this slicing thing in the park [moves hand in a slow slicing motion], this beautiful motion looks so elegant, [but] make no mistake— it is decapitation. It's a form of art that originated in killing people. You begin to see what some of the relationships of dancing and fighting are in terms of energy. Push Hands is one of the most incredible forms. It's really a way to understand and feel the energy of your partner-slash-opponent. It's very, very powerful. I've never felt anything like that, when you actually understand and feel someone else's chi.

What is your ultimate goal for this book?

That it hopefully will be taken as the gift that it was meant to be. It's not really the inside story of somebody's life. It's coming from the desire to have people learn this form. Lou was an artist who really tried his best to look at other people as clearly as he could. This is a guy who wrote "I'll Be Your Mirror," you know. He wanted to see who you are and what your engine is, and mostly wanted to, in the most missionary way, share this practice with people. So the best thing you could do with this book is give the practice a try.

Contributor Sandra Ebejer
Sandra Ebejer lives in upstate New York with her husband, son and two cats who haven't figured out how to get along. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Real Simple, Writer's Digest, Shondaland and others. Read more at sandraebejer.com or find her on Twitter @sebejer

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