Author Talk: Patti Smith

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[[applause]]

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Patti Smith: Hello, everybody.

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David C. Ward: Thank you all. Good afternoon, my name is David Ward.

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David C. Ward: I'd like to welcome you all to the National Portrait Gallery for today's program,

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David C. Ward: sponsored by our education department and in conjunction with our exhibition "Hide Seek."

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David C. Ward: Many of you know the animating spirit of "Hide Seek" is Walt Whitman.

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David C. Ward: What you may not know is that Walt Whitman is a continual presence in this building.

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David C. Ward: He was a nurse here during the Civil War,

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David C. Ward: afterwards he worked in the Interior Department from which position he was fired

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David C. Ward: for his authorship of that immoral book "Leaves of Grass."

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David C. Ward: And his presence in the building is made palpable today with our guest.

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David C. Ward: She contains multitudes. [[laughter]]

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David C. Ward: She always sings "The Body Electric." [[whooping]]

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David C. Ward: Poet, artist, rocker, hard rocker, and now memoirist - welcome Patti Smith.

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[[cheering]]
Patti Smith: Thank you

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David C. Ward: So a national book award, you're getting a ton of respect in your middle age. [[laughter]]

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Patti Smith: I have no problem with that. [[laughter]]

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David C. Ward: So you've adjusted to fame?

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Patti Smith: Well, it's, it's uh, I, I find, um, I find these things to be wonderful. I have a medal from the French Republic;

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Patti Smith: When I was a teenager, I won Spartan of the Year

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David C. Ward: Wow

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Patti Smith: and uh [[laughter]] I um, I mean they aren't what we aspire to when we're doing our work, but you know, in achieving them, it makes me happy.

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David C. Ward: It should. I uh, one of the things that you said during your- the sense of almost surprise and gratitude when you received the award,

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David C. Ward: and I just wanted to start because one of the things that's so great about "Just Kids" is,

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David C. Ward: particularly for those of us of a certain age, it takes us back to a time that seems impossibly close yet very distant

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David C. Ward: and I just want you, because I think you believe in luck, and I just want you to talk about that moment when you arrived at the bus station

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David C. Ward: in South Jersey and didn't have enough for the fare.

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Patti Smith: Well, I um, it was 1967 and I got laid off in Philadelphia from the factory I was working.

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Patti Smith: There wasn't any work really because the New York shipyard had closed and the Camden, Philly area had no work,

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Patti Smith: so I just decided to come to New York City and get a job.

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Patti Smith: And I had just enough money for a bus ticket and when I went it to get my ticket, they had raised the fare and I was devastated.

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Patti Smith: And I went into a phone booth, that was before the Ice Ages, they had a phone booth [[laughter]]

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Patti Smith: and um, to call my sister to try and figure out what to do next.

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Patti Smith: And somebody had a left a little, white plastic purse in the phone booth and it had $30 in it, which was a little more than I made in a week at the factory.

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Patti Smith: [[towards camera person]] I think we have enough pictures, right? Thanks. [[applause]]

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Patti Smith: And um, I went through the moral dilemma of what to do.

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Patti Smith: There was no identification in the purse and I, I just imagined that Providence had given me a hand and I took the money and went to New York City.

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Patti Smith: But I will say, even though I did that, I have never forgotten my unknown benefactor.

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Patti Smith: I figured it was some girl, God bless her, I am always, I always thank her. I never forget.

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David C. Ward: As you should.
Patti Smith: Even though I have no idea what she looked like or anything about her except that she had a white plastic purse.

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David C. Ward: It's interesting, the way that that momentary, fragmentary event connects, what I sense though is a larger meaning in your work.

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David C. Ward: I mean, you end the forward to "Just Kids" with "I live for love, I live for art," and you fold your hands to Providence,

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David C. Ward: and it seems to me that animating your whole time in New York,

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David C. Ward: or your career for that matter, is this notion of a flow, a notion of, as you put it,

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David C. Ward: 'I'm a sculptor hacking away, not quite sure what I'm doing.'

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Patti Smith: Like a blind sculptor hacking away, but, well really I think some of it is,

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Patti Smith: I love this little book "The Alchemist" and in "The Alchemist" it says,

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Patti Smith: one of the most wonderful things, it says-

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Patti Smith: 'that the universe can spire to help the shepherd boy because he maintained the language of enthusiasm.'

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Patti Smith: And I think that all through life, I've had some really rough times, very hard times, but um, I don't know.

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Patti Smith: I just feel like that, like that shepherd boy. I'm always optimistic, I'm always looking for the good to happen

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Patti Smith: and I think that if you keep open like that, you won't be stuck in the mire of your bad luck.

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Patti Smith: You'll be more lifted up by your good luck.

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David C. Ward: Right, I mean this whole notion of this flow experience seems to me to be really interesting and the way that you did it.

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David C. Ward: But I know there's a, seems to me an obvious difference between, I believe you see yourself as a poet first.

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David C. Ward: Your poetry and the memoirs seem to me to be existent on opposite ends of a sort of, stylistic scale,

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David C. Ward: and you say at the end of the memoir,

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David C. Ward: that you promise that you'd to write about Robert and you fulfilled this promise.

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David C. Ward: Could you just take us through the "why now, how?"

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Patti Smith: Well, Robert, I mean Robert died in March 9th, 1989,

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Patti Smith: and um, early in the morning and March 8th, I spoke to him right before he lost consciousness

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Patti Smith: and we both knew he was dying and I simply said

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Patti Smith: "What do you want me to do for you? What can I do?".

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Patti Smith: I promised him that I would do as I always did,

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Patti Smith: - magnify his name, write of him, and he asked me some specific things but he said "Will you tell our story?" and I knew what he meant.

