I spent a large chunk of my work day yesterday listening to a continuous stream of Lou Reed that was playing through my inTune phone app. I had only a few meetings, so I probably listened to five hours of it. Reed playing Reed, and others covering Reed. Yes, it was a little repetitive at times. Probably heard “Perfect Day” and “Pale Blue Eyes” a few too many times. But, man, you just can’t come away from that kind of thing without this feeling of such intense closeness with the core of what it means to be a true artist.
It colored my entire drive home–which was made under a dome of blue sky that seemed endless and as deep as you could reach.
Lisa and I took a short walk when she got home–which was nice. Then I made salads and we ate and did our mindless catching up on the Internet while watching “The Voice.”
This was all good, though. It’s just impossible for me to watch “The Voice” (or I suppose any of these Idol spin-offs) after a day of Lou Reed without feeling this jarring sense of loss. But in addition to that loss was an even more powerful sense of righteousness, of certainty, of knowing what is real and what is not merely by holding the two up in such close proximity that the truth of the matter just frankly cannot be denied.
I was thinking about that as I sat down to write my words this morning. Who do I want to be? What is an artist? What am I going to say this morning? Will anyone care?
And for just a few moments, everything was all so strangely clear.
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