Just Kids by Patti Smith

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Having recently finished reading Just Kids by Patti Smith, I came away with a greater understanding and appreciation of an era of bewilderment, wildness, uncertainty, and ultimately peace with all one has gone through and who they have become.

As is so often the case when seeing someone who has “made it”, and understanding this belief is certainly relative, it is quite easy to not only forget but never even notice all the failures and the attempts and the doubts and the questioning and the creeping thought of just quitting before even the slightest trickle of success begins to take notice.  Smith’s chronicles certainly bare witness to this.

One of the things I truly enjoyed while reading Just Kids was Smith’s playing with words. Now I will be the first to admit this is something I focus in on to a far greater detail than most, often at times missing the real plot or purpose of what has been written. I am intrigued by how words are used, and like a painter with a blank palette, word usage conjures up all kinds of thoughts and images.

Much of Smith’s book centers on her long relationship with Robert Michael Mapplethorpe. An artist seeking to always improve his skill, yet often outside the understood and accepted norms of that community at the time, Smith writes, “Coloring excited him, not the act of filling in spaces, but choosing colors that no one would select.”

When I read this I too could not contain my excitement. As one who from the earliest of my days had trouble staying within the lines, Smith’s description brought some clarity to an often unclear picture. The living of the creative mind in action is not always so much about being outside the lines, rather it is filling all the empty spaces with bright, vibrant colors no other person would ever think of using. And it is here, at the moment in time when any one, any one of us can change the world just a bit and just a bit in a way for the better.

Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “New scenery, new noise.” Now I’m pretty sure he was not so much thinking about coloring empty spaces with colors no one ever thought of, but in the end we all have the artistry to make a difference, to create new, fresh scenery and new, fresh noise that wake up our senses.

I would recommend reading Just Kids by Patti Smith. For some it will be a wonderful trip down “memory lane” with the stories and names of our youth. For others it will be an opening to how things once were. In the end as Johnny Depp shared, “Patti Smith has graced us with a poetic masterpiece, a rare and privileged invitation to unlatch a treasure chest never before breached.”