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Patti Smith: He meant our story, starting from when we were 20. Only I can tell it.

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Patti Smith: So I promised I would but it took me a long time.

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Patti Smith: It took me a long time because I had the death of my husband, my brother, my parents, and 2 small children to take care of,

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Patti Smith: and it was only in recent years that I could totally claim this task.

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David C. Ward: How did you claim it stylistically though? That's a thing that interests me,

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David C. Ward: the memoir is such an elegy, it's almost a pastoral,

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David C. Ward: it contrasts, since I just re-read all of your poems.

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David C. Ward: I mean your poems are these kind of, shards and fragments,

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David C. Ward: and the element again of smoothness in the memoir,

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David C. Ward: I mean it's almost, I have to say it's almost preternatural.

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Patti Smith: Well, I um, I wrote a lot in the 80s when I retired from public life.

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Patti Smith: I didn't publish hardly anything that I was writing continuously, so I was,

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Patti Smith: you know I had some grasp on writing,

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Patti Smith: but I wrote this book really, for 2, with 2 reasons.

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Patti Smith: One of course, to fulfill my promise and the other to give Robert to the people,

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Patti Smith: to give him as a holistic human being and not just as a dying artist.

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David C. Ward: Right.

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Patti Smith: And Robert wasn't very much a reader so I wanted to write a book that I thought he might like to read, and that the people would like.

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Patti Smith: I wanted to write a book that had, you know, a certain level of craftsmanship that anyone could appreciate,

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Patti Smith: but also a non-reader would be happy to breeze through.

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Patti Smith: And uh, that was my task. I was writing to the people. When I'm writing poetry I don't think of anybody.

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Patti Smith: I'm just, it's just more narcissistic, just writing to please myself.

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Patti Smith: But I wrote the book really, with the reader in mind

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Patti Smith: and trying to create almost like a film for the people, like a little movie.

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David C. Ward: So I mean you arrived in Manhattan in '67, that kind of precursor year before the terrible year of 1968

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David C. Ward: and you talk a little bit, briefly about this sort of paranoia that was in the air.

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David C. Ward: But one of the things, that again, and I guess I'm staying within the initial flow or smoothness is,

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David C. Ward: the way in which, and I'll be blunt, there's so much death in the memoir. I mean you arrive

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David C. Ward: and John Coltrane is dead the same month and it goes through the whole series of public and private deaths

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David C. Ward: how did you? and it's a remarkable achievement , the way you fold those into this narrative it seems to me
Patti Smith: I think
David C. Ward: to be uncanny.

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Patti Smith: death is part. I think part of that is my mother, my mother lost her mother as a child. My father lost his mother early.

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{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith" I never met my grandparents cause they all died young, my childhood friend died. There was a lot of death in our family.

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David C. Ward: [[Cross Talk]] Right
Patti Smith: My mother , you know my mother was obliged to go to the funeral of her father who died young,

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Patti Smith: and then come home and cook food for us and do laundry and and laugh and help us with homework

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Patti Smith: she always kept things going, she always found you know the happy way the glass being half full instead of half empty,

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Patti Smith: and I think I learned some of that from her.

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David C. Ward: Yeah again, it seems to me that there's an, that there's a combination of you of this, you want that off?

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Patti Smith: No I like seeing, I'm sorry. [[Laughs]] Just like to, just curious.

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David C. Ward: So okay Max's Kansas City tell us about Max's Kansas City. [[laughter]]

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Patti Smith: I'm sorry.
David C. Ward: Max's Kans-- well were jumping ahead with the the --

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Patti Smith: I interrupted you I'm sorry.
David C. Ward: Nope its fine, feel free.

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Patti Smith: Well uh, Max's Kansas City
David C. Ward: [[Cross Talk]] The whole scene
Patti Smith: When Robert and I moved to the Chelsea Hotel in 1969,

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Patti Smith: I had been in Paris most of the spring and summer, Robert had explored Manhattan

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Patti Smith: and had met some of the people in the Warhol scene he had seen Midnight Cowboy.
David C. Ward: Right.

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Patti Smith: He was his trajectory was more toward the Warhol scene, and the Warhol scene at least the second generation

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Patti Smith: was stationed at the, the Max's Kansas City. I wasn't really interested

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David C. Ward: Yeah you always seemed to be standing in the corner.
Patti Smith: but, it's just I, I just wasn't that interested in it, but it was so important to him so that's where we went at night.

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Patti Smith: You know you could hangout with -- we all hung out together everyone was aspiring to be something to do something

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Patti Smith: and in that way it was, it was great, because everyone had a vision that they were moving toward.

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Patti Smith: And uh so it was a um it wasn't just a social scene, it was a very creative scene.

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David C. Ward: Well yeah that's again going back to the 67 68 period, that period of sort of the sense of

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David C. Ward: weirdly again having two ideas at the same time of sort of impending doom, but none the less incredible creativity it seemed to me.

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David C. Ward: I mean, and again it it shoots through the memoir continuously. I have to ask you, this is almost a domestic question, but did you and Robert ever quarrel?

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Patti Smith: Umm
David C. Ward: Cause there's actually the thing
Patti Smith: We bickered, we bickered over the stupidest things. You know like

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Patti Smith: You know he would say things like, like uh you know he'd take me to -- Robert took me to my first open mic.

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Patti Smith: Cause he wanted me to read poetry in public and it was manned by Jim Carol and were getting ready and

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Patti Smith: I just, you know as usual just dress like Baudelaire or something, and Robert came out wearing Gold lame pants with a gold lame codpiece that he had designed.

