Patti Smith, May Day 2010, by Joselyn Valdes-Estruch
On the eve of graduating as an honorary Doctor of Art from Pratt Art Institute in Brooklyn, Patti Smith took part in a conversation with novelist Jonathan Lethem at Cooper Union in lower Manhattan, as part of the PEN International writer’s festival. Fresh from the victorious publication of her book JUST KIDS, her memoir of life as an artist newcomer to New York in 1967 with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Mapplethorpe was clearly on Patti Smith’s mind as she spoke.
Describing her writing process, Smith said, “No matter what I had, if I couldn’t see it like a little movie, I took it out.” She was also very clear about her audience. She said, “Robert wasn’t much of a reader. I couldn’t be boring or too digressional, or he would become agitated.” She also noted that it took some time to get the rhythm, but “I couldn’t stop writing once I got used to my voice.”
Bookhound Smith says her love of books – paper, print, the smell of them – dates from the 50s, when everyone was getting rid of musty old editions, and replacing them with more modern tomes like Reader’s Digest condensed books. She collected wonderful books for a few cents, including a Dickens first edition with an engraved portrait of the artist, and a lovely, protective onion skin page, in front. She also has Arthur Rimbaud’s calling card, a page from Jim Morrison’s notebook, and she lives with these things; is proud to say very little is in storage. “I look at it, love it,” she says. “I walk with all my books.”
Smith surprised the large and avid audience in the auditorium where Lincoln once spoke by saying she has “no natural gifts as a musician…I think of myself as a performer,” and that she comes to performance as a collector with a grounding in the visual arts. She noted that, born in 1946, her lifetime spans the “entire evolution of rock and roll,” and that as grassroots artists, rock musicians are the guardians of their own history. “Not comparing us to Moses,” Smith laughed, “But we saw the Promised Land: anyone could play rock and roll. We were more the bridge. To me, being part of the train that includes Coltrane, Allen Ginsberg, Jimi Hendrix – I wouldn’t want to turn my back on that.”
Smith described Allen Ginsberg as her “great friend and teacher,” and invoked his categorization of two types of family, the genetic one, and what he called the “golden chain,” or inherited artistic DNA. Patti Smith ticked off her golden chain as: William Blake, Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, all of whom, she pointed out, “reached out to the future to animate [their] creative impulse.”
Again, she made a surprising move by unpacking her guitar, saying that whenever she feels unappreciated — and spoofed herself by saying “clearly, I am unappreciated” — she reminds herself to remember William Blake: “a casualty of the Industrial Revoution — even on his deathbed, he was working on illustrations of Dante.” She counseled all present: “You just keep doing your work.” As she played a new song inspired by such a moment of renewed hope and faith, she bore a strong resemblance to her hero, Bob Dylan:
Throw off your stupid cloak
Embrace all that you fear
Joy will conquer all despair
In my Blakean year
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