It First Began in the Streets — Just Kids by Patti Smith
Patti Smith’s touching account of her homeless beginnings before she was “rescued” by Mapplethorpe — by pure chance — from a science-fiction writer interested in her beyond a meal invitation spoke most to me, who also arrived in a foreign city with no one and no means before a specific encounter changed the course of events:
I can’t say I fit in, but I felt safe. No one noticed me. I could move freely. There was a roving community of young people, sleeping in the parks, in makeshift tents, the new immigrants invading the East Village. I wasn’t kin to these people, but because of the free-floating atmosphere, I could roam within it. I had faith. I sensed no danger in the city, and I never encountered any. I had nothing to offer a thief and didn’t fear men on the prowl. I wasn’t of interest to anyone, and that worked in my favor for the first few weeks of July when I bummed around, free to explore by day, sleeping where I could at night. I sought door wells, subway cars, even a graveyard. Startled to awake beneath the city sky or being shaken by a strange hand. Time to move along. Time to move along.
When it got really rough, I would go back to Pratt, occasionally bumping into someone I knew who would let me shower and sleep a night. Or else I would sleep in the hall near a familiar door. That wasn’t much fun, but I had my mantra, “I’m free, I’m free.” Although after several days, my other mantra, “I’m hungry, I’m hungry,” seemed to be in the forefront. I wasn’t worried, though. I just needed a break and I wasn’t going to give up. I dragged my plaid suitcase from stoop to stoop, trying not to wear out my unwelcome.
It was the summer Coltrane died. The summer of “Crystal Ship.” Flower children raised their empty arms and China exploded the H-bomb. Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames in Monterey. AM radio played “Ode to Billie Joe.” There were riots in Newark, Milwaukee, and Detroit. It was the summer of Elvira Madigan, the summer of love. And in this shifting, inhospitable atmosphere, a chance encounter changed the course of my life.
It was the summer I met Robert Mapplethorpe.
— “Monday Children,” pp. 30-31
Writing about, or worse, ‘critiquing’ a book that contains something quietly private and unresolved seems to violate both its immortality and mortality as memory and history… as a sensitive reader, I hear many traces of sadness in Patti Smith’s voice and her narratives, past and present.
I was alerted about Just Kids by my husband, who first saw her in her maiden concert in Paris during the seventies. With “Because the Night” resonating in my head almost immediately, I was initially unsure what to expect from Patti Smith’s memoir. There was a mix of respect, distance, as well as the feeling of exclusion from a generation that isn’t mine. The myth of Rimbaud in shaping artistic consciousness and individuality, for example, is sometimes glorified beyond my scope of understanding. That said, I couldn’t help but ask, “How should I review a book that can only be highly recommended? And how should I recommend something that is a gift in itself?” Writing about, or worse, “critiquing” a book that contains something quietly private and unresolved seems to violate both its immortality and mortality as memory and history. I don’t know if others would feel the same way as I did, but as a sensitive reader, I hear many traces of sadness in Patti Smith’s voice and her narratives, past and present. The question that Mapplethorpe asked her during his dying moments, “Patti, did art get us?” also stayed with me for a long time.
Later, after finishing the book, I came across some blogs that commented on the memoir as sentimental. I have no problem with Patti Smith’s “sentimentalism.” Neither do I see anything “wrong” with being sentimental, especially when being emotionally honest (without being exhibitionist) actually necessitates more courage than not being so. Mapplethorpe died, she lives. From the days at Hotel Chelsea to their eventual separate choices and ways, they did invent something together, for her, for him, for them, and for us. By way of Just Kids, Patti Smith might have simply hoped to relive her memories and days with Mapplethorpe, but the writing itself has done much more — transcend.
Printed from Cerise Press: http://www.cerisepress.com
Permalink URL: https://www.cerisepress.com/02/05/it-first-began-in-the-streets-just-kids-by-patti-smith
Page 2 of 2 was printed. Select View All pagination to print all pages.