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[[laughter]]
Patti Smith: And uhh, and right before that we uhh we just had a coffee and he had a coffee and I had tea and I liked honey and they didn't have honey in the diner so I'd carry it with me.

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Patti Smith: and he'd say "Patti don't bring that out you're drawing attention to yourself." [[laughter]]

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Patti Smith: And I just, you know the things because he was the sort of middle -- I mean he had certain middle class

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David C. Ward: Yeah
Patti Smith: Especially when it came to table manners and things and I was such, you know, and animal [[laughter]]

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Patti Smith: He would worry about my table manners and my lack of table manners and he would be decked out in like black see through net shirts, with like five different colored bandanas

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Patti Smith: heavy keys and I'd say ,you know, you're worried, you know, that ,you know, I'm not using the right spoon. [[laughter]]

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David C. Ward: There are a couple of moments in in, throughout the book there are these great moments and I don't know if you can where where Robert he discovers you doing something specifically the time uh, you know I bring up your checkered past the first time you smoked dope and he comes back and he

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David C. Ward: there's this continual "Oh Patti!!"
Patti Smith: Yeah he would say "Patti No" that's what he would say "Patti noooo". I was like "Yeah you caught me because I never smoked pot you know I'm very broncular I wasn't really that interested because

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Patti Smith: the people that would smoke pot I'm too edgy and too impatient it would take them 20 minutes to put a coat on you know its like [[laughter]]

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Patti Smith: I Just, so, but like in like 74 or something I got involved in like Rastafarian music and I saw Harder They Come.

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Patti Smith: So I bought a little pot and I'm trying to stuff it in a you know inside a cigarette and um Robert came in and I never told him I was doing this 'cause I was so secretive and that's when he came in and "Patti No you're smoking pot" I had a twigs sticking out of the wrapper and seeds I I didn't know what I was doing. [laughter]

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David C. Ward: How was it? [laughter]
David C. Ward: So was it any good?
Patti Smith: It was Mexican pot you know so [laughter]

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Patti Smith: It was fun.
David C. Ward: You talk you of your sign, your a blue star Venus, um why did he call you China?

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Patti Smith: Well we just evolved we had all kinds of little names, he called me Soakey because I used to cry a lot. And then he called me China I had no idea that was like I don't even remember why he started calling me China.

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Patti Smith: Maybe because I had fragile aspects I have no idea. And I called him blue because he started making a blue star under his signature. He made the T in the Robert turn into a star it was just little names.

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David C. Ward: Right, uhm I want to get get back, because I'm interested in poetry and I wanted to ask you as I kind of

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David C. Ward: a very precocious reader, and you discovered Rimbaud very early on. And could you talk to us a little bit about Rimbaud. I was also specifically interested, why Rimbaud and not Baudelaire?

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Patti Smith: Well, I think because, first of all, I discovered Rimbaud first. I discovered Rimbaud through the artist Modigliani.

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Patti Smith: I loved Modigliani when I was in high school, and he loved Rimbaud, and every time I read about him, he was spouting, he was eating hashish and he was spouting Rimbaud, so I wanted to know who Rimbaud was.

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Patti Smith: And then when I discovered Rimbaud, he just happened to look like Bob Dylan, so that was

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Patti Smith: um, yeah
David C. Ward: That was the killer blow.

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Patti Smith: But, um. So I discovered Rimbaud first.

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Patti Smith: And through Rimbaud, I discovered Verlaine, I discovered Baudelaire, of course. And I admire all of the French poets, Nerval and, um, there's... there's so many of them, Laforgue, I... I love all of these, the French poets of that era.

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Patti Smith: But Baudelaire, I, um, appreciate him as being the precursor. I know that, you know, that he developed the prose poem and because of him, he helped beget Rimbaud, but I just prefer, truthfully, Rimbaud's language. I think Rimbaud is the better poet.

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Patti Smith: I think that Baudelaire is like, deserves his place as a father of modernism, Um, you know, of, um, Important critical analysis of painting, and he has written some beautiful things, but I just, truthfully, prefer Rimbaud as a writer.

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David C. Ward: Yeah, it seemed to be that it, it would get to that element of the relationship between self and style. Baudelaire, is.. is, obviously seems to be sorta [[distant?]].

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David C. Ward: So just to get back, I mean, in terms of the task of the poet seems to me in many ways to be the naming things.

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David C. Ward: Well again back, back to a personal. When.. when you.. you see Robert, and then you lose him, and then you find him again in that kind of mysterious, almost Horacio Alger for girls element, um, where you bump into him and he saves you.

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David C. Ward: Um, and he introduces himself, and you say that, you know, "I don't think of you as Bob,

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David C. Ward: can I call you..."
Patti Smith: Yeah, "introduce me as Bob."

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Patti Smith: Well I have an uncle Bob who was a beautiful man, but he was a big, very big, portly sort of awkward guy, and Robert was, you know, so lithe and slim and it just.

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Patti Smith: I couldn't bring myself to call him Bob, so I said "can I call you Robert?" And he said "ok." And actually, he became Robert ever after.

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David C. Ward: I also have to ask you, were you the one who named Janice Joplin "Pearl?"

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Patti Smith: No

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David C. Ward: Ok. Because there's that moment on the stairs where you say she looked like

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Patti Smith: No, I. I just assumed, in fact I, I elaborated on that a little in the paper back, because people ask me that. I didn't mean to, I just figured everyone assumed, that they knew, that was her nickname.

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Patti Smith: But, um, I was just uh. I was being clever, you know. "No, you're pearl, a pearl of a girl" because pearl was her nickname.

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David C. Ward: Thanks for clearing that up. There is, um, you know, enough with the French poets. Let's go back to America.

