I saw the news. Lou Reed died yesterday. It’s 8am Hawaii time, and way too early for that kinda knowledge.
There’s much that has, is and always will be said about his influence on music and art. He was an extraordinary poet, musician and composer. Very much a New Yorker, very much an American man, but from the edges of whatever it means to be in the love-hate relationship conscious Americans have with that identity.
I never met him, but I saw him perform once at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. He came out on stage and said something like, “I’m very sad for your city tonight,” then proceeded to perform a show that was more like a wake than a concert. My friend and I assumed he was talking about the verdict in what became known as the Rodney King trial, wherein LAPD officers were acquitted for the brutal beating of King. Unbeknown to us, at that moment, riots raged and parts of the city were burning.
Personally, his work inspired me with a sense of the incalculable value of being honest through one’s art, keeping things real, raw, and stripped down, being fiercely open and available to the most basic process of bearing life and bearing witness to life, however beautiful or ugly or in between these two destinies, which is where most of us live.
I pasted in the lyrics below from one of his many songs that once heard, left a mark on my spirit.
To me, Lou Reed was the last great American whale.
Last Great American Whale (from New York)
They say he didn’t have an enemy
his was a greatness to behold
He was the last surviving progeny
the last one on this side of the world
He measured a half mile from tip to tail
silver and black with powerful fins
They say he could split a mountain in two
that’s how we got the Grand Canyon
Last great American whale
last great American whale
Last great American whale
last great American whale
Some say they saw him at the Great Lakes
some say they saw him off of Florida
My mother said she saw him in Chinatown
but you can’t always trust your mother
Off the Carolinas the sun shines brightly in the day
the lighthouse glows ghostly there at night
The chief of a local tribe had killed a racist mayor’s son
and he’d been on death row since 1958
The mayor’s kid was a rowdy pig
spit on Indians and lots worse
The old chief buried a hatchet in his head
life compared to death for him seemed worse
The tribal brothers gathered in the lighthouse to sing
and tried to conjure up a storm or rain
The harbor parted, the great whale sprang full up
and caused a huge tidal wave
The wave crushed the jail and freed the chief
the tribe let out a roar
The whites were drowned, the browns and reds set free
but sadly one thing more
Some local yokel member of the NRA
kept a bazooka in his living room
And thinking he had the chief in his sight
blew the whale’s brains out with a lead harpoon
Last great American whale
last great American whale
Last great American whale
last great American whale
Well Americans don’t care for much of anything
land and water the least
And animal life is low on the totem pole
with human life not worth more than infected yeast
Americans don’t care too much for beauty
they’ll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream
They’ll watch dead rats wash up on the beach
and complain if they can’t swim
They say things are done for the majority
don’t believe half of what you see and none of what you hear
It’s like what my painter friend Donald said to me
“Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over, they’re done”
YouTube link: LastGreatAmericanWhale