Culture, Religion, Sex & Gender

"I'll Be Your Mirror — Reflections on Lou Reed" — Cross-posting to Heeb Magazine

Hey, Jewschoolers.  Check out my piece in Heeb about Lou Reed, z”l.  I’ll tease it here, and you can click on the link to read the rest on Heeb.
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If you’re reading this, you probably already know that Lou Reed died. So, I’m not going to write a newspaper obituary. This is the internet; you can find better ones on your own, and learn all about why The Velvet Underground was such an important band and all that. I’m also not going to write one of those “Hey, Lou Reed kicked ass and Lou Reed was Jewish, so see?  Judaism can kick ass too” kinds of pieces, nahmean?  Let’s not stretch the Jewish thing, but take him at his word: “My God is rock’n’roll. It’s an obscure power that can change your life. The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.”

But I’m Jewish and Jewy and I do want to reflect about why I think Lou Reed’s artistry is so vital, how it reaches me, through my prisms, or as the case may be, mirrors.

“I’ll be your mirror

Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know

I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset

The light on your door to show that you’re home” (“I’ll Be Your Mirror”)

More than anything else, Lou Reed was our mirror, reflecting what we are, in case we didn’t know.

We are terrified of freedom, but deny it. Shaking off the effects of sterile Long Island and forced, adolescent, electro-convulsive “therapy” to “cure” him of his bisexuality (it didn’t work), Lou Reed grabbed a rock and roll public by the collar, spit in its face, made it stop averting its eye from anyone fearful, and look hard at what liberation really looks like.

To read the rest of this article, follow this link.

2 thoughts on “"I'll Be Your Mirror — Reflections on Lou Reed" — Cross-posting to Heeb Magazine

  1. Indeed Lou Reed will be missed.
    Yet it may be time to move on. My friend Rob said this just today: “Just as I start to make sense of a world without Lou Reed, now comes the news that the Jonas Brothers are breaking up.”

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