Laurie Anderson: ‘Lou Reed died looking at the trees and doing tai chi with his hands’

The late musician's wife posts a touching open letter online


Lou Reed‘s wife, performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson, has posted a touching open letter online to the residents of Springs, East Hampton, the New York town where the Velvet Underground man passed away over the weekend.

Writing in the East Hampton Star, she explained that last week she promised Reed that she would get him out of hospital and take him to his ‘spiritual home’ of Springs.

“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,” she wrote of his passing. Read the full letter below:

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.

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Lou Reed‘s cause of death was confirmed as liver disease by his doctor. Dr Charles Miller of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where the singer had liver transplant surgery this year and was being treated again until last week, confirmed the cause of death to The New York Times. The former Velvet Underground frontman and influential solo artist died on Sunday (October 27). He was aged 71.

Read NME’s obituary of Lou Reed, 1942 – 2013

Read NME’s tribute to Lou Reed

Listen to a playlist of Lou Reed’s finest musical moments

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