Ask the Author: Patti Smith
Answered Questions (16)
Patti Smith
Becoming a parent and being responsible for one’s own blood, a tiny helpless thing shifts our place in our universe. We find we are no longer in the center and our self-preoccupation forcibly dissipates. That is a good thing. One can maintain their ideals, their artistic vision, and sense of self while still relinquishing one’s place in the center. That is how we evolve. That is how we develop a sense of humanity, placing others before ourselves.
Patti Smith
I’ve always been fascinated with photography from a very young age. The photographs of Irving Penn in the late fifties Vogue magazines fascinated me as did the Victorian photographers and the great 19th century amateurs. I don’t remember my earliest photograph but I took pictures of Robert Mapplethorpe’s hands in 1969.
Patti Smith
I would have coffee with Roberto Bolano and talk about 2666. Although we would have to magically give me the gift of speaking and comprehending Spanish.
Patti Smith
I did meet Murakami, and I asked him the things I wanted to ask, but his answers were so enigmatic that I am still trying to decipher them.
Patti Smith
No I don’t. I think having a remarkable imagination can be even more valuable. The imagination, unlike real life, has no bounds.
Patti Smith
The Musical Brain by Cesar Aira
I am rereading The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. Which I never cease to love.
I am rereading The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. Which I never cease to love.
Patti Smith
I want to return to Ghent and reexamine the Ghent Altarpiece. I want to go to Algeria to visit the grave of Isabelle Eberhardt. I want to go to the Faroe Islands, off the coast of Norway where Ingmar Bergman shot Through A Glass Darkly.
Patti Smith
It was absolutely intentional to write a book that had no agenda, no plot, and no external expectation. I just began writing, and let the book unfold as if by its own will. I had very strict outlines for Just Kids, and undeniable responsibility to the subjects, the city, and the time frame. I wanted to be free of those constraints.
Patti Smith
I rely seventy percent on journal entries. I write by hand in my journals and then transcribe then into my laptop, embellishing the entries with dreams, anecdotes, or expanding upon what has been written and supplying what I call “connective tissue,” which threads it all together.
Patti Smith
Writing lyrics is a more collaborative responsibility, as they are serving music, composer, and the public in a very direct way. Lyrics, because of their form, need to be reined in. Hopefully accessible to the listener. Writing on the whole is a more solitary pursuit, research, thought, mulling, rewriting, all done on one’s own, with the main responsibility to the work itself. It is the way the writer communicates from a very insular place to the outside world. In the end, the way they are related is that one writes songs and books to inspire, entertain, or incite the reader or the listener. I also think that since I work in both genres that even subconsciously rhythm and a lyric feel enters my prose.
Patti Smith
I can’t really say. I never feel a loss for creative energy, though
as I get older I have to monitor how I use my energy to my best advantage. Energy is precious and I feel its important not to waste it.
as I get older I have to monitor how I use my energy to my best advantage. Energy is precious and I feel its important not to waste it.
Patti Smith
I find myself reading and rereading Roberto Bolano, Murikami, Cesar Aires, and Sebald. Though sadly, Sebald and Bolano have passed, they are my contemporaries, two of the writers I most admire.
Two wonderful books by authors I had not known of really struck me.
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin
The Blind Contessa’s New Machine by Carey Wallace.
Two wonderful books by authors I had not known of really struck me.
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin
The Blind Contessa’s New Machine by Carey Wallace.
Patti Smith
The process is the aspect that belongs solely to the writer. The hours of solitude, staring at the empty page, and filling it with words that successfully convey what needs to be said. The creative impulse made flesh, so to speak. The rest belongs to the reader.
Patti Smith
Henning Mankell’s inspector-detective Kurt Wallandar series has been my most recent read. Wallander has a flawed genius, drinks too much, listens to Maria Callas, is dysfunctional at home, obsessive on the job. The perfect detective. The BBC television series based around the books are beautifully produced and Kenneth Branagh truly grasps the inner and exterior world of his character. I’m drawn to the way the genre traces the inner mechanism of the detective, the way his mind works, and his ability to get into the skin of his suspect by having an equal comprehension of how his suspect’s mind works as well. A lot like writing. I like watching how an intricate puzzle is unraveled and solved.
Patti Smith
It was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. One of the main characters, Jo March, is a headstrong tomboyish writer. I identified with her at a very young age, and was inspired that she wrote. It made me feel like that was something I could also do, to merge imagination and energy within the written word. From then on I have always written. Even if only a few lines a day.
Patti Smith
I think it may be easier to speak of how they are dissimilar. The most important difference is that albums are, in my experience, a collaborative process. Although I have written all of my own lyrics, I am usually dependent on my musical partners to magnify and interpret lyrics I have written or vice-versa. Much of our work is improvisational, where we form music and the trajectory of the language simultaneously. Recording brings into play technology and technicians, production and performance. Making an album is a more visceral experience, hoping for a more immediate response from the listener. Writing a book is a more solitary and individual experience.
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Jun 04, 2021 02:35PM · flag