Louminous
By Brian Arsenault
I was feeling pretty good. Saw both my real football and American football teams win this weekend. It’s been cold and windy. But sunny.
Then I went on the damn internet and saw that Lou Reed had died.
Lou who took me to Berlin — “Oh baby, it was paradise” — that magnificent work that the critics first panned and the public ignored.
“How do ya think it feels,” Lou? It kind of feels alone.
I just watched the film of your 2006 concert performance of Berlin which reminded me that people finally came to see what a great work it is.
And before that, when all those West Coast hippy bands were writing cute little tunes about Marrakesh and tokin’, you took us to the damn damage of lurking heroin. Dangerous not because it made you feel bad but so damn good while it was killing.
Was “Sweet Jane” a he or a she? We weren’t sure but we damn sure knew the pain was real.
You knew a lot about pain. The pain your parents gave you with electroshock treatments to keep you from being bi. The pain of watching lesser lights become what they call “superstars” while radio stations feared you.
The pain of misfits on the street: drag queens, junkies, failed musicians, angry poets. You know, people.
They finally invited you to the White House. How did that ever happen? How did it feel? But you did nice at the White House and as Ken Bruen writes of Jack Taylor, you didn’t do nice.
What you did was honest and raw and so effen real. Some got titillation from “AWalk on the Wild Side,” but you knew it was damn hard to walk through a life.
Glad you could be with us as long as you could. You took a hard edge to tell us something about what it is to be human. Can’t ask for more than that from a poet.
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