Patti Smith
Page 24
This wild sensation stayed with me for some days. I was certain it couldn’t be detected. But perhaps my grief was more apparent than I knew, for my husband packed us all up and we drove south. We found a motel by the sea and camped there for the Easter holiday. Up and down the deserted beach I walked in my black wind coat. I felt within its asymmetrical roomy folds like a princess or a monk. I know Robert would have appreciated this picture: a white sky, a gray sea, and this singular black coat.
Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed. I stood looking at the sky. The clouds were the colors of a Raphael. A wounded rose. I had the sensation he had painted it himself. You will see him. You will know him. You will know his hand. These words came to me and I knew I would one day see a sky drawn by Robert’s hand.
Words came and then a melody. I carried my moccasins and waded the water’s edge. I had transfigured the twisted aspects of my grief and spread them out as a shining cloth, a memorial song for Robert.
Little emerald bird wants to fly away.
If I cup my hand, could I make him stay?
Little emerald soul, little emerald eye.
Little emerald bird, must we say goodbye?
In the distance I heard a call, the voices of my children. They ran toward me. In this stretch of timelessness, I stopped. I suddenly saw him, his green eyes, his dark locks. I heard his voice above the gulls, the childish laughter, and the roar of the waves.
Smile for me, Patti, as I am smiling for you.
After Robert died, I agonized over his belongings, some of which had once been ours. I dreamed of his slippers. He wore them at the end of his life, black Belgian slippers with his initials stitched in burnished gold. I agonized over his desk and chair. They would be auctioned off with his other valuables at Christie’s. I lay awake thinking of them, so obsessed I became ill. I could have bid on them but I couldn’t bear to; his desk and chair passed to strange hands. I kept thinking of something Robert would say when he was obsessed with something he couldn’t have. “I’m a selfish bastard. If I can’t have it I don’t want anyone else to.”
Why can’t I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply. I got over the loss of his desk and chair, but never the desire to produce a string of words more precious than the emeralds of Cortés. Yet I have a lock of his hair, a handful of his ashes, a box of his letters, a goatskin tambourine. And in the folds of faded violet tissue a necklace, two violet plaques etched in Arabic, strung with black and silver threads, given to me by the boy who loved Michelangelo.
We said farewell and I left his room. But something drew me back. He had fallen into a light sleep. I stood there and looked at him. So peaceful, like an ancient child. He opened his eyes and smiled. “Back so soon?” And then again to sleep.
So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.
A note to the reader
ON MARCH 8, 1989, ROBERT AND I HAD OUR LAST CONVERSATION. The last, that is, in the human form. He knew he was dying and yet there was still a note of hope, a singular and obdurate thread, woven in the timber of his voice. I asked him what he wanted me to do for him and he said take care of my flowers. He asked me to write an introduction to his flower book. They are color flowers and I know you prefer the black and white ones so perhaps you won’t like them. I will like them I said and I will do it. I told him that I would continue our work, our collaboration, for as long as I lived. Will you write our story? Do you want me to? You have to he said no one but you can write it. I will do it, I promised, though I knew it would be a vow difficult to keep. I love you Patti. I love you Robert. And he was wheeled away for tests and I never heard him speak again. Save for his breath, which seemed to fill his hospital room as he lay dying.
I wrote the poem for his memorial card as I had done for Sam Wagstaff. On the twenty-second of May, Fred and I attended the service at the Whitney Museum. Fred wore a suit of indigo gabardine with a burgundy tie. I wore my Easter dress of black silk velvet with a white lace collar. There were two grand vases with white lilies flanking the podium. His flowers hung on the walls. As I sang his memorial song I held the image of him from two decades before, smoking a cigarette outside the museum, waiting for me to emerge. Robert’s entire family was present. His father, Harry, greeted me with warmth and compassion. His mother, Joan, was in a wheelchair fitted with a small oxygen tank. When I knelt to kiss her goodbye she pressed my hand. You’re a writer, she whispered with some effort. Write me a line. I imagined she meant a letter, but Joan passed away three days later and was buried at Our Lady of the Snows.
I wrote the piece for Flowers and honored Joan’s request. I wrote The Coral Sea and made drawings in remembrance of him but our story was obliged to wait until I could find the right voice. There are many stories I could yet write about Robert, about us. But this is the story I have told. It is the one he wished me to tell and I have kept my promise. We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world. There were temptations and witches and demons we never dreamed of and there was splendor we only partially imagined. No one could speak for these two young people nor tell with any truth of their days and nights together. Only Robert and I could tell it. Our story, as he called it. And, having gone, he left the task to me to tell it to you.
May 22, 2010
MEMORIAL SONG
Little emerald bird
Wants to fly away
If I cup my hand
Could I make him stay
Little emerald soul
Little emerald eye
Little emerald soul
Must you say good-bye
All the things
That we pursue
All that we dream
Are composed
As nature knew
In a feather green
Little emerald bird
As you light afar
It is true I heard
God is where you are
Little emerald soul
Little emerald eye
Little emerald bird
We must say good-bye
A flower that grew from years of flowers.
Shot by one who caused a modern shudder.
And was favored by his mother.
A wall of flowers concealing all the tears of a relatively
young man with nothing but glory in his grasp.
And what he would be grasping is the hand of God
drawing him into another garden.
–from Flowers, 1989
Memorial card
MEMORIAL POEM
As there is strength
in blackness
a deep control
a calla flare
trumpets
grace corporeal
there is a steady hand
adjusting child lace
and bravery’s face
in veil inviolate
there is a steady hand
adept in heavens skin
spending into black
where pure hearts
are kin.
