Laurie Anderson, on the death of her husband, Lou Reed

Artist and musician Laurie Anderson wrote a memorial for The East Hampton Star on Long Island. It’s the local paper for the area where she and her late husband, Lou Reed, spent much happy time together. Here is her remembrance, in full:

To our neighbors:

What a beautiful fall! Everything shimmering and golden and all that incredible soft light. Water surrounding us.

Lou and I have spent a lot of time here in the past few years, and even though we’re city people this is our spiritual home.

Last week I promised Lou to get him out of the hospital and come home to Springs. And we made it!

Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature. He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air.

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.

— Laurie Anderson
his loving wife and eternal friend

A related bittersweet read: Greg Mitchell on when Lou Reed “underwent electroshock as a teen just over the hill from my home,” to drive out Reed’s “homosexual tendencies.”

(via Greg Mitchell)