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David C. Ward: There's a, the moment where you arrive in New York, when Coultrain dies, I was struck. I was looking at the book again last night, and the next paragraph you talk about being in Frank O'Hara territory.

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David C. Ward: And I couldn't help wonder the correlate... culture and dying and Frank O'Hara, Did you have in mind then, O'Hara's poem "The Day Lady Died?"

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Patti Smith: Uh, Yes. When I thought of... I thought of "The Day Lady Died" when I looked at the five, was it the five spot, because she sang there, but really I was thinking of lunch poems

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Patti Smith: and I have to say, just side tracking a little, I went up and looked at the exhibit. It's just, It's so beautiful. Oh my god, it's so, such a bold, beautiful exhibit and seeing that painting, that Larry Rivers.

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Patti Smith: I knew Larry Rivers, and I haven't seen that painting in a long time, and that beautiful, was his masterpiece, that painting of Frank O'Hara. And of course the photograph you have of Walt Whitman, I've never seen it.

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David C. Ward: Yeah, the Eakins that we got a couple years ago.

00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:27.000
Patti Smith: So I'm a Philly girl and Eakins looms large and, you know, something that you, a painter that you learn about, that you study, that you see in the Philadelphia Museum. I never even knew he took photographs like that.

00:21:27.000 --> 00:21:29.000
Patti Smith: It's so beautiful
David C. Ward: They're fantastic.

00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:31.000
David C. Ward: So what about Whitman?

00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:33.000
Patti Smith: What about him?

00:21:33.000 --> 00:21:35.000
David C. Ward: I'm asking the questions.
Patti Smith: Well Walt Whitman, you know, Walt Whitman.

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:52.000
Patti Smith: I'm from the Camden area and, uh, Walt Whitman is buried there. He designed his own headstone, its really like a little mausoleum in this, this sort of, uh, beautiful sprawling cemetery in Camden, New Jersey.

00:21:52.000 --> 00:22:06.000
Patti Smith: And, I love Walt Whitman. He, um, you know he's really, to me I think of, like, sort of, its almost like a spiritual link between William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Alan Ginsburg.

00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:29.000
Patti Smith: They all seem, in the way you use the word, they're in flux, in flow with one another. And, uh, all containing multitudes, all believing in the animating, animating of the human spirit into work, and, uh, all thinking of generations before them, all very generous men.

00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:48.000
Patti Smith: And, uh, I love the story of, its so funny, I didn't realize that there was such a controversy over Leaves of Grass, but there's a great story of how a journalist came to see President Lincoln, and he had Whitman's, a, you know, like a galley, I guess a galley of Whitman's poems,

00:22:48.000 --> 00:23:05.000
Patti Smith: and President Lincoln says "can I see that" and he says "I'll be right back." And he goes in another room and he starts reading and then no one could bother him, and then the journalist wanted his book back and Lincoln didn't want to give it back. So...

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:12.000
David C. Ward: Now, Whitman had this odd stalkerish relationship with Lincoln where he kind of trailed him around but never they actually never met, even though

00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:17.000
Patti Smith: I know, its so sad, because I know they would have loved to really. I think they would have loved to meet.

00:23:17.000 --> 00:23:32.000
David C. Ward: Yeah, I, actually have always, just as a slight advertisement I did our show on Whitman, and I always thought Whitman didn't want to meet Lincoln because he was in some senses afraid of him, that it was too, there was too much

00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:33.000
Patti Smith: I can understand that.

00:23:33.000 --> 00:23:35.000
David C. Ward: You know, too much dailyness

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:43.000
Patti Smith: But I think, I think Lincoln would have adored the opportunity to talk to Whitman about his work.

00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:44.000
David C. Ward: Right

00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:51.000
Patti Smith: You know I think that that's what he would have wanted, to go through poems and ask him about things, cause he was a serious reader of poetry.

00:23:51.000 --> 00:24:05.000
David C. Ward: There's some, there is some notion that Billy Herndon, who, Whitmans, I'm sorry Lincoln's law partner, was a first edition collector, had the Whitman Leaves of Grass and read it in the law office, this was back in Illinois, then Lincoln would have heard them as early as that.

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:14.000
David C. Ward: But they, again, in terms of those sort of aura, this connection between them, it was, as you say indissoluble.

00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:25.000
Patti Smith: its almost like you imagine them black and white, cause Whitman always in with his white beard and his white hat and his white suits, and Lincoln always in black and his, you know, his image of, you know, this

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:39.000
David C. Ward: and so, and and and Lincoln is totally reticent and Whitman is so voluble, and I think that Whitman in some senses thought if they were ever in the same room together it'd be the space time continuum would blow up and then would like fracture everybody else.

00:24:39.000 --> 00:24:45.000
David C. Ward: Since you mention this show and since Georgia O'Keefe is in the show, would you mind reading your poem on Georgia O'Keefe?

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:53.000
Patti Smith: Oh ok. Um, I wrote this many, many years ago. Probably around 1970.

00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:57.000
David C. Ward: It comes with a picture that we were unable to borrow.

00:24:57.000 --> 00:25:06.000
Patti Smith: But, uh, I wrote this in 1971 I believe. And, uh, she was still alive.

00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:27.000
Patti Smith: And what drew me to write it is, um, a friend of mine, John McKendry, who was the curator of the Met at the time, had gone to visit her and I said "well what does she do now?" and he said "well she, for one thing she's always, you know, got a stick and, you know, killing snakes that are on the property."

00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:29.000
David C. Ward: Who wouldn't.

