It's been nearly two weeks since Lou Reed died, and after reading as many tributes as I could find, and listening to most of his albums since, I'm pretty confident that most listeners got him all wrong.*
I've never been a big proponent of the New Criticism school of literary criticism, the idea that all you need to understand a work of art can be found right in the text itself. I was an English and History major all those years ago, after all. But as a mindset it is a pretty effective tool when sorting through popular culture — and it really lights up Lou Reed's work, which is too often befogged by his reputation and easy assumptions.
Lou Reed's work meant a lot to me, and since he died I've been struck by the strange number of ways his words and music are woven into my life. The first song I listened to after my daughter was born was by Lou Reed (it's how she got her middle name, in fact). Certain songs can summon thoughts and feelings with magical thoroughness: each time I hear "Sunday Morning" I'm back on certain New York streets at certain late hours remembering certain things — an insane feedback loop of nostalgia, sorrow, and regret that is so intense I don't want to talk about it. Some memories I can't even make sense of. Like that one afternoon shortly after I'd moved to Williamstown and was overwhelmed with how remote and lonely it felt, and the song "Dirty Boulevard" came on WEQX. Something about hearing it at that moment made me so happy I nearly cried.
This is all means quite a lot to me, but what I want to talk about is how he lives in our culture. The conventional line, which you've heard over and over again since his death, is that he was a consummate outsider, a poet of rough, beautiful, alternative lifestyles in the big, bad city. A chronicler of those things in the night that are frightening yet strangely attractive.
Well, a little, maybe, but no.
Let's go to the text. Consider the song "Perfect Day." The prejudiced reading is that it must have something to do with how groovy it is to get stoned in the park. But there is nothing in the song that suggests anything of the sort. You have to — and too few people can for some reason — take it at face value: that it is about how nice it is to spend the day with someone you love. Anything more and you are missing the signal by broadcasting your own noise.
The shocking truth is that Reed was an almost perfectly irony-free romantic, which is so weird and counter to his counter-cultural reputation — not to mention the generally accepted understanding of his prickly personality — that he becomes revolutionary.
The songs are crystalline images of very powerful emotions, and they work best when you trust him and meet him on his own terms. A real favorite song of mine is "Coney Island Baby," which captures the weird longing to be accepted and terror of boredom that is as perfect a summary of teenage longing as you'll find. But to really get it, you have to understand what it means to want to play football for the coach, and not think it means something kinky or sarcastic. You have to believe in the "glory of love" with all the seriousness and logic half-formed youth can muster. And, of course, you have to let "I swear I'd give it all up for you" be the last word. Doesn't matter what "it" might be. You probably felt that way once. I hope you did.
Throughout his work he was exploring what we have in common. Think about Transformer, an album that can't shake its reputation as a roman a clef about drag queens, junkies, and whores. But none of that really matters if you don't know, or even better, can get past, the novelty of it. If it weren't such a plain amazing song, it would astonishing that "Walk on the Wild Side" is the song everyone knows from his solo period (and I'm still figuring out how my state senator tweeted his memory of driving down Route 7 blasting the song with his dad in the car… his dad being our long-time district attorney). This is very human and universal, like the best art is, about alienation and loneliness and redemption. About fun and the desperate lengths we go to make our lives less dull and sad. It's a fortunate, collateral effect that it happens to maybe make you realize how much you have in common with people you might too quickly dismiss as marginal.
And I really think that Lou chose his subjects out of an abundance of compassion. Even his legendary prickliness is a function of his intense sincerity and earnestness. He couldn't be bothered with the deep artifice we demand of public figures. He obviously had many deep personal relationships, so he wasn't a total misanthrope.
When you look at the work all together, you see what values are at work. Tolerance, community, curiosity, cynicism about nothing but cynicism itself. His art is about the incredibly ancient and durable and maybe trite idea that life is really worth all the trouble if you are honest with yourself and look at it right.
