Review: Lou Reed's Art of the Straight Line

 

The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi
by Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson
Faber, 2023 

 Lou Reed was the singer-songwriter of The Velvet Underground before launching a solo career that lasted from the 1970’s to the 2000’s. A Grammy-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, he influenced musicians such as David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Patti Smith. 

In addition to his artistic endeavors, Reed was a dedicated practitioner of Chen style t’ai chi. He began studying t’ai chi as he struggled to stop his drug use, which he described as ‘reckless excess.’ T’ai chi became a constant in his life. He practiced daily, whether at home or on tour and encouraged friends and acquaintances to take up t’ai chi. He studied with Ren Guangyi, a mainland Chinese master living in New York. Working with Ren, Lou Reed took t’ai chi performance art on tour in the 2000’s. He wanted to publish a t’ai chi book but struggled to get it started.

A team of friends (Scott Richman, Bob Currie, Stephan Berwick) and Laurie Anderson (his wife of 21 years) curated the book’s content and published it in 2023, ten years after his death. The book’s title page correctly describes its contents -- “A collection of Lou’ writings on t’ai chi and conversations with friends, teachers, and fellow practitioners.” While the book includes various writings, emails, and conversations with Reed, it is primarily interviews with and reminiscences of people in Reed’s circle. This included well-known fellow musicians such as Iggy Pop and Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett, as well as friends, fellow t’ai chi practitioners and teachers. Not everyone was engaged in t’ai chi, though all share stories of finding Reed practicing t’ai chi whether on his apartment rooftop or while on tour. Those with knowledge of the Rock and Roll music scene will find sections from Lou’s fellow musicians of interest.

While t’ai chi practitioners may find the discussions of t’ai chi, push-hands, practice and a visit to Chen Village interesting, it is not a ‘sink your teeth into it’ tome on t’ai chi. Rather, the audience for this book is primarily musicians, artists and others who want to discover Lou Reed, the person.

            —Cheryl Powers

Ed Young, Children's Book Artist and T'ai Chi Teacher Passes Away

Ed Young (left) and Tam Gibbs

 Ed Young, one of Great River T'ai Chi's mentors and frequent workshop teacher, has passed away at the age of 91. Ed was a senior student in Professor Cheng Man-ch'ing's Shr Jung school in New York City, and served as Professor's translator and instructor for over ten years. 

Ed's main career was as a children's picture book artist and author, for which he received great recognition, winning the Caldecott Award and many other honors. He illustrated over 100 books, many of which he also wrote. Many of the books touch on human nature and virtues, environmentalism, and Chinese culture.

Caldecott Award-winning Lon Po Po

Review: The Yijing: A Guide

The Yijing: A Guide
Joseph Adler
Oxford University Press, 2021
paper, 206 pp.

A certain talent is required to render complex ideas understandable for novices. Joseph Adler, who has written extensively about the Yijing, has accomplished this in a masterful guide to the Chinese Book of Changes. The Yijing: A Guide is an excellent introduction for anyone interested in the worlds of Chinese philosophy, history, and literature. It clearly and succinctly summarizes China’s vast intellectual traditions in a very understandable manner.

In seven chapters, Adler describes the Yijing and its layers. He places the book in the context of divination from around the world, and then turns to the specifics of China’s historical and cultural context, covering early, early modern, and modern China, and Western uses of the Yijing, ending with a chapter that asks “Why the Yijing?”

Adler explains specialized Yijing terminology while keeping jargon to a minimum. He succinctly describes the parts of the Yijing, from its hexagram components to the Ten Wings. In his coverage of the Great Treatise, for example, he shows the development of important philosophical ideas and terms. Adler surveys the Yijing’s major schools (Image and Number, Meaning and Principle) and thinkers such as Shao Yong and Cheng Yi. Chapters include:

1. What is the Yijing?
2. Layers of Change
3. Yijing Divination
4. The Early History of Yijing Interpretation
5. Early Modern Views of the Yi
6. The Yijing in Modern China and the West
7. Why the Yijing?
Bibliography

Adler’s prior works include studies and translations of the great Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130–1200), including his philosophy and his Yijing commentaries. Zhu was a pivotal figure in the Song era’s revamping of classical education.

The Yijing: A Guide is part of an affordable series that Oxford University Press produces of “Guides to Sacred Texts.” Another book in the series of interest of particular interest to Yijing readers is Livia Kohn’s The Daode Jing.

This book overlaps some in content with Richard Smith’s I Ching: A Biography and with Tze-ki Hon and Geoffrey Redmond’s Teaching the I Ching, however, Adler’s work is squarely aimed at those who are not necessarily familiar with the complexities of the Yijing or with Chinese culture. This makes it an invaluable book for college classes related to Chinese studies, as well as comparative religion, anthropology, philosophy, and literature. Students of allied arts such as Chinese medicine and martial arts will appreciate Adler’s treating theory and practice as being equally important; the Yijingis not just an academic pursuit.

 

Yang Family Founder Yang Luchan

 

Yang Luchan, Taijiquan Patriarch

 ‘The Many Lives of Yang Luchan: Mythopoesis, Media, and the Martial Imagination.’

In Martial Arts Studies

By Douglas Wile, 2022

ABSTRACT:
The life of Yang Luchan, patriarch of the Yang lineage and founder
of taijiquan’s most popular style, is a biographical blank slate upon
which conservative, progressive, orientalist, and just plain rice bowl
interests have inscribed wildly divergent narratives. Conservative
scholar-disciples sought to link him with the invented Wudang-Daoist
lineage, while progressives emphasized his humble origins and health
benefits of the practice. His life (c.1799-1872) straddled the height of
the Manchu empire and decline into semi-colonial spheres of foreign
influence, while successive generations of Yang descendants propagated
his ‘intangible cultural heritage’ through Republican, Communist,
‘open’, and global eras. Practiced world-wide by hundreds of millions,
taijiquan’s name recognition made it ripe for media appropriation, and
Yang Luchan has been remythologized in countless novels, cartoons,
television series, and full-length feature films. The case of Yang Luchan
offers an unusual opportunity to witness an ongoing process of mytho-
poesis and to compare these narratives with traditional Chinese warrior
heroes and Western models of mythology and heroology. If the lack of
facts has not constrained the proliferation of invented biographies, nei-
ther should it discourage the quest for historical context as we sift and
winnow truth from trope in the many reconstructions of Yang’s life.
 

Tai Chi Extolled for Balance