00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:38.000
Patti Smith: Georgia O'Keefe/ Great lady painter/ What she do now?/ She goes out with a stick/ and kills snakes

00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:51.000
Patti Smith: Georgia O'Keefe/ All life still/ Cow Skull/ Bull Skull, skull/ No bull shit/ pyrite pyrite/ she's no fool/ She started out pretty/ Pretty, pretty girl

00:25:51.000 --> 00:26:05.000
Patti Smith: Georgia O'Keefe/ Until she had her fill/ painted desert/ flower cactus/ hawk and head mule/ choral water color/ red coral reef/ been around forever/ Georgia O'Keefe

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:21.000
Patti Smith: Great lady painter/ What she do now?/ Go and beat the desert/ stir dust bowl/ go and beat the desert/ snake skin skull/ go and beat the desert/ all life still.

00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:27.000
David C. Ward: Thank you.

00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:39.000
David C. Ward: You have, you have another poem, that's longer and grimmer, where you talk about Jackson Pollock's death as a work of art. And, to be honest, I, I have trouble with that. Could you...?

00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:56.000
Patti Smith: Uh, well that's a diff... that's a difficult poem. What that is is actually, its not so much about Jackson Pollock, it's really a, um, it's a meditation on Robert Bresson's movie Au Hasard, Au Hasard Balthazar.

00:26:56.000 --> 00:27:02.000
Patti Smith: And, uh, it...it...it's sort of uh, it's difficult to break down.

00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:06.000
Patti Smith: But in a part of it, it talks about Jackson Pollock.

00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:23.000
Patti Smith: Um. It says "from his mad wrist spin us, we're all children of Jackson Pollock." You know we're all children of like the, the fusion of uh, of uh, mind and motion of uh Jackson Pollock.

00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:25.000
Patti Smith: But it talks about, I think you are talking about the

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:26.000
David C. Ward: Yes

00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:33.000
Patti Smith: It talks about, it says that he is, uh, um, again, oh uh, artist and murderer, Jackson...

00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:34.000
David C. Ward: Yes

00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:40.000
Patti Smith: Well, yes I wrote that as, again, as a young girl, I loved Jackson Pollock. Uh, Um.

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:50.000
Patti Smith: But that, I stepped away and looked at what he did at the end of his life. He, um uh. And I got it from a, uh, Frank O'Hara poem.

00:27:50.000 --> 00:28:05.000
Patti Smith: First bunny died, and then Jackson. Jackson, I think, who always said there are no accidents, just brazenly went out, took his life, but he took a young girl down with him.

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:17.000
Patti Smith: So, in that way, he is a murderer. He created a, you know and the debris of that I was imagining it as like Pollock's last work.

00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:29.000
Patti Smith: You know, the blood of this girl and his own being, uh, the drips from their blood being Pollock's last work. It wasn't written with any judgement or anything. It was just a meditation.

00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:32.000
David C. Ward: Yeah, you may even be right.

00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:38.000
Patti Smith: Well, it doesn't even matter who's right or wrong. I don't have any judgement of it. It was just a vision.

00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:41.000
David C. Ward: What I again, given this, what sense is this sort of duality of your career.

00:28:41.000 --> 00:29:07.000
David C. Ward: I'm thinking, cause its, frankly, been on my mind a bit, the [[??]] show, that on the one hand Pollock, on the other hand Jasper Johns form you, there's the, the element of quite, the the, I mean the picture that we have in the show, Ventriloquism, with the sense of, of of, you know, creating, of speaking with your own voice, develop your own voice in a way which is the, the post abstract expressionist sense of.

00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:26.000
Patti Smith: Well, I mean, I don't know exactly really where we're going will this question. Except if I try to glean something out of it. You know for myself, I've always had an irreverent streak and that's got me in trouble a lot. And it will always get me in trouble.

00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:49.000
Patti Smith: But on the other hand, I also have a classical streak, the other part of me. What do I listen to at night, I listen to Glenn Gould. What do I like to go to, I like to go to the opera. You know, how do I feel about the museum right now, I think that the museum did a beautiful and elegant and bold exhibit and I think that's my main concern, you know.

00:29:49.000 --> 00:30:07.000
Patti Smith: I don't, You know I don't, I can't be pinned down to, and and be expected to think in gonna be all that way. You know and, you know, um, relate to everything that happens as if I was a 22 punk rocker.

00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:28.000
Patti Smith: You know, I'm just, I'm myself, you know, I'm just as, I can be just as obnoxious as I was when I was 20 and I can also be, you know, hopefully a compassionate human being, but I'm not all one or the other. Because as Walt Whitman said, we contain multitudes.

00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:33.000
David C. Ward: Where did, I mean you

00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:45.000
David C. Ward: Where did, I mean you had said, you had said again with the NBA never forget that book, you, where do you see the humanities and the arts going? Where do you...?

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:58.000
Patti Smith: Well I mean I think that, you know, I'm not the, who will decide that is the new generation. I'm not, I'm not a, you know, a sociological visionary.

00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:08.000
Patti Smith: You know, perhaps when I was younger. At this point, its going in places that I probably couldn't even imagine.

00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:16.000
Patti Smith: You know, I cant keep up with the, you know, the technology, the lack of privacy, you know, the blurring of every single line.

00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:40.000
Patti Smith: Uh, the cult of celebrity, I cant keep up with all that. All I can do is just do my work, have faith in new generations that they'll, you know, navigate through all the crap that is being issued. or you know this uh, this um obsession with notoriety, and that they'll go do good work.

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.000
David C. Ward: Um, will you play for us?

00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:46.000
Patti Smith: Um, Yeah. I can do a song.

00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:52.480
Patti Smith: Is it time already?

