Patti Smith

Today I received in my inbox a missive from Poetic Outlaws, which I subscribe to. Everyday there is a poem or piece of writing from those I admire or those undiscovered. I didn’t know todays poet Julia Vinograd but I liked her poem. I am going to read it aloud and hope it will inspire you to seek her work out. Much gratitude to Poetic Outlaws for introducing an energetic work by a worthy poet.

Today is Brian Jones birthday, a kind of poetic outlaw. There was supposed to be quite a snowstorm in New York, but it petered out. A little ice residue, nothing more. The poet Julia Vinograd liked to drink coffee and write poetry at the Caffe Med on Telegraph Avenue. She died in 2018 at the age of 75, forever blowing bubbles.

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This is link to the cathedral website, with info on the live stream. People can watch it here or, I guess. on YouTube.https://www.stjohndivine.org/calendar/42468/celebration-of-the-life-of-joan-didion

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I recorded my improv on this beautiful track by REM on the death of my great friend, the German artist, filmmaker, theatre director and political activist, Christoph Marie Schlingensief. He was a genius and a genie, only fifty years old. There is much to be said of him today, on his passing day. But I will let this track suffice, in remembering that boy of Berlin.

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More pictures to come…..

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London

Morning coffee.  Toast, olive oil, porridge and banana smoothie, side of beans, berries. Rehearsal went well.  We are the quartet configuration that is, in actuality as my son says: a power trio with a singer. With our sound and monitor techs Darrell and Pete.

It’s a small set up and everyone takes two or three roles. Getting us from place to place Setting up their own equipment and taking care of me.

As I was just writing, a very young girl, maybe twelve, asked me for an autograph.  But not on paper but on an iPad with a stylus.  I can’t imagine how this is saved.  I offered to write it on paper as well, but she didn’t want it and was happy to have it on the iPad.  Then she ran off, literally ran.

It’s always touching when a young person shows interest in you. And then it occurred to me that she is the age of many of the children who were shot dead in Texas by a fellow teenage boy.  Eighteen children.  Eighteen smiling, mischievous, challenged beings just having shed one cocoon, one skin or another.  Cut down completely.

In our British concerts we remember the children, and the 25th anniversary of the passing of the poet and activist Allen Ginsberg and Jeff Buckley.

In Cambridge I visited the wild meadow at Kings and the grave of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The scent of the wild enshrouded the grave of the great philosopher. Fully energized I stepped upon the stage of the Corn Exchange and we had a great night, and in the morning took a train to Brussels.

The first day of June.  In the morning I assess my state of being.  I still feel the effects of my booster shot that I didn’t want, still bothering me.  In fact, I feel the same dreaded transformation as the shots, but more prolonged, insidious. We live in the times we are in.  And these times require a booster, if I desire to travel, so i am thrice inoculated, and something added or subtracted from myself.

The morning was bright.  The view from my window, a magnificent steeple, loomed.  I did my stretches and stumbled downstairs into the breakfast room.  I made a plate of cucumbers, small bits, pumpkin seeds, goat cheese, marinated small fish and a small roll.The coffee was strong, so I added hot water and got up again to get a small roll with raisins for my pocket.  I sat and contemplated last night.  Our first night in Brussels was an erratic flame. The kind that could ignite a forest, that was the energy of the people and I realized that these two and a half years in isolation and semi-isolation displaced me some.  I was excited and happy, yet caught in such a swirl of energy, that I struggled to contain it.  I missed cues, sputtered in tongues, as if I was channeling the Flemish consciousness, mixed in French, mixed with my own.

My dear friend, the artist and designer, Ann Demeulemeester was standing in the wings. I thought of the first time we played in Brussels. Ann, quite young was there. It was 1977, and Arthur Rimbaud was in the air.  We ate crepes and fries in paper cones.  Scores of kids followed us in the street, not for selfies or autographs, just to hang out. We recited Rimbaud, drank coffee and raised a ruckus. That was Brussels.

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27 May London

It was that café.  The one with the faces of musicians tacked on the wall, home cooking sign in the window.  Black Swan was on from the album Nina Simone Live at Carnegie Hall.  I hadn’t heard it in a long time and it gave me a strange feeling; it took me way back to 1963, sixteen years old, holding that album in my hand and weeping to that song, conscious of  the miracle of Nina Simone.  And she was very much alive, angry, and vibrant, and now she’s dead and I’m still here.  I don’t know why that gave me such a chill.  So many souls who were alive now are gone.  Nina, William Burroughs, Bobby Neuwirth, Sam Sheperd, Robert Mapplethorpe…one dead friend after another, another mentor, another star. It was a momentary feeling, a kind of compressed sense of time.

I ordered black tea and a version of apple pie- a lot of cinnamon, which I love, but a bit doughy.  In any event it was just something to justify me sitting there for as long as it would take to write this, and then return a few steps away to Premises Studio. An historic cluster of rooms for reasonably priced rehearsal space, where Nina Simone once played on their piano.

I am doing six dates with my trio, my son Jackson on guitar, Tony Shanahan on bass/ keyboards and English drummer Seb Rockford on drums. The fellows set up while I wrote.  We’re trying some new things and dusting others off. Boy Cried Wolf.  A song for the Children, the Led Zepplin song that found its way into The Melting and Don’t Say Nothing for the great poet/ activist Allen Ginsberg.  That song was written by me and my drummer Jay dee Daugherty when Allen lay dying in his loft in the East Village during the garbage strike.  I guess around 25 years ago. And I was thinking about Allen’s activism and how many things have happened that he would have stood against, so many things since his passing, that fall into numb/dumb silence.  And I was just sitting there listening to Nina Simone, thinking of the 18 children in Texas, picked off with an automatic rifle by a teenage boy.  And I imagined 18 swans, and a horrifying target practice originating from the belly of hell.

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I am about to leave on tour. Be on a plane on Bob’s birthday. Sending you our version of Drifter’s Escape, and escaping I am. To other parts to do my my part. All good wishes everybody. I will send messages from beyond.

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