Patti Smith, She Just Kept Redefining Herself

So I just read the Patti Smith biography written by Victor Bockris and Roberta Bayley.

I am not really sure how I picked the book up (I never really liked punk rock), but I saw a short review in the newspaper and her life story peaked my interest.

She spent over a decade in her late teens and twenties in New York City, developing her music and poetry and connecting to the City’s underground music scene, spending time with Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg and Sam Sheppard. Most of her time though was spent with her best friend and partner Robert Mapplethorpe; the two took care of each other for over a decade and had such a groove.  In her words, she “wasn’t plotting to be famous. Her and Robert just had a million ideas and lots of energy.”

Then in her late twenties, she met Fred Sonic Smith and she dropped everything (including losing touch with her friends in New York) to get married and move to Detroit, where she started and raised a family.  A move to leave rock and roll seemed to be brewing for a few years for her; two years before she left the City she said in an interview:

“I would do as much rock “n” roll as I could and then transcend to something else.  I did as much painting as I could – I transcended to poetry – now I’m into this period of my life…I wanna keep transcending..”.

I love this idea of “transcending” throughout life….

She then spent a decade in Detroit, fully removed from her earlier life and no longer in touch with her friends in New York.  She said “she worked harder in the eighties than she ever had”. She spent time as a wife and a mother, bearing and raising two children.    “There’s a lot of sacrifice and very intense responsibility” she explained.  “I’ve grown and expanded as a human being in that way”.   She cut herself off.  “She never went out, never had people over, didn’t perform and didn’t record”. I got the sense from the book that all these things were self imposed; that she just wanted to immerse herself in the “interlude” she was in.  Her role as a nurturer in this decade permeated into her work and the eighties represented a very creative period for her.  She explained that during this period, she produced some of the best work she ever had.

In the early nineties though, her best friend Robert passed away, her husband tragically passed away and her brother (who she was so close and connected to) passed away; she was grief stricken.   Her close friends urged her to “start to let go and continue with her life’s celebration”.

After months of mourning, she took her grief, her children and moved back to New York. She had to start again and she found herself stronger and more creative than ever. She re-emerged.   She was at a point in her life where she was trying to rediscover “who she might be“.  She was invited to open for Bob Dylan, she sang and read to audiences in Central Park, headlined at the Lollapalooza festival in New York and started doing shows in select cities across the U.S.  She was in a new momentous groove.  She then met Oliver Ray, who over the course of a year became her constant companion and then boyfriend.

This was one of my favourite quotes of the book, which she said at a show after she moved back to the City:

The final number, Paths That Cross, had an optimism that comforted her, declaring that everything renews itself in time, and that if one path has crossed another, it is bound to cross it again.

Patti said: “I feel that the older we get, that all of our different ages comes back in us,” said Patti.  “In my thirties, I felt completely different than in my twenties.  But now, at this point, at forty-eight, I feel the same type of tension of adolescent rage is still within me“…….”I’ve experienced a lot of personal sorrow, but I still feel constant amazement at how beautiful life is.”

I liked her life story (which for Patti still unfolds) and this idea that you can go full circle.  It was inspiring how she was able to RE-DEFINE herself in the wake of things that she could not change, reconnect to old friends, make new deep friendships and relationships and soak in the beauty of life. Patti, I like how you roll.