00:31:56.000 --> 00:32:13.000
Patti Smith: Oh just sit there, I mean I'm not much of a. You can just sit there. We'll just.
David C. Ward: Ok, oh.
Patti Smith: I don't really have the proper technology, but that's ok.

00:32:13.000 --> 00:34:07.000
Patti Smith: Um, so uh, this little song is a lit, a song I writ when I was, um, feeling unappreciated, was before I won the national book award. [[laughter]] And uh, but at the same time as I was feeling a little down, you know, my mind was already computing all the, you know, thing, ways in which I'm lucky. And one is, is this thing, I like the way you talk about it, this flow. I have had, you know, you know, I've had the, the desire to work, to produce, to write, to think, to explore, since I was very young child and that's its own reward. So, I thought about William Blake, and how this man, with all his gifts and everything he gave to us, uh, was also, a um, a victim of the industrial revolution. Here he was, uh, such a beautiful engraver, hand-colorer, doing the beautiful books, one by one, songs of innocence and songs of experience and on and on. At a time when the printing press is invented, and they can do thousands. And he becomes obsolete almost overnight. So, William Blake the poet, the painter, the activist, um, uh, the engraver was nearly forgotten in his lifetime. Had very little success and died poverty stricken. But he maintained his vision, he did his work and he did it with, uh, a certain amount of joy to his last breath. So, I think he's a very good example.

00:34:07.000 --> 00:34:16.000
{MUSIC}

00:34:16.000 --> 00:36:34.390
Patti Smith: [[SINGING]] In my Blakean year, I was so disposed toward the mission yet unclear. Advancing pole by pole. Fortune breathed into my ear obey the simple code. When road is paved in gold, when road is just a road. In my Blakean year, such a woe was schism. The pain in my existence was not as I envisioned. Boots that tramp from track to track, worn down to the sole. When road was paved in gold, when road was just a road. In my Blakean year, temptation, yeah the hiss. Just a shallow spear, roamed with cowardice. Brace yourself for bitter flack for a life divine. A labyrinth of riches never shall unwind. The tears that bind the pilgrim sack are stitched into the Blakean back. So, throw off your stupid cloak, embrace all that you fear. Cuz joy will concur all despair

00:36:37.000 --> 00:37:24.000
PATTI SMITH: [[singing with acoustic guitar accompaniment]] Blakean year. So throw off your stupid cloak, Embrace all that you fear. 'Cause joy will conquer all despair, In my Blakean year. In my Blakean year. In my Blakean year. [[applause]]

00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:27.000
[[speaking]] Thank you.

00:37:27.000 --> 00:37:33.000
DAVID C. WARD: And I think, we'll close on that lovely note. We have time for questions.

00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:45.000
Uhhm, we don't have mics, so if you don't mind me repeating the question. Also, please try to put your question in the form of a question. [[laughter]]

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.000
And I think we need the house lights 'cause I can't see any hands.

00:37:49.000 --> 00:37:55.000
Or maybe there are no questions??
PATTI SMITH: Anybody have a question?
DAVID C. WARD: Come on! Yeah. Well, you pick 'em, Patti.
PATTI SMITH: OK. Right there.

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.000
AUDIENCE #1: Ah, I really like the story--
DAVID C. WARD: Could you stand up, Sir?

00:37:59.000 --> 00:38:11.000
AUDIENCE #1: I really like the stories you have about the Chelsea Hotel. And I really like the stories you have about Harry Smith — who was a great folklorist, and one should know about — but

00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:24.000
I wonder if you could tell a little bit about what Harry Smith [[?]] knew about folklorist — not about how he was always cadging money, but, you know, that the art that he helped us learn about—

00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:47.000
PATTI SMITH: Well, Harry had such a diverse, um, field of knowledge, and really, in all the time I spent with Harry we talked mostly about alchemy, and magic, and, except sometimes he would play tapes for me, that he had made, that no one had heard yet;

00:38:47.000 --> 00:39:03.000
uh, I mentioned he played me a little tape of a song done by a girl who said she had been Jesse James' girlfriend. And he had Kiowa Indian rituals. But, he just, we just listened to them —

00:39:03.000 --> 00:39:27.000
you know, I experienced with Harry, and had adventures with Harry, but um, I wasn't, like a student or anything, so I couldn't really — someone else could talk to you about, all of, you know, you know more, you know uh, musicology, and things like that, who spent— 'cause Harry,

00:39:27.000 --> 00:39:39.570
everybody has different stories; some people can say I learned everything about the blues from Harry, or I learned everything about string figures from Harry, and uh, me and Harry spent a lot of time on magic.

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:51.000
[[laughter]]
Patti Smith: Oh, what, he just wanted to know what I learned from Harry Smith.

00:39:51.000 --> 00:39:58.000
David C. Ward: Sorry, my bad, that was my job.
Patti Smith: But I'll, OK. —— Next time.
David C. Ward: Yes, I know, failed that!

00:39:58.000 --> 00:40:00.000
Patti Smith: Yes?

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:02.000
Patti Smith: Yes.
David C. Ward: Yes.

00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:10.000
Unknown: Hi, um— First of all, I'm so happy that you have received the honor that deserves you.

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:13.000
Patti Smith: Oh, thank you.

00:40:13.000 --> 00:40:18.000
Unknown: You know, like many people in this room, we´ve been in love with you since the 70s, and, uh, we respect all of your work.

00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:20.000
Patti Smith: Thank you.

