lou reed

i could say lots of things about lou reed. about the person who, when  i was seventeen, introduced me to the velvet underground and then nothing was the same. who said later, one day you were there and then the next you'd left us all behind. i remember listening to venus in furs and hallucinating polar bears moving in the ceiling. i remember being in some art students flat listening to the gift for what seemed like hours and leaving just as the police arrived and everyone got arrested. being in stinking hole in the ground punk clubs, getting attacked, cleaning the blood out of i's head while listening to berlin.

the new york i knew from the velvet underground was long gone by the time i got there. but i did see lou reed in the park at a spoken word reading for the new york album. it was great but it wasn't the velvet underground. but, by that time, neither were we. i don;t know anyone from those days now. i lost touch with i years ago and the only other person who would recognise the me of those young years is long dead.

my favourite lou reed story tho? is the one i thought about when i heard he'd died and the quietest of all. me and my mum listening to transformer as we did the dishes. her favourite album of all of mine she said and the one we listened to when it was just the two of us. this will be what i remember when she too, is gone.

there's lots about lou reed all over the internet but, seeing as i've got a post about him germinating here's neil gaiman