“You need to try to master the ability to feel sad without actually being sad.” How is this possible when someone you dearly loved for 21 years is gone…? Laurie Anderson made the most powerful and intense dedication of love to her recently deceased husband Lou Reed, by writing an essay. It is a farewell, but it is also the most genuine way of talking about a relationship to someone.
When you marry your best friend of many years, there should be another name for it. But the thing that surprised me about getting married was the way it altered time. And also the way it added a tenderness that was somehow completely new. To paraphrase the great Willie Nelson: “Ninety percent of the people in the world end up with the wrong person. And that’s what makes the jukebox spin.” Lou’s jukebox spun for love and many other things, too – beauty, pain, history, courage, mystery.
Read the full piece here!