The Hotel Chelsea
Nathan’s Coney Island
Target/Letter, Paris 7.7.69
Postcard
Robert’s Last Camera
WILD LEAVES
Wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground
Every leaf a moment
A light upon the crown
That we’ll all be wearing
In a time unbound
And wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground
Every word that’s spoken
Every word decreed
Every spell that’s broken
Every golden deed
All the parts we’re playing
Binding as the reed
And wild leaves are falling
Wild wild leaves
The
spirits that are mentioned
The myths that have been shorn
Everything we’ve been through
And the colors worn
Every chasm entered
Every story wound
And wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground
As the campfire’s burning
As the fire ignites
All the moments turning
In the stormy bright
Well enough the churning
Well enough believe
The coming and the going
Wild wild leaves
View from the window of the Hotel Chelsea, Room 204
THE DESK
In all the world one may always hope to recapture something lost. But sometimes we are obliged to set the memory of certain things in a dresser of small regrets. Yet occasionally we discover in the folds of an old handkerchief a shell or insignificant stone that had once embodied our happiest of afternoons. We experience a moment of respite when all sense of bad luck vanishes. As when the corrected proofs of Finnegans Wake, left on a backseat within a maze of taxicabs, were magically returned to the hands of an astonished and grateful James Joyce.
In mid-July, as I was assembling these pages, I received a message from my friend the photographer Lynn Goldsmith. She had met a young girl of fifteen named Delilah, who read my book and had given it to her mother to read. Her mother told her that years ago, after the birth of her first child, she took a trip with him on the Concord. Robert was sitting next to her and had a loving connection with the infant. This did not surprise me, as Robert was always tender and caring with children.
When Robert passed away, remembering his kindness, Delilah’s mother obtained his desk at auction. Lynn assured me that if it was the desk that I had written of, that it was in good hands. When I opened the attachment I burst into tears. It was indeed his desk, as glowing as I remembered.
Seeing the photograph of Delilah, working so diligently, as I had dreamed I might, filled me with great happiness. I used to close my eyes and picture Robert showing it to me, saying, I thought of you when I got it because you always loved desks. Now I am at peace. I imagine Delilah writing at the desk, perhaps stopping for a moment, to give us both a good thought.
Robert, 1979
Poem
MacDougal Street, 1974
Acknowledgments
Before Robert died, I promised him that I would one day write our story. I wish to extend my deep appreciation to Betsy Lerner and all who have encouraged and assisted me in keeping my promise.
Lenny Kaye Rosemary Carroll Daniel Halpern Edward Mapplethorpe Sharon Delano Judy Linn Andi Ostrowe Oliver Ray Nancy M. Rooney Janet Hamill David Croland Abigail Holstein Lynn Davis Steven Sebring Linda Smith Bianucci Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and Jesse Paris Smith
About the Author
PATTI SMITH is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary mergence of poetry and rock. Her seminal album Horses, bearing Robert Mapplethorpe’s renowned photograph, has been hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time. She has recorded twelve albums.
Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and has been represented by the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. In 2002, the Andy Warhol Museum launched Strange Messenger, a retrospective exhibit of her drawings, silk screens, and photographs. Her drawings, photographs, and installations were shown in a comprehensive exhibit in 2008 at the Fondation Cartier Pour l’Art Contemporain in Paris.
Her books include Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Auguries of Innocence.
In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture awarded Smith the prestigious title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor awarded to an artist by the French Republic. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
Smith married the late Fred Sonic Smith in Detroit in 1980. They had a son, Jackson, and a daughter, Jesse. Smith resides in New York City.
WWW.PATTISMITH.NET
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Credits
Jacket images courtesy of Patti Smith
Photograph: Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, Coney Island Boardwalk, September 1, 1969
Jacket design by Allison Saltzman
Bible School, Philadelphia: Courtesy of the Patti Smith Archive
First Holy Communion, Floral Park, Long Island: Courtesy of the Edward Mapplethorpe Archive
Memorial Day, 1967: Courtesy of the Patti Smith Archive
First Portrait, Brooklyn: © Lloyd Ziff. Used with permission.
Hall Street, Brooklyn, 1968: © Lloyd Ziff. Used with permission.
Self Portrait, Brooklyn, 1968: Drawings by Patti Smith courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery
Patti with Feather: © Linda Smith Bianucci. Used with permission.
Robert’s Hands: © Patti Smith
West Twenty-Third Street, Fire Escape: © Gerard Malanga. Used with permission.
“Sleepless 66”: © Patti Smith
Musee Rimbaud, Charleville, 1973: © Patti Smith
Jim Morrison’s Grave: © Patti Smith
Horses album cover: © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. Used with permission.
Robert with Lily, 1978: Drawings by Patti Smith courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery
Memorial card: Courtesy of Patti Smith Archive
The Hotel Chelsea: © Patti Smith
Nathan’s Coney Island: © Patti Smith
Target/Letter, Paris 7.7.69: Courtesy of the Patti Smith Archive
Postcard: Courtesy of the Patti Smith Archive
Robert’s Last Camera: © Patti Smith
View from the window of the Hotel Chelsea, Room 204: © Patti Smith
Robert, 1979: © Patti Smith
Poem: © Patti Smith
MacDougal Street, 1974: © Lynn Davis. Used with permission.
Copyright
Some images were unavailable for the electronic edition.
JUST KIDS. Copyright © 2010 by Patti Smith. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
EPub Edition © March 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200844-2
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