Convergence; or, Patti Smith Is A Kick In The Butt
Friday, February 19, 2010 at 02:07PM On my way out to Utah last month, trying to distract myself from the fact that I was about to throw myself head-first into something I had no clue about, I came across an excerpt from Just Kids in Vanity Fair. Another thing I apparently had no clue about? Patti Smith. She had a relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe? What? And dated Sam Shepard? When? Something about meeting Allen Ginsberg in an Automat? Huh?
That's the girl you wanted to be, I thought. She came to New York, didn't know what to do with herself, worked at bookstores and knew all the poets and the musicians and the artists. You used to always want to be accidentally surrounded by a scene, I thought. Like Parker's roundtablers, like the Beats; like Bolaño's poets.
And yet you never wanted to do any of the work.
(Wouldn't it be nice if things just happened to us.)
At some point, Bolaño collides with Patti: I read Patti; she reads Bolaño. More convergences: Emily Gould reads Patti too; I have a dream about Emily Gould (ugh, how creepy is it when you read people admitting to having dreams about people they've never met) in which she IS Patti Smith in her 23rd street apartment, sketching atop crumpled sheets.
Envy dreams. Because you can see how everyone seems to be working towards being a part of something bigger than just themselves.
There's something about Patti's crumple-sheeted New York that reaches beyond any sort of scene. Something fiery and raw and tear-filled that could happen to any of us who at any point have been young, at any point had any sort of drive, an emotion — artistic or not — that couldn't be ignored. A reminder of how we loved people when we were young, loved so hard that sometimes we didn't know how to handle being in the same room with ourselves.
I don't know how to put these particular thoughts together. I just think that sometimes I think too much about growing old, about growing away from old passions, about growing out of that phase where you surround yourself with art and artists and artsiness. And here I am trying to come to terms with it out loud, raw and fiery, trying to make myself inspired enough to actually do some of the work.
Reader Comments (4)
You will find that your passions will grow along with your age. So do not fear.
You will find that your passions will grow along with your age. So do not fear.
I, too, was surprised by the Patti Smith-Mapplethorpe connection. But really, I just wanted to thank you for this lovely, honest post. In searching, we often find passions we never expect.
Thanks, Asha! You're so right. And it's best not to ignore the unexpected - who knows what might come of it?
And Grad: good to know. I just hope I have what it takes to put the energy into the passions that come along the way.