Patti Smith

First off, I should say that I've never been a Patti Smith person. If you're a Patti Smith person, you know exactly what I mean. And if you're not a Patti Smith person, you probably know what I mean and might not even know who I mean.

I'm now a Patti Smith person.

I read Just Kids when it came out and loved it -- not just because Smith is a good and engaging writer, but because she wrote about that transcendent time in New York when art was Art and there was the Chelsea Hotel and grit and grime and music and being poor and doing your thing took precedence over commerce and Wall Street and all that stuff. I don't really know Patti Smith, though, other than through those iconic photographs and the language of her groupies. I got a ticket to go hear her through our library foundation, and because she is Patti Smith, it wasn't a free ticket like the other library foundation tickets but the slightly more expensive ticket that gave me a seat on the third row of this beautiful old theater in downtown Los Angeles. The place was filled to capacity with hundreds, if not thousands of Patti Smith people. Oh, and me.

But now I'm a Patti Smith person.

She was "interviewed" or rather was engaged in conversation at first with the writer Jonathan Letham and sort of spell-bound us with stories and jokes and observations and anecdotes. At one point she talked about how many books she'd read as a child, and she mentioned that when she went to a library and went to the children's section, even now, she had read all the books. She sort of had love and fierceness as an aura around her. Her eyes twinkled. She was reverent and really funny. She talked about art and music and gender and Bob Dylan (truly the greatest Bob Dylan story I've ever heard) and her children and her husband and Robert Mapplethorpe and writing and her poetry and what it means to be alive. She was transcendent. Seriously. Sweet and funny and not giving a fuckish in the best way. A bodhisattva.

And then it was over -- at least the conversation. She stood up and Tony Shanahan came out (see, since I'm now a Patti Smith person, I know who that is) with a guitar and then she sang. She sang two beautiful ballads -- one that she'd written for her daughter and another about her husband. I felt like I was floating at this point, such was her effect on me. Then she dedicated a song to the young people who had died in Paris and we all stood up and sang it with her. Because the night was made for lovers. It was crazy beautiful.

That's it. Some of you will be jealous. I understand. Some of you will have no idea what I'm talking about. I understand that, too.

Philippe Petit

It's blurry, but that's a photo of Philippe Petit signing a photo of himself (that Oliver had printed out on the computer earlier): To Oliver.  Last night, I took him downtown to our central library to hear the man read from his new book, Creativity, the Perfect Crime. Here's an excerpt from the book:

My attitude as an artist grew out of the realization I'd arrived at from an early age: that my intellectual engagement, my imaginative freedom, had a price, that of the forbidden. Whatever I decided to do, it was not allowed! "Creativity is illegal!" became my byword.

The creator must be an outlaw.

Not a criminal outlaw, but rather a poet who cultivates intellectual rebellion. The difference between a bank job and an illegal high-wire walk is paramount: the aerial crossing does not steal anything; if offers an ephemeral gift, one that delights and inspires.

Despite my outlaw approach -- or because of it -- a network of personal creative principles imperceptibly emerged. Lawlessness doesn't mean lack of method: in fact, the outlaw I became needed method all the more, because I was swimming alone to the island of my dreams. 

 

 

I can't express how thrilling it was for me to see this strange and funny man come on the stage. He wore an orange pullover and khaki pants tucked into weird leather boots. He's of medium height and quite muscular for his age, and if you've seen any of the wonderful documentary Man on Wire, you'd recognize his quirky mannerisms and mischievous smile. In fact, he did less reading from his fascinating new book, and more explaining in a thick French accent and demonstrating his own creative processes. He involved the very small audience throughout the performance, asking us to come up with interesting uses for a plastic fork that we were given when we walked in, and even doing some sleight of hand magic tricks. He was utterly charming and subversive in the best way. 

I did find it hard not to stare at him, consumed by the thought this man walked on a wire between the World Trade Center towers. Don't ask me why this has always thrilled me to the point of obsession. I'm not a risk taker. I hate roller coasters and heights make my knees quiver. There's a tightrope walker and trapeze artist in one of my favorite movies, Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire. I often wear a necklace with a tiny medallion on it of a tightrope walker holding that long balance stick. Come to think of it, it might be Petit between the Towers. I guess I could make metaphor with my obsession -- why it resonates so much with me.  I've done that plenty of times even here on this blog. 

The funambulist is a person who walks the wire or dances on the wire, messing with boundaries, balancing dark and light, acknowledging the fine line between them. As the mother of a child with such severe disabilities, who is so utterly dependent upon me, I am a funambulist of sorts, alone and agile. 

But enough of that.

Oliver and I were smitten by Philippe Petit and grateful to live in such a fine city where we had the opportunity to see this great artist in such a small and intimate space, for free. 

He's legit, Oliver declared after meeting Petit and shaking his hand. When we walked out into the softly lit evening city, we felt enchanted.

Lorrie Moore, again

Lorrie Moore has a new collection of short stories out called Bark, and I headed down to the Los Angeles Central Library to hear her read tonight. You might remember the last time I went to hear her, when her novel came out ten years after I had discovered her in the New Yorker and how I had a wonderful encounter with her when I asked her a simple question after she read and then conversed with Michael Silverblatt -- but just now I searched and searched and couldn't find the post, so now I'm thinking that I never wrote about it. Oh. I don't feel like doing so right now-- just take my word that we had an encounter. That she spoke to me, directly, and blew me away. I did write a post last August called Group Therapy that does a reasonable job explaining just how much this writer means to me, so you can read that if you'd like.

