Crashingly Beautiful

“One book opens another” says an old proverb. I have just finished reading Patti Smith’s National Book Award winning memoir, Just Kids. It is both a love story as well as an elegy. It describes the ascent of two young artists, Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith behind the backdrop of the tumultuous New York art world during the late sixties and seventies. Essentially, the book is about the plight of two young kids driven to the path of art, devotion, and initiation, and how they sustained and encouraged each other along the way.

I always read with a pen. This way I can underline, write notes in the margins and put asterisks beside important passages. I can’t help it. But, interestingly, I am completely against folding over corners of pages. The great thing about reading an autobiography of an artist is that it is almost always filled with the influences and overall inspiration that fueled their quest. The books of Henry Miller come to mind, especially The Books In My Life. His books are filled with what inspired him. He holds nothing back. Throughout his books, Miller drops artists like Hansel and Gretel dropped food crumbs in the forest in order to find their way back home. If life was a bone, Miller sucks everything out of it, right down to the marrow, and when he’s done, it falls on the plate with a thud. I collect the scraps that are left behind and try to make them my own. I guess that is why I deface my books. Miller’s energy and enthusiasm for what keeps him going is contagious. I found Patti Smith’s writing also contained this quality of vibrancy and life.

When I started reading Just Kids, I realized that music was going to take center stage. I started making notes of all the artists and song titles Patti mentions and I made a musical play-list out of it as I read along. I was familiar with many of the artists but there were some new discoveries, like the folk singer, Tim Hardin for example. After I finished the book I also decided to make a list of all the writers, books, painters, photographers, and films Patti Smith mentions.  For the most part I have listed them here in the order in which they appear. I’ve also added  a few links just for the fun of it.

“The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It’s the artist’s responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.
      I left Mephistopheles, the angels, and the remnants of out handmade world, saying, I choose Earth.”

–Patti Smith Just Kids, p. 256.

See Intense City for the lists.