2024/075: Just Kids — Patti Smith

I was thinking what a magical portal this lobby was when the heavy glass door opened as if swept by wind and a familiar figure in a black and scarlet cape entered. It was Salvador Dalí. He looked around the lobby nervously, and then, seeing my [stuffed] crow, smiled. He placed his elegant, bony hand atop my head and said: “You are like a crow, a gothic crow.”
“Well,” I said to Raymond [the crow], “just another day at the Chelsea.” [p. 126]

Being a great fan of Patti Smith, I've owned this book for years in different formats, but only now felt the urge to read it. Patti Smith's account of life in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, is a fascinating read: she seems to have met everyone who was anyone, from Lou Reed to Salvador Dalí, though her interactions in these pre-fame years are sometimes comically slight. (On Grace Slick: '“Hello,” I said, noticing I was taller. “Hello yourself,” she said.')

Smith and Mapplethorpe lived rent-check to rent-check (the book is a litany of shoplifting, usually for art supplies but also for food) but both were determined to be true to their art, though Smith was focussed on drawing and poetry rather than music. I found the chapters covering their residence in the Chelsea Hotel most fascinating, as a window into the legendary community of that building. Also intriguing, though sometimes painful, was Smith's account of Mapplethorpe's struggle with his own sexuality. Smith comes across as quite naive in many ways, but also ready to accept those she met who didn't immediately fit into her world view -- junkies, homosexuals, drag queens, S&M practitioners. She and Mapplethorpe were friends as well as lovers, and in some ways he's the focus of the book.

And how did they get together? "I noticed a guy lurking around, watching me. He had a beard and was wearing a pinstripe shirt and one of those jackets with suede patches on the elbows. The supervisor introduced us. He was a science-fiction writer and he wanted to take me out to dinner... I was conjuring lines of escape when he suggested we go up to his apartment for a drink...I saw a young man approaching. It was as though a small portal of the future opened, and out stepped [Robert Mapplethorpe]... "I need help," I blurted. "Will you pretend you're my boyfriend?" "Sure..."[pp.36-7] Who was that mysterious masked bearded SF author? I think we should be told.

And the artist soul shines through:

I understood that what matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind comes a light, life-charged. [p. 62]