So, it's been fifteen years since Moore published a collection of short stories, and I've just begun delving in. I'm a reader who keeps an anticipated book sitting by my bedside for weeks as a sort of tantalizing confection that I need to put off before devouring.  Bark is like that, so I read one story at a time and then put it down. It's a ritual.Tonight she read one of the new short stories in her beautiful, melodious voice and then conversed a bit with the playwright Brighde Mullins. It was an amazing short story, filled with her mordant wit and keen observation and then the tenderest of endings. God, I love a good short story. The conversation between the two writers was a bit slow, but I didn't care. Like David Sedaris, Lorrie Moore is someone who I honestly believe would be my friend if she only knew me.

How women like me get excited

I'm going out tonight to hear the U.S. Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey, read from her poetry and speak a bit at our downtown library. And you thought this post was going to be inappropriate, didn't you? HA! I just thought I'd throw a wrench in, seeing that I've spent the last day or so ranting and raving about health insurance. I haven't been out at night for weeks and will be meeting a friend and having drinks beforehand. I know nothing of Trethewey or her poetry, so I'm excited. I found this poem online and liked it.

Vespertina Cognito

Overhead, pelicans glide in threes— their shadows across the sand dark thoughts crossing the mind. Beyond the fringe of coast, shrimpers hoist their nets, weighing the harvest against the day's losses. Light waning, concentration is a lone gull circling what's thrown back. Debris weights the trawl like stones. All day, this dredging—beneath the tug of waves—rhythm of what goes out, comes back, comes back, comes back.

Natasha Trethewey, via Poets.org

The Last Week of Summer

one of the sculptures hanging in an atrium at the Los Angeles County Central Library

I've checked in on the blog this week, here and there, but really what I've spent the most time doing is spending the last precious days of summer with my three children. We've had the requisite doctors' and dentists' appointments (and this being LA saw Conrad Hilton, Paris' brother at the dentist office and soon after, behind a posse of paparazzi, one of those Kardashian girls at a nail salon), haircuts and back to school shopping, but we've also managed to squeeze in some of the things off our SUMMER LIST.

Today, Sophie felt fine. It might be the first day in months that she felt fine and since I'm superstitious, I'm only writing this once with immense gratitude.


We decided to head downtown to explore a new neighborhood and ride Angel's Flight. Angel's Flight is dubbed "the shortest railroad in the world" and has been open and running in downtown Los Angeles since 1901, except for the brief time recently when there was a terrible crash and an elderly man was killed. It recently re-opened and still costs only $.25 a ride. 

First, we went to California Plaza and admired the fountains and buildings that rose up all around us in the blue sky. 

We bought tickets and got on Angel's Flight.

It's very steep and it's difficult, at least for me, NOT to think about the car gone crazy that crashed years ago. Oliver continually reminded me of it but in a hopeful way (Mom, do you think it would crash? It would be kind of cool, right?) 

I ignored him and then forced the two boys to sit and let me take their picture.

Sophie really looks, here, better than she has for MONTHS. I am so relieved.


Then we pushed Sophie in her wheelchair all the way down Bunker Hill which is immensely steep -- San Francisco-like steep. We visited the magnificent Central Los Angeles Library and spent more than an hour there.

I know that I've mentioned it before, but really, I'm a closet librarian. There might be nothing on earth more pure for me than my love of books. And libraries. Well, maybe not pure but certainly orgasmic. Are they the same thing? The elevators at the downtown library are lined with old card catalog, Dewey Decimal cards. I had to explain this archaic system to the boys.

When we stepped off the elevator and made our way to the Children's Literature section, I insisted that Henry take this picture (and I had to explain that in these drawers lay all the wonders of the universe to me, when I was a child).

Really, libraries make me feel like I've died and gone to some sort of heaven. The sight of the books stacked, the smell of the stacks, the quiet, the anticipation of things found and worlds explored. I can still remember what it felt like to crouch in the aisle, a book in my hand and read the flyleaf, the crackly, crinkly clear cover protector whispering under my fingers.

We left the library and realized that we had to push Sophie in her wheelchair back UP Bunker Hill. Holy crapola. Just yesterday, as I was driving around in my car I felt this sort of free-floating anxiety that I hadn't exercised, really, in months.

I could barely, just barely, make it up the hill, but the boys took over the pushing.

They're amazing. My angels, really.

When we got back to the top, we ate chicken schnitzel from a truck (all the rage in Los Angeles these days). The schnitzel was pounded very thin and served with lemon slices, just like they do in Austria. The guys who cooked in the truck were Israeli, of course. I told them that my husband was a Swiss German chef, and they got nervous. But it was delicious -- amazing what can come out of a truck.  I let the boys have a huge bottle of Fanta each as they'd been so helpful and uncomplaining all day.

When we finished, we piled into the car with stacks of library books and headed on home. We passed through quite a bit of urban grit, down and out neighborhoods and crowds of immigrants and businesses catering to Koreans and Latinos. Oliver asked whether these were bad neighborhoods, and I told him that they weren't bad but that they were a bit rough. I thought of those who dislike our city, their lamentations of crime and poverty and dirt, of immigrants laboring at jobs that "real" Americans won't do. I thought of my own little Oliver whose sensibilities are, sometimes, like that as well. He feels threatened and dislikes difference, and I see that as part of his personality and something that I can, at best, only temper.  The thing is that my personality is quite different. I thrill to what is urban, to the grit and the clamor and the teeming  life. It's alive to me and immensely exciting. I see the poverty, the despair -- yes, I do see it, but there's something within me that also sees life. I thought of how much there is to be done in this world, to alleviate suffering, to work for those who are vulnerable. I ramble, now, after such a stimulating day --