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
82 - First Day of School—1960, New Orleans
81 - Sonic Prayer Flags - New Orleans
80 – Thad Vogler: A Short History of Spirits
79 – Pati’s Mexican Jewish Table
78 – The Galveston Hurricane of 1900: No Tongue Can Tell
77 – New Orleans Visions – King’s Candy & Living with Water
76 – Liberace and the Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band
75 – The Making Of a Karaoke Ice Cream Truck and More Stories
74 – What Is It About Men and Meat and Midnight and a Pit?
73 – Basque Sheepherders Ball
72 – Warriors vs Warriors
71 – Hidden Kitchen Gaza: A Palestinian Culinary Journey
70 – The Egg Wars
69 – The Romance and Sex Life of the Date
68 – Tony Schwartz: 30,000 Recordings Later
67 – The Hidden World of Girls with Tina Fey
66 – Sugar in the Milk: A Parsi Hidden Kitchen
65 – Sam Phillips, Sun Records, and the Acoustics of Life
64 – Kimchi Diplomacy: Hidden Kitchens – War and Peace and Food
63 – War and Food and Manga
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