I entertain the thought at times that I am making some progress toward emerging from musical illiteracy, but then something comes along to correct that idea. Most recently I was brought back to reality by the discovery of Patti Smith. I would hope I am not the last person on Earth to find her, but I have to admit the possibility.
In my defense I am pretty sure that Patti Smith and I inhabited parallel universes which only intersected a few days ago when I stumbled on a picture of her on the cover of one of her books in which she is arm in arm with the photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. That improbable pairing prompted me to download her book, Just Kids, to my Kindle.
Just a few pages into the book I found that we were both wandering around the streets of New York's East Village in the late 1960s, eating in the same cheap Polish restaurants and searching for a new life vastly different to what we had known up to that point. A few years older than her, I had made it all the way through college and was able to find work pretty easily. She often slept in the street and really lived hand to mouth for a couple years.
Part of my NYC journey was spent in a basement photography school in the Financial District learning the basics of the craft. Patti Smith developed an interest in photography which included a life-long attachment to a Polaroid 250. (One of the polaroids in her Instagram stream shows the Gem Spa at 2nd and Saint Marks which was just a couple blocks from where I lived.) From there our paths diverged significantly. My path led me through San Francisco and Idaho to New Mexico. Patti Smith, after the rocky beginning mostly stayed in NYC, always knowing who she was and working toward achieving fame as a writer, poet, artist and musician.
I thought Just Kids was excellent and I finished it in a couple days. Her Instagram stream is also worth a visit; it was recently turned into a book as well.
