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Transcription: [00:00:00]
[[applause]]

[00:00:13]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Hello, everybody.

[00:00:16]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Thank you all. Good afternoon, my name is David Ward.

[00:00:20]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
I'd like to welcome you all to the National Portrait Gallery for today's program,

[00:00:24]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
sponsored by our education department and in conjunction with our exhibition "Hide Seek."

[00:00:30]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Many of you know the animating spirit of "Hide Seek" is Walt Whitman.

[00:00:36]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
What you may not know is that Walt Whitman is a continual presence in this building.

[00:00:40]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
He was a nurse here during the Civil War,

[00:00:43]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
afterwards he worked in the Interior Department from which position he was fired

[00:00:48]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
for his authorship of that immoral book "Leaves of Grass."

[00:00:54]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
And his presence in the building is made palpable today with our guest.

[00:01:00]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
She contains multitudes.
[[laughter]]

[00:01:05]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
She always sings "The Body Electric." [[whooping]]

[00:01:10]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Poet, artist, rocker, hard rocker, and now memoirist - welcome Patti Smith.
[00:01:17]
[[cheering]]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Thank you

[00:01:29]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
So a national book award, you're getting a ton of respect in your middle age.

[[laughter]]

[00:01:36]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I have no problem with that.

[[laughter]]

[00:01:38]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
So you've adjusted to fame?

[00:01:39]
{SPEAKER name="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;
[00:01:51]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
When I was a teenager, I won Spartan of the Year

[00:01:54]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Wow

[00:01:56]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:02:06]
{SPEAKER name="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,

[00:02:15]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
and I just wanted to start because one of the things that's so great about "Just Kids" is,

[00:02:20]
{SPEAKER name="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

[00:02:28]
{SPEAKER name="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

[00:02:37]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
in South Jersey and didn't have enough for the fare.

[00:02:40]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Well, I um, it was 1967 and I got laid off in Philadelphia from the factory I was working.

[00:02:49]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
There wasn't any work really because the New York shipyard had closed and the Camden, Philly area had no work,

[00:02:56]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
so I just decided to come to New York City and get a job.

[00:03:00]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:03:12]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
And I went into a phone booth, that was before the Ice Ages, they had a phone booth [[laughter]]

[00:03:19]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and um, to call my sister to try and figure out what to do next.

[00:03:25]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:03:37]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
[[towards camera person]] I think we have enough pictures, right? Thanks.

[[applause]]

[00:03:45]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
And um, I went through the moral dilemma of what to do.

[00:03:51]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:04:07]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
But I will say, even though I did that, I have never forgotten my unknown benefactor.

[00:04:14]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I figured it was some girl, God bless her, I am always, I always thank her. I never forget.

[00:04:23]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
As you should.

[00:04:23]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Even though I have no idea what she looked like or anything about her except that she had a white plastic purse.

[00:04:33]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:04:41]
{SPEAKER name="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,

[00:04:50]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
and it seems to me that animating your whole time in New York,

[00:04:56]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
or your career for that matter, is this notion of a flow, a notion of, as you put it,

[00:05:05]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
'I'm a sculptor hacking away, not quite sure what I'm doing.'

[00:05:09]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Like a blind sculptor hacking away, but, well really I think some of it is,

[00:05:15]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I love this little book "The Alchemist" and in "The Alchemist" it says,

[00:05:20]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
one of the most wonderful things, it says-

[00:05:23]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
'that the universe can spire to help the shepherd boy because he maintained the language of enthusiasm.'

[00:05:32]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:05:42]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I just feel like that, like that shepherd boy. I'm always optimistic, I'm always looking for the good to happen

[00:05:50]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and I think that if you keep open like that, you won't be stuck in the mire of your bad luck.

[00:05:58]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
You'll be more lifted up by your good luck.

[00:06:02]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:06:08]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:06:16]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Your poetry and the memoirs seem to me to be existent on opposite ends of a sort of, stylistic scale,

[00:06:23]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
and you say at the end of the memoir,

[00:06:28]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
that you promise that you'd to write about Robert and you fulfilled this promise.

[00:06:32]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Could you just take us through the "why now, how?"

[00:06:36]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Well, Robert, I mean Robert died in March 9th, 1989,

[00:06:42]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and um, early in the morning and March 8th, I spoke to him right before he lost consciousness

[00:06:50]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and we both knew he was dying and I simply said

[00:06:55]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
"What do you want me to do for you? What can I do?".

[00:06:58]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I promised him that I would do as I always did,

[00:07:01]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:07:15]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
He meant our story, starting from when we were 20. Only I can tell it.

[00:07:20]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
So I promised I would but it took me a long time.

[00:07:24]
{SPEAKER name="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,

[00:07:34]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and it was only in recent years that I could totally claim this task.

[00:07:40]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
How did you claim it stylistically though? That's a thing that interests me,

[00:07:46]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
the memoir is such an elegy, it's almost a pastoral,

[00:07:50]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
it contrasts, since I just re-read all of your poems.