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:35.000
Unknown: Now, having a 22-year-old artist daughter, um, I'm wondering if you have any ideas, or uh, you know what, what artists can do today because it's a whole different world in the art scene; you know they can't go to New York or—

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:38.000
David C. Ward: ——Sure they can.——
Unknown: —it's very expensive and so—

00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:53.000
Patti Smith: Well—
David C. Ward: Just to, Just to repeat the question— this is a follow-on from my last question to Patti which was with the arts today and how you can make your way in them, um, although that little white purse probably has to have about three hundred dollars in it.

00:40:53.000 --> 00:41:05.000
[[laughter]]
Patti Smith: Well, I mean, I, when, uh— Don't forget I went to New York City looking for a job - not to, not just, you know, um, to fulfill my dreams as an artist—

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:18.000
Patti Smith: —I went there because there was employment at the time, but really I would tell anyone that, especially a young person, what they should be interested in is the evolution of their work.

00:41:18.000 --> 00:41:28.000
Patti Smith: You know, it doesn't matter where they're working. You don't have to be in New York City, you can be in Detroit, Philadelphia, Newark. You can be here, any, you know, you can be, go to Europe!

00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:41.000
Patti Smith: It doesn't matter where you are, um, unless you're trying to build a scene, um, and maybe that would be more important, but the important, real important thing is just to focus on work.

00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:50.000
Patti Smith: I talk to people all the time and they seem so, you know, "Should I get a manager?", "Should I get an agent?", "Where can I go to get a gallery?" and you know—

00:41:50.000 --> 00:42:02.000
Patti Smith: —First of all, the, it's, it's your motivation-- what you wanna do, what you wanna give people, what you have to say, how you can develop your skills and um,

00:42:02.000 --> 00:42:12.000
Patti Smith: I mean, I'm 63 years old and I'm still learning, you know, there's a lotta, uh, it's, it's work, hard work, and the first thing one shouldn't, should—

00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:20.000
Patti Smith: —the last thing one should be worrying about is how they're gonna get famous, how they're gonna get a record deal, how they're gonna get in a gallery.

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:25.000
Patti Smith: The first thing is just developing your work into something worthy

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:28.000
David C. Ward: What are you working on now?

00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:29.000
Patti Smith: Me?
David C. Ward: Yeah.

00:42:29.000 --> 00:42:32.000
Patti Smith: Um, making a record, writin' uh, writin'.

00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:39.480
David C. Ward: Writin'.
Audience: [[laughter]]
Patti Smith: And uh taking photographs, drawing, um, you know I'm always working, always doing something.

00:42:42.000 --> 00:42:45.000
David C. Ward: --in the middle

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:53.000
{Unknown Speaker} Note the song captures the supernatural ecstasy of feeling in love. Like the song "Dancing Barefoot"
Patti Smith: Oh, thank you.

00:42:53.000 --> 00:42:56.000
{Unknown Speaker} I've been entranced with that song all of my whole life.
Patti Smith: Thank you.

00:42:56.000 --> 00:43:02.000
{Unknown Speaker} Just describe for me [[inaudible]]
David C. Ward: How do you want to play it?
Patti Smith: Um [[laughter]]

00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:14.000
Patti Smith: Well, he, uh, he has asked about my song "Dancing Barefoot." It's very interesting that you should ask about that because I'm writing a major piece that is, uh,

00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:27.000
that song is inspiring a very big piece, but to bring it down quickly, "Dancing Barefoot" I wrote in response to--

00:43:27.000 --> 00:43:44.000
It has three levels. One is to the people because I wrote it, part of it, to the people. Um, and it's about communication with the people as a performer.

00:43:44.000 --> 00:44:00.000
Another level is communication with God, my Creator. And another level, the most, probably the most prominent thing, is it was a love song to my late husband, Fred Sonic Smith.

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:10.000
And so when it says "Could it be he's taken over me?" that's about him.

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:15.000
[[Applause]]

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:23.000
David C. Ward: Yes, in there. {Unknown Speaker} Um, I'd just like to thank you for having such an impact on me and a lot of people at my school. I'm in a club that promotes student action.

00:44:23.000 --> 00:44:31.000
And I was wondering what your feelings were about the controversial decision with the exhibit upstairs [[??]]
David C. Ward: Oh.

00:44:31.000 --> 00:44:33.000
Patti Smith: I think that it's overblown--
David C. Ward: Now just--
Patti Smith: It's okay.

00:44:33.000 --> 00:44:40.000
David C. Ward: No I was just going to repeat it for the--
Patti Smith: Well, she wants to--sorry, go ahead
David C. Ward: No, go ahead. [[laughter]]

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:48.000
Patti Smith: I'm sorry.
David C. Ward: Um, the removal of the [[??]] video, um--
Patti Smith: Well, I think probably it brought-- [[Audience Laughter]]

00:44:48.000 --> 00:45:01.000
it brought more attention to the video than it probably would have gotten in the first place. So, I think that--
David C. Ward: That wasn't our intention. [[Audience Laughter]]

00:45:01.000 --> 00:45:16.000
Patti Smith: I, I, I really, I think it's more humorous than anything I don't think that it's-- You know, I read somewhere where someone compared it to what happened to the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit in Cincinnati.

00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:26.000
There's no comparing the two issues. They shut down Robert's exhibit. They slandered him as a human being. They called him a pedophile.

00:45:26.000 --> 00:45:39.000
David C. Ward: Right.
Patti Smith: And he wasn't alive, of course, to defend himself. I think that really this snafu that we're in the middle of

00:45:39.000 --> 00:45:54.000
it's almost, you know, it's almost like a-- this overreaction of religions towards any examination of what they think is proper.

00:45:54.000 --> 00:46:08.000
And it's really ridiculous because most art I mean from [[??]] to Mexican Retablos are much more shocking than this stupid little plastic crucifix with ants crawling on it.

