I’m still digesting this emotionally charged and poetic memoir by Patti Smith. I finished reading Just Kids twenty-four hours ago.
At first I wasn’t that into her poetic prose, the dream-like quality, specifically, to the way she describes New York City in the mid-sixties, the references to a love of specific literature, writers and poets, the name dropping, you know. It seemed like a journey I had refused to take.
And that’s because in 1985, armed with my fashion design BFA, I headed to Manhattan for interviews and was offered jobs that paid nothing. I didn’t want to live in poverty until I made it as an artist, so I didn’t. I stayed home and clunked around, moved to Florida for a bit, came back and got that MS in Art Ed and worked doing that for thirty years.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in myself, was it? That I didn’t identify with other artists? The dream of being a successful artist has always been there, but not the bohemian stuff. When she writes about the drugs and the deaths (overdoses, suicides) of those in and around their friend group – and these were the successful ones – the Janis Joplins, Edie Sedgewicks and Jimi Hendrixes – I just felt like, really??? They all thought they were profound and super talented but none of them practiced mindfulness. When Smith started dabbling with marijuana, I was screaming at her – don’t do that!!!! You are supposed to be the voice of reason!
But, you know, they were just kids.
As I continued reading, I learned so much about these two artists, Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, how they were so sure of themselves despite not even having food or shelter. Different times.
I thought about my parents and how they were only a little bit older than those two, how they got married at nineteen and twenty-one and bought us a home around the same time as Just Kids, and raised us in a great neighborhood even though they made, like, nothing. I think Dad told me he made $57.00 a week or maybe a month, I don’t remember.
They were just kids too.
By the end of the book I was devouring the poetic prose, crying, like, I could barely see the pages. Because it is a love story, one of enduring, unconditional love and respect despite the pain of choices made and directions taken.
Mapplethorpe is famous for homo-erotic photographs in which he was an active participant- this he thought crucial in his commitment to authenticity – that he fully immerse in the process and transform from artist to Artist. Smith shares the genesis of said work, how he punished himself for these lewd thoughts yet felt compelled to progress with that trajectory. He’d said he’d wanted to sell his soul to the devil for fame and fortune and quite possibly believed he’d done that, the Catholic guilt that prevalent coursing through his veins and brain.
Smith is almost an anthropologist here, even as she documents this true saga of her life. She doesn’t judge. She shares her own rise to success as poet and rock star, carefully navigating her stuff only as it intertwines with his even though her stuff is the stuff of legend.
Again, my comparison – how I’m always telling you I don’t feel like I am living authentically. And yet, I just don’t believe that I need to participate in fantasies. I don’t need you to understand me/dissect my inner desires. I mean, what the heck – why must we bleed, why die for our art? It’s so extreme. I certainly can’t compare my success to theirs, you see? I’m not right. I’m not wrong, but I am frustrated by choices. Hence the gallons of tears I shed.
She married someone else in the end and had a beautiful yet, in my opinion, brief blissful family life but she doesn’t say much about her husband save how wonderful he was (he died a mere five years after Mapplethorpe’s demise).
It’s a bittersweet hero’s journey. Someone made a movie about it. Patti Smith didn’t give her blessing. It stars Matt Smith of Dr. Who and The Crown fame as Mapplethorpe.
I wouldn’t have (given my blessing) either. It took Patti Smith ten years to write this book. It’s a perfect love letter penned to her first love, trusted friend and fellow artist, so worthy of the National Book Award for non-fiction it received. Read it and weep.
You’re welcome. <3
I too chose not to have the homeless artist life. I just could not go the drug route, maybe too uptight or too level headed is the way I chose to think I was.
Even as I am still contemplating this book and grappling with those choices, I am reminded that Patti Smith shared her moments of soul searching and voiced her bouts of tears. No one’s path is easy, but hers is truly a remarkable level of commitment. But I hear you and am with you. I’ve been almost homeless due to financial crisis but not sleep-on-a-park-bench-or-grassy-knoll-in-Central-Park homeless. More like a live in my parents’ basement sort of thing.