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I am the spring, the holy ground,
the endless seed of mystery,
the thorn, the veil, the face of grace,
the brazen image, the thief of sleep,
the ambassador of dreams, the prince of peace.
I am the sword, the wound, the stain.
Scorned transfigured child of Cain.
I rend, I end, I return.
Again I am the salt, the bitter laugh.
I am the gas in a womb of light, the evening star,
the ball of sight that leads that sheds the tears of Christ
dying and drying as I rise tonight.
I’ve always liked Horses but I never seemed to get anywhere with Easter. Horses feels like this huge urge towards independence, original gestation, being born out of the surf, that great youthful need to define yourself against your society and your peers. Whether it’s exaltation of the self and its history ‘Gloria’, lust for another liberating the individual ‘Break it Up’ or that plaintive need for self-sufficiency turning into largesse ‘Free Money’; it’s an album where the self is filled up till it’s overflowing into the love for others.
But whenever I played Easter it seemed weaker in comparison, the clarity of that independence was lost, its strengths seemed to draw on a past image and where it wanted to be expansive it felt frail, sometimes morose; I couldn’t identify with this new artist that didn’t seem as happy to stand on her own feet and had latched onto this alien-feeling Christianity. And so I was giving Easter another play today, and I don’t know if it’s the time of year or the distance since I last heard it, but it was subtly, crucially different: it “clicked”. You get a sense of Smith reflecting on the fiery optimism of her past that she could be self-sufficient and self-created, here she’s calling her artistic and spiritual totem figures together, she’s found religion but can say “I have not sold myself to God”, it’s the other way about. The desire for another in Horses has found itself reconfigured in universal terms “You are everything to me / all is in your name”. It’s confident and coherent and multi-layered in a way I’m not sure she’s repeated (though I’d be happy to hear suggestions). I’m still not sure it’s as stark and lovely as Horses, but it definitely rewarded coming back to it.
I’ve never felt that great an urge to explore her later work, I felt that as it moved away from that primal creativity I’d be less interested, plus reading her biography suggested that her own interests were elsewhere and that generally she was far more engaging in her music than in person. But I got a copy of her last album Trampin’ a while ago, and remember that it was hailed as something of a musical and personal resurgence for her (‘cos aren’t we just existing in an era of the recapitulation of our past glories?). However, I don’t know that it worked for me either in terms of re-capturing that ecstatic fervour in her earlier work or really either as a ballsy rock album. Certainly there’s a greater grounding in politics and strident spiritual hopefulness, and I’m quite fond of ‘My Blakean Year’, but it just didn’t cut it overall. Apart from the title track (which is a cover anyway) the songs simply aren’t that memorable. Maybe I just need to give it a few more years.
Also, I found out today that Patti Smith is opening an exhibition of her visual art with a performance in Glasgow on Wednesday (19th April). Needless to say the 100 tickets have sold out. Is anyone going? I’m still gutted that I couldn’t afford to go to any of the Meltdown stuff in London last year, it seemed like a great line-up, not to mention all the Blakean stuff that was being highlighted. To be quite honest, sucker as I am for any work of art even mentioning Blake, I think my interest falters somewhat when Smith comes across as incoherently as she sometimes does when she turns ‘visionary’, even though that’s always been an aspect of her work in some form. Sometimes it works, but at other points…
However, the exhibition in question goes on for a bit longer if anyone’s interested, details below:
Patti Smith – at The Mitchell Library, Glasgow UK.
Start Date: Thursday 20 April 2006
End Date: Tuesday 09 May 2006
An exhibition of drawings, paintings and photographs by the American musician, poet and performer Patti Smith. Smith is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential contributors to music and poetry in the last 40 years. Since the late 1960s she has made visual artworks that contain the emotional and lyrical characteristics of her poems and songs. As a passionate believer in the cathartic and redemptive power of art, Smith invests similar emotional and spiritual energy in her drawings, paintings and photographs as in her written and spoken words. The inspiration for Smith's artwork comes from a variety of autobiographical, artistic, historic, literary and spiritual sources. These range from the work of the 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud to the ideas of the British artist and visionary, William Blake (1757-1827), and the friendship and guidance of Smith's late friend, the artist and photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89). |
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