* Not really true. As with so many things his wife Laurie Anderson gets it: "Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us."
I've never been a big proponent of the New Criticism school of literary criticism, the idea that all you need to understand a work of art can be found right in the text itself. I was an English and History major all those years ago, after all. But as a mindset it is a pretty effective tool when sorting through popular culture — and it really lights up Lou Reed's work, which is too often befogged by his reputation and easy assumptions.
Lou Reed's work meant a lot to me, and since he died I've been struck by the strange number of ways his words and music are woven into my life. The first song I listened to after my daughter was born was by Lou Reed (it's how she got her middle name, in fact). Certain songs can summon thoughts and feelings with magical thoroughness: each time I hear "Sunday Morning" I'm back on certain New York streets at certain late hours remembering certain things — an insane feedback loop of nostalgia, sorrow, and regret that is so intense I don't want to talk about it. Some memories I can't even make sense of. Like that one afternoon shortly after I'd moved to Williamstown and was overwhelmed with how remote and lonely it felt, and the song "Dirty Boulevard" came on WEQX. Something about hearing it at that moment made me so happy I nearly cried.
This is all means quite a lot to me, but what I want to talk about is how he lives in our culture. The conventional line, which you've heard over and over again since his death, is that he was a consummate outsider, a poet of rough, beautiful, alternative lifestyles in the big, bad city. A chronicler of those things in the night that are frightening yet strangely attractive.
Well, a little, maybe, but no.
Let's go to the text. Consider the song "Perfect Day." The prejudiced reading is that it must have something to do with how groovy it is to get stoned in the park. But there is nothing in the song that suggests anything of the sort. You have to — and too few people can for some reason — take it at face value: that it is about how nice it is to spend the day with someone you love. Anything more and you are missing the signal by broadcasting your own noise.
The shocking truth is that Reed was an almost perfectly irony-free romantic, which is so weird and counter to his counter-cultural reputation — not to mention the generally accepted understanding of his prickly personality — that he becomes revolutionary.
The songs are crystalline images of very powerful emotions, and they work best when you trust him and meet him on his own terms. A real favorite song of mine is "Coney Island Baby," which captures the weird longing to be accepted and terror of boredom that is as perfect a summary of teenage longing as you'll find. But to really get it, you have to understand what it means to want to play football for the coach, and not think it means something kinky or sarcastic. You have to believe in the "glory of love" with all the seriousness and logic half-formed youth can muster. And, of course, you have to let "I swear I'd give it all up for you" be the last word. Doesn't matter what "it" might be. You probably felt that way once. I hope you did.
Throughout his work he was exploring what we have in common. Think about Transformer, an album that can't shake its reputation as a roman a clef about drag queens, junkies, and whores. But none of that really matters if you don't know, or even better, can get past, the novelty of it. If it weren't such a plain amazing song, it would astonishing that "Walk on the Wild Side" is the song everyone knows from his solo period (and I'm still figuring out how my state senator tweeted his memory of driving down Route 7 blasting the song with his dad in the car… his dad being our long-time district attorney). This is very human and universal, like the best art is, about alienation and loneliness and redemption. About fun and the desperate lengths we go to make our lives less dull and sad. It's a fortunate, collateral effect that it happens to maybe make you realize how much you have in common with people you might too quickly dismiss as marginal.
And I really think that Lou chose his subjects out of an abundance of compassion. Even his legendary prickliness is a function of his intense sincerity and earnestness. He couldn't be bothered with the deep artifice we demand of public figures. He obviously had many deep personal relationships, so he wasn't a total misanthrope.
When you look at the work all together, you see what values are at work. Tolerance, community, curiosity, cynicism about nothing but cynicism itself. His art is about the incredibly ancient and durable and maybe trite idea that life is really worth all the trouble if you are honest with yourself and look at it right.
* Not really true. As with so many things his wife Laurie Anderson gets it: "Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us."
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