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.
The Kitchen Sisters Present: Lou Reed’s Tai Chi.
“Well, everybody does something, some people race cars, others collect stamps. I find tai chi to be philosophically, aesthetically, physically and spiritually fascinating.” — Lou Reed
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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159 — Nomadland with Frances McDormand
158 — A Plea for Peace: Leonard Bernstein, Richard Nixon, and the Music of the 1973 Inauguration
157 — Chido Govera—The Mushroom Queen of Zimbabwe
156 — The Amish Pandemic Sewing Frolic
155 - Frances McDormand in Nomadland
154 — Hunting & Gathering with Angelo Garro
153 — The Vietnam Tapes of Lance Corporal Michael A. Baronowski
152 — Winona LaDuke—First Born Daughter
151 - Pearl Jam: It's a Rock Band, Not The Smithsonian
150 — Floating City - The Mirabeau Water Garden, New Orleans
149 - The Sonic Memorial—Remembering 9/11 with host Paul Auster
148 - Youth on Fire—The International Congress of Youth Voices
147 - Kamal Mouzawak—A Lebanese Kitchen Vision
146 — French Manicure—Tales from Vietnamese Shops in America
145 - Louis Jones, Field Archivist, Detroit
144 - 95,000 Names—Gert McMullin, Sewing the Frontline
143 - The McDonogh Three—First Day of School
142—From King Henry the VIII to the Rolling Stones on Eel Pie Island
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