[00:07:54]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
I mean your poems are these kind of, shards and fragments,

[00:07:59]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
and the element again of smoothness in the memoir,

[00:08:06]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
I mean it's almost, I have to say it's almost preternatural.

[00:08:10]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Well, I um, I wrote a lot in the 80s when I retired from public life.

[00:08:18]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I didn't publish hardly anything that I was writing continuously, so I was,

[00:08:24]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
you know I had some grasp on writing,

[00:08:29]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
but I wrote this book really, for 2, with 2 reasons.

[00:08:35]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
One of course, to fulfill my promise and the other to give Robert to the people,

[00:08:40]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
to give him as a holistic human being and not just as a dying artist.

[00:08:45]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Right.

[00:08:46]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:08:56]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I wanted to write a book that had, you know, a certain level of craftsmanship that anyone could appreciate,

[00:09:03]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
but also a non-reader would be happy to breeze through.

[00:09:08]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:09:14]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I'm just, it's just more narcissistic, just writing to please myself.

[00:09:19]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
But I wrote the book really, with the reader in mind

[00:09:24]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and trying to create almost like a film for the people, like a little movie.

[00:09:30]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
So I mean you arrived in Manhattan in '67, that kind of precursor year before the terrible year of 1968

[00:09:38]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
and you talk a little bit, briefly about this sort of paranoia that was in the air.

[00:09:43]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
But one of the things, that again, and I guess I'm staying within the initial flow or smoothness is,

[00:09:49]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
the way in which, and I'll be blunt, there's so much death in the memoir. I mean you arrive

[00:09:56]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
and John Coltrane is dead the same month and it goes through the whole series of public and private deaths

[00:10:05]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
how did you? and it's a remarkable achievement , the way you fold those into this narrative it seems to me

{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I think

{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
to be uncanny.

[00:10:16]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:10:23]
{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.

[00:10:31]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
[[Cross Talk]] Right

{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
My mother , you know my mother was obliged to go to the funeral of her father who died young,

[00:10:40]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and then come home and cook food for us and do laundry and and laugh and help us with homework

[00:10:48]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
she always kept things going, she always found you know the happy way the glass being half full instead of half empty,

[00:11:01]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and I think I learned some of that from her.

[00:11:06]
{SPEAKER name="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?

[00:11:13]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
No I like seeing, I'm sorry. [[Laughs]] Just like to, just curious.

[00:11:17]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
So okay Max's Kansas City tell us about Max's Kansas City.

[[laughter]]
[00:11:22]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I'm sorry.

{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Max's Kans-- well were jumping ahead with the the --

[00:11:25]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I interrupted you I'm sorry.

{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}

Nope its fine, feel free.

[00:11:30]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Well uh, Max's Kansas City

{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
[[Cross Talk]] The whole scene

{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
When Robert and I moved to the Chelsea Hotel in 1969,

[00:11:36]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
I had been in Paris most of the spring and summer, Robert had explored Manhattan

[00:11:44]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and had met some of the people in the Warhol scene he had seen Midnight Cowboy.

{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Right.

[00:11:50]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
He was his trajectory was more toward the Warhol scene, and the Warhol scene at least the second generation

[00:11:57]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
was stationed at the, the Max's Kansas City. I wasn't really interested

[00:12:02]

{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Yeah you always seemed to be standing in the corner.
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:12:11]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
You know you could hangout with -- we all hung out together everyone was aspiring to be something to do something

[00:12:19]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and in that way it was, it was great, because everyone had a vision that they were moving toward.

[00:12:26]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
And uh so it was a um it wasn't just a social scene, it was a very creative scene.

[00:12:34]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Well yeah that's again going back to the 67 68 period, that period of sort of the sense of

[00:12:41]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:12:48]
{SPEAKER name="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?

[00:12:57]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Umm

{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Cause there's actually the thing

{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
We bickered, we bickered over the stupidest things. You know like

[00:13:04]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:13:13]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Cause he wanted me to read poetry in public and it was manned by Jim Carol and were getting ready and

[00:13:20]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:13:31]
[[laughter]]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:13:44]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
and he'd say "Patti don't bring that out you're drawing attention to yourself."
[[laughter]]

[00:13:51]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
And I just, you know the things because he was the sort of middle -- I mean he had certain middle class

[00:14:00]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Yeah
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
Especially when it came to table manners and things and I was such, you know, and animal
[[laughter]]

[00:14:07]
{SPEAKER name="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

[00:14:18]
{SPEAKER name="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]]

[00:14:29]
{SPEAKER name="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

[00:14:43]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
there's this continual "Oh Patti!!"
{SPEAKER name="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

[00:15:00]
{SPEAKER name="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]]

[00:15:09]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:15:20]
{SPEAKER name="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]

[00:15:42]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
How was it?
[laughter]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
So was it any good?
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
It was Mexican pot you know so
[laughter]

[00:15:49]
{SPEAKER name="Patti Smith"}
It was fun.
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
You talk you of your sign, your a blue star Venus, um why did he call you China?

[00:15:59]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:16:13]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:16:32]
{SPEAKER name="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