U Tell Me

I spent yesterday reading patti smiths latest book Bread of Angels. when she is good she is sensational. delivering a concept, an idea, in and of itself worth rumination - and how she lands it is so wondrous it oftentimes reaches breathtaking heights. but as one review noted - one hundred pages in we are still with ten year old sickly Patti channeling Blakeian phantasmagoria roaming round garbage strewn abandoned lots somewhere in Nowhere, New Jersey. She can take any worthless found object or random image and imbibe it with facetted talismanic properties. It gets tired and precious and corny and very possibly made up.    

But ... 

her life is like no other I can think of. A scrawny little wall eyed girl with not a single prospect moves to the city, works in a bookstore, meets her idols who just happen to be the ultimate Pop culture makers and shakers, talks, works and screws with them. She never denies her majestic worth, writes, sings, makes records, travels the world, makes paintings and photographs, has gorgeous boyfriends, marries her troubled same last name as her man, has children, abandons her rock star career, meets the woman she gave birth to at nineteen, finds out at 70 her biological father was a Jewish soldier, not a bird loving factory worker. She's honored by entire countries, loves her solitude, works every day. 

You tell me.