Sunday, February 27, 2011

i've been sleeping

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I can't believe that I have somehow managed to not write about New York, yet. I've been home for a month, one whole month!, and somehow, not a word. While I was there, I imagined different ways to tell you about the perfect truffle fries I was eating or the flawless pair of boots I spotted on the subway and instantly coveted. In fact, I wouldn't even have to write in order to tell you about New York. I would simply have to type. The tough part has already been done and then filed away in the back of my mind to pull out whenever I have a second., which of course, I haven't.
I could blame it on my job. My schedule recently shifted and while it is now infinitely more manageable, it is taking me a bit of getting used to. I could blame it on my boyfriend, too. Since his return to Oakland he has insisted on usurping every last particle of energy I may have possessed at one point or another in my life, by forcing me to lay around in bed with him and have perfect weekends and be blissfully in love and such. That shit is draining, I tell you! Really though, I think it's better if I blame it on a book. The one I mentioned in my last post: Just Kids by Patti Smith. You know, the book that made me forget I was on a six-hour flight from the East to West Coast?
Just Kids was written by Patti Smith as an ode to her friend and sometime lover, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, but it's actually a name-dropping, self-glorifying, masturbatory description of what it's like to be the coolest chick in New York in 1970, (which in case you aren't cool enough to know this is way cooler than being the coolest chick in New York today...) and holy fuck, it is a masterpiece.
I don't know, it's totally possible that Patti Smith could write a three hundred page treatise on what it feels like to take a shit and I'd eat it like candy. There's something about her style of writing that feels instantly heart-wrenching, and at the same time, so familiar as to be almost familial. Maybe this is because my first exposures to her particular brand of intensity all occurred through my parents who were both on-and-off fans of hers. Who the fuck knows.

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In any case, I think the whole thing is beautifully written. It veers occasionally into the realm of the unbelievable, portraying the author as nothing less than a saint, abstaining from drinks, drugs and everything fun, and stumbling, completely accidentally of course, into glorious social situations with the likes of Joni Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix whilst she was simply trying to focus on her art and be noble. But really, who cares? We all do that. We all remember things in a way that allows us to view ourselves favorably, and I think we all also know that Patti Smith did as many drugs as anyone else who lived at the Chelsea Hotel in the 70s. But truthfully, it just doesn't even matter. I mean, she's writing about living in the Chelsea Hotel for fucksake, and getting coffee with Allan Ginsberg and it's all just so enviably romantic.
Actually, my favorite part of the entire book is in the very beginning, when she's talking about living in Jersey or Pittsburgh or some similarly god-awful place and being dirt poor and getting knocked up by accident. She mentions something about going to some diner once a week to get a donut and listen to their jukebox and how that was like, the bright spot in her life at that time. For some reason, the idea of Patti Smith self-soothing by eating a shitty donut at some shitty diner in shithole Jersey, all by her lonesome, was just so, so touching to me. Maybe it's because when I get depressed, I too have a tendency to eat shitty food in solitude. It just seemed like such a vulnerable, human thing to share, and the fact that it happens in the beginning sort of sets the tone for the entire book. So, even though her remaining attempts to portray herself as a real person with real struggles fall sort of flat in light of the fact that she doesn't actually have a real job besides being photographed all day and kicking it with celebs, you kind of forgive her for it, because you know, at one point in her life, she ate shitty donuts like the rest of us.
And I know, I know, everything I have to say about this book is just reeking of jealousy. I'll admit it freely. Stories like this make me jealous. I've said it here before, but goddamn, I want to be an artist!!! I want to quit my day job and be a fucking artist! I'm positive that this is part of the reason this book is so appealing to me. I have differing opinions on Patti Smith's merit as a musician. I find a lot of her music whiny and self-indulgent, but Dancing Barefoot resonates with me more strongly than almost any other piece of music I've ever heard. But regardless of her talent, or her skill, she set out to be an artist. She had some sort of blind, almost naive, but nonetheless fierce faith that she would be able to support herself through means other than the conventional, and whether she got lucky, or worked her ass off for it, she succeeded. Things could have fallen apart for her at any given moment, as easily as they could have for any one else, but they didn't, and in that, there is magic.
There is magic, too in the way that she describes the city. The mood she creates is just so, so New York. After a week of trudging through blizzards, getting snowed in, and remembering why I moved to the West Coast in the first place, I needed that. Before I tried to tell you about my vacation, before I even tried to digest it myself, I needed to remember that New York is magic, too. So, on the plane ride home, I read about New York and I re-lived my vacation. I re-lived every moment I've ever spent in New York surrounded by that particular type of magic, and in re-living, it all became tied together. This book, my vacation, every moment I've spent in New York city from the day I was born. I think that after one month, I'm finally ready to tell you about all of it.

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