Horses 40

I meant to post this photo taken at The Beacon Theatre on 11/10 sooner, but it felt weird to post about anything at the end of that week in light of the tragedy in Paris, and then I forgot.

A few months after I finished reading Just Kids, tickets went on sale for Patti Smith's Horses 40th anniversary tour. I had no idea -- just absolute perfect timing. I jumped on tickets because my admiration for Just Kids was still very fresh and I wanted to experience Patti's energy live. Plus I didn't know when I might be able to again.

I felt like more of a bystander, observing the way the older people around me were immersed in music they've long been familiar with. I smiled when the elder man two rows ahead of me would raise his fists or signal peace with his two fingers every time he felt especially moved by the beat or lyric of a song. I wondered if he had seen Patti before, and if he had maybe seen her 40 years before, and if it was in New York, and what that must have been like: to see her at the very beginning. Patti Smith is still a fucking rock star in every sense of the word & if I can sing and dance and scream and move the way she does at the age of nearly-70, I'll be a very happy woman.

In the end, we were more alike than not, and gravitated toward each other, however wide the breach.

Just Kids
By Patti Smith

Just Kids is the most beautiful tribute to someone I've ever read. I finished it this morning, and have been thinking about it all day. I listened to Horses for the first time while I made dinner. Just me and my thoughts and the music. It felt appropriate and I loved it in a way I don't think I could have before. I'm sad, but in complete awe. So incredible are the connections human beings can create with one another if they want to, if they're open, if it's meant to be. What a gift that Patti could capture hers with Robert this way to share with others.

"We used to laugh at our small selves, saying that I was a bad girl trying to be good and that he was a good boy trying to be bad. Through the years these roles would reverse, then reverse again, until we came to accept our dual natures. We contained opposing principles, light and dark."
(p. 9)

"Our social differences, however exasperating, were tinged with love and humor. In the end, we were more alike than not, and gravitated toward each other, however wide the breach. We weathered all things, large and small, with the same vigor. To me, Robert and I were irrevocably entwined, like Paul and Elisabeth, the sister and brother in Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles. We played similar games, declared the most obscure object treasure, and often puzzled friends and acquaintances by our indefinable devotion.
He had been chided for denying his homosexuality; we were accused of not being a real couple. In being open about his homosexuality, he feared our relationship would be destroyed.
We needed time to figure out what all of this meant, how we were going to come to terms and redefine what our love was called. I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth."
(p. 200)

On Robert shooting the album cover for Horses:

"The light was already fading. He had no assistant. We never talked about what we would do, or what it would look like. He would shoot it. I would be shot.
I had my look in mind. He had his light in mind. That is all.
Sam's apartment was spartan, all white and nearly empty, with a tall avocado tree by the window overlooking Fifth Avenue. There was a massive prism that refracted the light, breaking it into rainbows cascading on the wall across from a white radiator. Robert placed me by the triangle. His hands trembled slightly as he readied to shoot. I stood.
The clouds kept moving back and forth. Something happened with his light meter and he became slightly agitated. He took a few shots. He abandoned the light meter. A cloud went by and the triangle disappeared. He said, "You know, I really like the whiteness of the shirt. Can you take the jacket off?"
I flung my jacket over my shoulder, Frank Sinatra style. I was full of references. He was full of light and shadow.
"It's back," he said.
He took a few more shots.
"I got it."
"How do you know?"
"I just know."
He took twelve pictures that day.
Within a few days he showed me the contact sheet. "This one has the magic," he said.
When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us."
(pp. 250-251)