Podcasts Society & Culture Personal Journals The Kitchen Sisters Present 227 - Lou Reed's Tai Chi

227 - Lou Reed's Tai Chi

Published: Dec. 5, 2023, 2 p.m.

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Lou Reed, musician, rock icon, poet, leader of the legendary Velvet Underground, was obsessed with tai chi \\u2014 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.

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Lou\\u2019s 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\\u2019s long, life-altering journey with tai chi.

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She turned to three of Lou's friends to help her with the project. By the time the book,\\xa0The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi\\xa0by Lou Reed, hit the stands in the spring of 2023, they had spoken with nearly 100 people and created a riveting portrait of Lou\\u2019s spiritual, medical and musical life, beckoning readers to enter the world of tai chi.

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The Kitchen Sisters read the book and we kept thinking,\\xa0these 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\\u2026.

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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,\\xa0Anohni, Master Ren and many more, plus archival recordings of Lou Reed.

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The Kitchen Sisters Present: Lou Reed\\u2019s Tai Chi.

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\\u201cWell, everybody does something, some people race cars, others collect stamps.\\xa0I find tai chi to be philosophically, aesthetically, physically and spiritually fascinating.\\u201d \\u2014 Lou Reed

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