In a few words
Moving memoir centered around Patti Smith's relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe.
Inspiring lessons on building relationships that weather difficulties, creating art, and taking bold risks.
==="I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not."
"It was a good day to arrive in New York City. No one expected me. Everything awaited me."
"I understood that what matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind comes a light, life-charged."
"Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?"
"It is said that children do not distinguish between living and inanimate objects; I believe they do. A child imparts a doll or tin soldier with magical life-breath. The artist animates his work as the child his toys."
"memento mori. “It means ‘Remember we are mortal,’” said Gregory, “but poetry is not.”
"I was there for these moments, but so young and preoccupied with my own thoughts that I hardly recognized them as moments.
"I was both scattered and stymied, surrounded by unfinished songs and abandoned poems. I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in."
"I thought of something I learned from reading Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated. He tattoos lightning bolts on the ears of his horses so the sight of them will remind him of this as he rides. I tried to apply this lesson to the things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine."
"'Say anything,' he said. “You can’t make a mistake when you improvise.” “What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?” “You can’t,” he said. “It’s like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another.” In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life."
"I" found myself at home onstage. I was no actress; I drew no line between life and art. I was the same on-as offstage."
"Because of the price of film he felt obliged to make every shot count. He did not like making mistakes or wasting film, and so developed his quick eye and decisive manner. He was precise and economical, first out of necessity, then out of habit."
"I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth."
"Even as Robert and I parted as a couple, our photographs became more intimate, for they spoke of nothing but our common trust.
"Richard Sohl was nineteen, classically trained, yet he possessed the simplicity of a truly confident musician who did not need to show off his knowledge."
"Bob Dylan had entered the club. This knowledge had a strange effect on me. Instead of humbled, I felt a power, perhaps his; but I also felt my own worth and the worth of my band. It seemed for me a night of initiation, where I had to become fully myself in the presence of the one I had modeled myself after."