Patti Smith Dream of Life

My mother recorded the PBS POV documentary Patti Smith Dream of Life for me (brilliantly filmed by Stephen Sebring), and we watched it together last night and this morning at her house.

It was incredibly beautiful, and gave this wonderful, disjointed, impressionistic composite of Patti Smith as a consummate artist. I really enjoyed it. I'm very tired right now, and don't feel like writing, so I'm just going to copy and paste what PBS says about the work:

"Shot over 11 years by acclaimed fashion photographer Steven Sebring, Patti Smith: Dream of Life is a remarkable plunge into the life, art, memories and philosophical reflections of the legendary rocker, poet and artist. Sometimes dubbed the "godmother of punk" — a designation justified by clips of her early rage-fueled performances — Smith was much more than that when she broke through with her 1975 debut album, Horses. A poet and visual artist as well as a rocker, she befriended and collaborated with some of the brightest lights of the American counterculture, an often testosterone-driven scene to which she brought a swagger and fierceness all her own.

Through performance footage, interviews, poems, paintings, photographs and Smith's voice-over reminiscences, Dream of Life reveals a complicated, charismatic personality wrestling with the paradoxes of being an artist in America and of being a woman in a male-dominated music scene.

Smith also wrestles with the tragedies — the deaths of her husband and brother — that brought her back to New York and to performing. Layering Smith's words over innovative camera techniques, the film explores how one woman discovered herself through music, how she survived tragedy, how she raised two children and how she endeavors in a quest for peace, for herself and for the world.

In telling Smith's story, Sebring plumbs the history of several important cultural movements. Smith's collaborations and close friendships with poets William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and musicians Bob Dylan and Michael Stipe reveal the links that make her a bridge between the Beats, the punk movement and musicians of today. The colorful moments in Dream of Life are plenty: Smith as an angelic street urchin, reciting "A Prayer for New York" in footage from 1975; a jam session with her 1970s collaborator, playwright Sam Shepard; Smith reading an Allen Ginsberg poem at Ginsberg's funeral; and Smith hanging out on the beach with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Just Kids

I came to Patti Smith early, but also slowly.

In 8th grade something drew me to a copy of her poems, Babel. I think it was at Colliseum Books. There was a picture of her on the cover that seemed empirically cool. I just felt something. I loved the poems and did an English class project on the book. I also bought a copy of the album Horses. Unfortunately, I found it weird and difficult to listen to. In high school I would listen to it occasionally, but could really only deal with "Redondo Beach" and "Kimberly".

Then when I was a sophomore in college a friend made me listen to Wave, saying that it reminded her of me.

I was transported. Elevated. Hooked. Patti Smith forever. The more I exposed myself to her, the more amazed I was with the brilliance of her art. As I blogged here, Dream of Life is one of the most beautiful "documentaries" ever made.

So I've been meaning to read Just Kids since it came out at the beginning of this year to rave reviews.

I gobbled it up on my Kindle. I have to say, between my adoration and the amazing things I had heard about it, I was slightly disappointed. Just Kids isn't as artistically beautiful or successful as I had hoped. It's a very, very good memoir of a unique and historically important friendship. A portrait of two young artists in the midst of an historic and wonderful cultural moment. The downtown music and art scene in NY in the late 60s and 70s. It's especially interesting in the way it chronicles the development of Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith as young artists. It's a good read. In a way kind of an important read.

But for the most part the prose is kind of flat. A memoir of her intense, romantic and artistic friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, the two brilliant youths at the heart of the story always seemed somewhat remote to me. Something was missing.

Still, in spite of not loving it, I loved it. I was bawling as I read the last few pages chronicling Mapplethorpe's illness and death.

She ends:
"Why can't I write something that would awake the dead?That pursuit is what burns me most deeply. I got over the loss of his desk and chair, but never the desire to produce a string of words more precious than the emeralds of Cortes. Yet I have a lock of his hair, a handful of his ashes, a box of his letters, a goatskin tambourine. And in the folds of the faded violet tissue a necklace, two violet plaques etched in Arabic, strung with black and silver threads, given to me by the boy who loved Michelangelo."

Hoagland: Application for Release from the Dream

Tony Hoagland's Application for Release from the Dream is a soft and sad collection of poems, observing and reflecting on yearning and loss. I loved reading these. They were comforting in their beauty and their gentleness. There is wit and bitterness here, and there is also love, kindness, and regret. A wonderful book by a poet I very much admire.