00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:12.000
I imagine-- I know I'm going off the track but I've thought about this.
David C. Ward: No, it's fine.

00:46:12.000 --> 00:46:23.000
Patti Smith: I was imagining Jesus coming back and looking at this and embracing the ants--[[Audience Laughter]]-- and being appalled by the crucifix.

00:46:23.000 --> 00:46:33.000
[[Audience Laughing and Applauding]]

00:46:33.000 --> 00:46:43.000
Patti Smith: And I have to say we can't forget the Smithsonian is a-- you know it receives federal funding. If the Smithsonian lost their funding,

00:46:43.000 --> 00:46:53.000
hundreds and hundreds of people, I believe, would be out of work. We would lose such an important institution.

00:46:53.000 --> 00:47:06.000
I think, you know, whether it's all sort of dumb. The Smithsonian has done a beautiful job. This exhibition is so strong. Is so beautiful. Is so diverse. And so elegant.

00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:20.000
I was just nearly moved to tears by it and I don't think it should be clouded by this one issue that is unfortunate.

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:27.000
And really--
David C. Ward: Let me just say a heartfelt thank you [[Audience Laughter and Applause]]

00:47:27.000 --> 00:47:44.000
Patti Smith: Well, I just, I'm grateful for the exhibition. I also think it's interesting you know 10 years ago, or more or less, there would be a public outcry because of all the male schmoozing in the pictures.

00:47:44.000 --> 00:47:55.000
Or whatever, but there was nothing of that. What are people worried about? I mean, ants on a Crucifix, I mean I think that shows some progress in our country.

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.770
[[Audience Laughing]]

00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:12.000
David C. Ward: Evolution of religious views in what God means to Patti Smith

00:48:12.000 --> 00:48:13.000
[[laughter]]

00:48:13.000 --> 00:48:16.000
Patti Smith: well, lets, lets, [[cross talk]] sum that up in two minutes.

00:48:16.000 --> 00:48:17.000
[[laughter]]

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David C. Ward: well, we've got ten.

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Patti Smith: Well, I couldn't really express what god means to me in such a short period of time. Uh, since you know it's part of my whole being.

00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:58.000
Patti Smith: But I received the idea of God, first, from my mother and prayer and then religion came. I went to bible school, I was a Jehovah Witness till I was twelve. I studied various faiths, I've looked into all faiths, I've been to all kinds of churches. I loved going in a church and sitting.

00:48:58.000 --> 00:49:31.000
Patti Smith: Well, I've chosen not to have a religion. I've chosen to go back to the original moment where my mother gave me God and telling me of God and gave me prayer. And that's all I need. I do like to go into churches, especially when I'm on the road. You know churches are so beautiful, if, I'm certain Christ would agree, a bit material, but I find them beautiful.

00:49:31.000 --> 00:49:44.000
Patti Smith: You know some of our greatest art has been committed for the church, so I like to go in churches and light a candle or a temple or a mosque, but its more aesthetic really.

00:49:44.000 --> 00:49:54.000
Patti Smith: And I don't need any specific religion to have a relationship with God and to pray and that's part of my daily routine.

00:49:54.000 --> 00:49:57.000
David C. Ward: Somebody way in the back.

00:49:57.000 --> 00:50:01.000
Man In Audience: Can you tell us the inspiration for your song Radio Baghdad?

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Patti Smith: Yes, he's asking about the Radio Baghdad, which was on a record-Trampin'

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Patti Smith: My, of course, I was, like many of you, protested against the Bush Administration going into Iraq

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:32.000
Patti Smith: And I was just devastated when we went into Iraq and I wanted to respond to it not only as a human being but as an artist

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Patti Smith: But I decided the way to do it would not be from a political view point but a more humanistic view point

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Patti Smith: So I went in the recording studio with my band I had no specific lyrics, we had a riff, my guitarist, Oliver Ray, had written a guitar riff

00:50:52.000 --> 00:50:58.000
Patti Smith: And I said just improvise and trust me and follow me

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Patti Smith: And I imagined being a mother in Baghdad trying to sing her children to sleep as the Americans were bombing.
Patti Smith: I imagined, what tried to imagine being a mother myself, what that would have felt like, you know trying to you know, you know, you know wanting her children to feel safe but at the same time when bombs were falling, so its really from the point of view of a mother. And that's where the impulse came to improvise it.

00:51:43.000 --> 00:51:45.000
David C. Ward: yes?

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Audience : As you've written about Robert Mapplethorpe,

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I'm wondering if you feel that your story has been told through your work?

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or do you feel there's someone out there who will write your story in the way you've written his?

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David C. Ward: I was going to ask and actually close proceedings by asking are you going to write about yourself.

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Patti Smith: Well, I love to...I am writing another book already.

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I started...once I finished that book, I couldn't stop writing, I just kept going,

00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:29.000
and because my mind, I so disciplined myself to write and think about, you know, all of these times.

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I have a certain time period that I would like to write about from a different point of view,

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just kids with completely filtered, as much as I could it was filtered through Robert and I, because that was my task.

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But I would like to write a book even sort of in the same time period, from my own point of view

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that really is, you know, my thoughts, my thoughts of being a girl, my thoughts in being a young artist, my thoughts in writing the songs that I wrote

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but I like writing about when I was younger, especially childhood. It's --

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I don't think that I'll write a whole lot after a certain period because it's just too close to me, but I can't imagine really that anybody could

00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:33.000
write my story past a certain age except maybe my daughter, who knows me best.

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David C. Ward: Well, we'll have her when she does that. [[audience laughter]] Again, Patti Smith, thank you, it's been a pleasure.

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Patti Smith: Thank you. [[applause]]