#13: Just Kids, by Patti Smith

There are two ways to be an artist. The first way is to be born with a fabulous talent, like a Mozart or a Picasso, and then to nurture and develop that talent. The second way is to know that you are an artist, and then to find some way to express that identity. Patti Smith is the second kind of artist. She achieved fame as a rock musician in the mid 1970s, yet for most of the years covered by this memoir (1967 to 1972) she never aspired to be a musician, and didn’t own or play an instrument. But she certainly knew that she was an artist.

The memoir deals with the years when Smith was living with fellow artist Robert Mapplethorpe. They were lovers and soul mates. Mapplethorpe ultimately found fame—and notoriety—as a photographer, but when he lived with Smith he had not yet found his art form either. They met in 1967, both poor and newly arrived in New York City. They spent their La Boheme years sketching and drawing; she wrote poetry, he crafted jewelry, collages, and tableaus a la Joseph Cornell. Their lives were precarious and difficult and Smith’s humble and plainspoken account is often very moving:

For the following weeks we relied on the generosity of Robert’s friends for shelter… Ours was an attic room with a mattress, Robert’s drawings tacked on the wall and his paintings rolled in a corner and I with only my plaid suitcase. I’m certain it was no small burden for this couple to harbor us, for we had meager resources and I was socially awkward.

Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDs in 1989, is known today for his brilliant and often shocking photography; he photographed flowers and friends, but also explicit sadomasochistic scenes. He was the occasion for a skirmish in the cultural wars back in the late 1980s, when Republican politicians objected to public arts funding for exhibits of Mapplethorpe’s photographs. (I remember my mother being incensed at the idea.)

Knowing of his future, we read Smith’s account of their time together as we might read of someone’s bringing home a lion cub for a pet—we know that their domesticity will not endure. Smith recognizes that Mapplethorpe is going through a metamorphosis:

He was searching, consciously or unconsciously, for himself. He was in a fresh state of transformation. He had shed the skin of his ROTC uniform, and in its wake his scholarship, his commercial path, and his father’s expectations of him.

Smith refuses to separate Mapplethorpe’s development as an artist from his progress toward recognizing and acknowledging his sexual identity. She will not acknowledge the tabloid mentality, will not present a standard “coming out” story, or retroactively pretend to understand what she did not fully understand at the time.

Smith and Mapplethorpe moved to the Chelsea Hotel in 1969, years before either achieved fame, where they were able to establish themselves in New York art and music worlds. While she resided at the Chelsea, Smith met everyone from Salvador Dali to Allen Ginsberg to Janis Joplin. She visited William Burroughs in his apartment on the Bowery. Harry Smith, known as the man who put together the landmark Anthology of American Folk Music, which single-handedly kick started the folk revivial of the 1960s, became a friend. She had an affair with Sam Shepard and wrote a play with him—Cowboy Mouth, which I recently discovered takes its title from a line in Bob Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Smith (Patti, not Harry) and Mapplethorpe start hanging out at Max’s Kansas City, where they were eventually given places at the celebrated round table, where they could rub elbows with Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, and other Warhol "stars."

And then, they each find their niche. Smith begins giving poetry recitals with guitar backing. Over time, this evolves into a band. Mapplethorpe begins using a Polaroid to collect images for his collages; eventually the collages fall by the wayside. There is no single eureka moment, but there is a distinct sense of destiny arriving:

The Polaroid camera in Robert’s hands. The physical act, a jerk of the wrist. The snapping sound when pulling the shot and the anticipation, sixty seconds to see what he got. The immediacy of the process suited his temperament.

At first he toyed with the camera. He wasn’t totally convinced that it was for him. And film was expensive, ten pictures for about three dollars, a substantial amount in 1971. But it was some steps up from the photo booth, and the pictures developed unsealed.

And there we are. Mapplethorpe takes the iconic photo for the cover of Smith’s first album, Horses in 1974. After that, they more or less go their separate ways.

My friend Melanie once made me a Patti Smith tape and scribbled a quote from Lester Bangs on the cover: “What’s a Patti Smith album without some bullshit?” Smith can be naïve, cerebral, or fierce by turns. She speaks with a lower-middle-class South Jersey accent, yet she is a disciple of Verlaine and Rimbaud. I wonder what it would be like to have gambled everything on becoming who you are meant to be. Most of us just sort of happen—we have certain skills or talents and we use them to find a job that makes us enough money to pay the rent. We marry, have kids, buy a house. Patti Smith actually did go on to marry and have kids, which is a bit surprising in a way. She retired after just a few years in the spotlight. Now as she looks back, does she wonder who that person was who burned with such passion and ambition? Or has she always remained that person?