From the last stanzas of "Crossing Water":

Each time I make the trip, I get the strange idea that this
is what is waiting at the end of life --

long stalks slanting in the breeze, then straightening --
flowers, loose-petaled as memory, grey

as the aftertaste of grief.

Tonight, I'll lie in bed and feel the day exhaling me
as part of its long sigh into the dark,

knowing that I have no plan,
knowing that I have no chance of getting there.

I will remember how those flowers swayed and then held still 
for me to look at them.

And here's some favorite lines from "Controlled Substances":

Like money,
         which teaches you to strangle time,

or the narcoleptic trance connected with a small lit screen?

Waking Life

Okay, I didn't finish this movie (Richard Linklater's Waking Life). But I didn't not like it either. It is a very self-consciously philosophical film, where every single character offers their own existential perspective on reality, consciousness, death, God, free will, etc. And they may all be part of an alienated youth's lucid dream. You must have a liberal arts background to get this movie at all. It is very smart and interesting, with tons and tons of great lines. And it looks great, if you like contemporary animation, which I do.

But it was also very boring to me! I felt like I would rather read it. Or skip it entirely. But I definitely didn't want to listen to it. So I turned it off three quarters of the way through.

"Seems like everyone is sleep-walking through their waking state, or wake-walking through their dreams. Either way they're not going to get much out of it." Whatever.

Or, and better: "On really romantic evenings of Self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion."

You're afraid to dive into the plasma pool, aren't you?

I saw The Fly when it first came out in the 80s and sort of remember thinking it was ridiculous. But, back then, I had trouble with movies if they weren't "realistic" -- so there was basically no chance that I would like a movie where a man gets his molecular structure "fused" with a fly's during a "teletransport" experiment.

Less principled in middle age, I have, at times at least, an increased ability to suspend disbelief. Of course The Fly is ridiculous, I realize, but I can move on from there and not be paralyzed by my own self-righteousness.

So, I didn't hate it this time around. I had completely forgotten how gross it was: arms broken with bones sticking out, ears falling off, Goldblum's face turning to an oozy mess, watery white vomit expelled from his mouth, pulling his own nails off with an expression of horrified wonder. I love the ideas Cronnenberg plays with, the biomorphic imagery, the invaded body, the false or shedding exterior. In The Fly, there is a dream sequence where Gina Davis gives birth to a giant maggot; at the end, Goldblum's shell is cracked open from inside by the metamorphosed giant insect. I was fascinated by the character's transformation and disintegration. At one point it seemed to mirror the normal aging and dying process that seems to be one loss after another. Goldblum watches his body fall apart, in a drastically speeded up and embellished version of what we all might go through in one way or another. We will still feel exactly the same inside, we will still be us, but our body will begin to decompose before our disbelieving eyes.

I have to say, Jeff Goldblum's eyes seemed more bug-like and creepy BEFORE the transformation. I mean, he was kind of weirdly insect life or not quite human from the beginning (I posted before and after transportation pictures so you can see what I mean).

Being Elmo

Last night I watched Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey. This sweet, simple documentary about the man behind the famous Muppet is incredibly heartwarming.

Kevin Clash fell in love with Sesame Street as a nine year old when the show first aired in 1969, and became entranced with the Muppets. He just loved them so much and wanted nothing more than to create them and work with them.

He began making his own puppets, doing local puppet shows for neighborhood children, and never abandoned his hobby but instead became more and more immersed in it, developing his talents. As a teenager he managed to get work doing puppets on a local children's show, and from there his career took off.

When he began work on Sesame Street he felt that he had fulfilled his life's dream. And then he had the opportunity to develop a character for the little known small red Muppet. He brought love to the character, transforming Elmo into the most beloved Muppet and a cultural icon.

Being Elmo has wonderful early footage of the first children's shows, as well as of the Clash family, but what makes Being Elmo so special is the personality of Kevin Clash. He is such a sweet likeable man that his success fills one with naches.

Black Wave

 Michelle Tea's novel Black Wave revisits some familiar terrain of her memoirs. San Francisco in the 90s, queer arty druggy scenes. Her writing is insightful and funny and self reflexive. Even though nothing like my life, it is relatable some how. I would have loved this book if it had remained in this register. But something happens, there is the apocalypse. You see the inklings of this throughout, the environmental degradation. Little bleak background details. But when the character moves to LA, it ramps up. And the book opens up. There is a long end section where people retreat into a dream world and it so beautiful and sad and expansive. I loved this book.