Choose to Choose, Choose to Go.
It was
in my 18th or 19th year, now further back in time than it
actually feels. I was in the thick of an ever evolving process of
self-isolating that truly begun in
earnest, just a few years prior. I’d picked up a Sunday evening shift at a
local college radio station as a favor to a friend, who was a station manager
there, to help fill out the summer hours. Each week for an hour or two, during
dusk, I’d turn the station into my own version of a broadcasted mixtape to long
lost friends and lovers. It was a perfect outlet to communicate everything I
was feeling without having to actually interact with others or use my own
words. Without any theme I let the songs speak for themselves and complement
each other. Releasing them into the
atmosphere, with the possibility that somewhere, someone’s receiver would pull
them in. Of course I also offered to take requests on the studio hotline. I
only received one call the entire summer.
What was that song? The really
soft one you just played, the really beautiful one?
I’m not sure do you remember
anything else about it?
He was singing about someone’s
eyes…
I noted
the death of Lou Reed yesterday by not really processing it, I just let it roll
off me. After all, older people tend to die and though the Velvet Underground
had meant a lot to me at one point they now were just an occasional thought.
The market for artistic influence in my life had expanded and as I met others I
saw that in some ways the Velvet Underground had over saturated parts of
it. In many ways the beatification of
the band had turned me off to them. So many folks who discovered them and then
set their heart’s compass to their art and legacy just soured me on taking them
too seriously anymore. They became a phase I grew out of. Then a friend
commented on Lou’s passing yesterday “This hits hard. All I ever wanted to be
in high school was Lou Reed.”
I first
heard the Velvet Underground when I was 16 it was a greatest hits compilation
CD of a friends. I recorded it onto a blank tape and listened to it non-stop
until I could afford the box-set. The
song that made me sit up and pay attention was “Stephanie Says.” I was
fascinated with the line in the chorus “She’s not afraid to die, the people all
call her Alaska.” I still have no fucking clue what that means but I developed
a thousand expansive theories that summer and over the following years. What I
loved about that lyric was, it wasn’t just druggy gibberish to me (like a lot
of the lyrics from many of the bands from that era tend to be) it was a
thoughtful attempt by to convey a meaning that was too broad and intangible to
fit into words or melody so it had to be reduced to koan snapshots. Let the
listener wrestle for an external truth by exploring the internal. So much of
their work was like that, a foggy window to a much broader undefined theme.
The
message in other songs was more straightforward and possessed a narrative. All
of the work of Lou Reed from this period and I’d say until his death held a
spirit of being resigned to the darkness but appreciating the light. Similar to
the work of Townes Van Zandt, the artist is holding on to a spirit of hope but
more grappling with this truth of a darkness. In essence it’s all about struggling
with control. Something happens to some of us, most of us, all of us, during
that time between being a child and learning the truth of it all. I think with
Lou (like Van Zandt) the ability to reconcile the two and allow them to
coexist, is the main undercurrent in the work. Even in songs like “I’m Waiting
for my man” there’s a jumpy, childlike excitement about journeying into the
black neighborhoods of 60s era New York in order to score some heroin. The
situation is very sketchy on so many levels but the energy of the song is a
living energy, jumpy and driving, with a youthful mischievous tone. That great
duality of humor and sorrow really appealed to a presence already within me.
Besides being very dark, Lou Reed’s music was also a testament to how powerful
humor and rock n roll can be as tools for beating back despair and keeping you
inspired.
What was
interesting at that time too was that, living in rural Vermont it’s like I got
to develop a relationship with the music in a vacuum. Sure friends and others
knew about or liked the band but it wasn’t the same as discovering them in
college or Art School or working at a coffee house or record store. I didn’t
ask for and no one really offered their opinions on the music, so I had the
space to investigate it and embrace it on my own terms.
That’s
why it struck me when I heard that line from my friend about wanting to be Lou
Reed. I realized I was shrugging it off, Lou Reed’s death; like it was a
childish hobby that I could appreciate but had long since outgrown. He’s no
messiah and a lot of the solo records were pretty bad, but he was always
honest. The music of the Velvet Ground was so incredibly honest that it meant
the world to me for that period when it was all I was listening to. It touched
a place in me filled with simultaneous joy and sorrow and provided it with a
voice I didn’t realize existed. Songs like Sunday Morning, All Tomorrow’s
Parties, Jesus, and Pale Blue Eyes. That’s how heartbreak, loss, craving and
fatigue sound and all of those experiences ultimately give you a deeper
appreciation of the joy, love and beauty that you experience. In one of his
later solo albums he has a line about hanging around in a relationship and
feeling not wanted that states, “ I’m a New York City man, you just say ‘go’
and I’ll be gone.” I can’t even tell you how many times I thought that line in
crumbling romantic and non-romantic situations. I’d feel unwanted and just
split. You just say ‘go’ and I’ll be gone. No bullshit, just be honest.
Lou was
an astronaut to me. He had gone out there into the unknown and come back. His
honesty gave him a quality of integrity that I saw disappearing from all around
me as I grew up. So it hit me today, re-listening to those old albums and
remembering the experience of that music and the world they described; how
important it was for me to relate it to my own life and observations. How I
wanted to aspire to those heights and depths. The passing of Lou Reed deserves
a real, artistic reflection on my part; and it felt important for me to
remember and pay tribute to the Lou Reed I knew and not the one defined for me
by others. Life is gonna go fast, it’s important to take time to remember the
words, the sounds and the spirit, to stand in the shadows and remember the
light/ heat.
