As Christmas and the new year approach, I found myself reading Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith. I’ve just bought it from the bookshop at Philharmonie’s museum.
From the rock poet and musician, I had read Jusk Kids, a moving autobiographic novel about her formative years in arts, along her discovery of love and heartbreak when she was sharing a room in New York’s Chelsea Hotel with Robert Mapplethorpe, who started delving into the SM scene and taking pictures.
cover of Just Kids.
Just Kids was dedicated to Robert, her first love. It was a brilliant book about a special kind of love between two persons who began as soul mates (at least in an artistic and poetic sense) and ended slowly but surely drifting apart.
Robert’s hands Hotel Chelsea 1970. Patti Smith
No doubt that to her empathic and bohemian mind, Mapplethorpe appeared as a kind of misunderstood genius, an underdog who deserved to be in the spotlight, someone akin to Arthur Rimbaud, her favorite poet and one of the greatest influences on her work as musician and writer.
Patti Smith, Arthur Rimbaud’s Utensils, Musée Rimbaud, Charleville, 2005, Gelatin silver print, edition of 10, 10 x 8 in., 25.4 x 20.32 cm.
When Patti writes, she muses. All of her writings are wanderings of the mind. She travelled the world, and now, in her seventies, she still likes discovering new countries and cities but even when she was too poor to fly to Europe in search of Rimbaud’s presence (she later visited the not so-glamourous Charleville-Mézières, hometown of the poet), she would travel through the act of writing.
Mill – Arthur Rimbaud museum, 2019, copyright Nausica Zaballos
“Galla : kids with a massaub, table”, Philipp Paulitschke credited Arthur Rimbaud with taking this picture, 1887. (© Arthur Rimbaud/KHM-Museumsverband, Weltmuseum, Vienna). © Nausica Zaballos, 2019. Patti Smith dedicated her album Radio Ethiopia to Arthur Rimbaud.
Smith captures moments just as she flashes her polaroid camera. Her stories are snapshots and yet, they also circumvolute. Most of her books are haunted by friends long gone. Year of the monkey begins with one friend in the coma, but despite the sadness, Patti Smith embarks on a new adventure as she mills about the coast of Santa Cruz. Patti Smith’s books all have an eerie quality : among recollections of the past, the action just seems to stop suddenly as if somene had pressed pause, letting Miss Patti Smith to roam aimlessly, free from all obligations.
No wonder that the author often compares herself to Alice in Wonderland: « my departure was derailed by a sudden popping-up of animated Tenniel: The upright Mock Turtle. The fish and frog servants. The Dodo decked in his one grand jacket sleeve, the horrid Duchess and the Cook and Alice herself, glumly presiding over an endless tea party, where, pardon us all, no tea was being served. »
The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, illustrated by John Tenniel.
When Patti Smith presses the shutter, she detains time and makes the fleeting last forever. The singer has been known to travel around the world to take pictures of writers’ graves (Sylvia Plath’s grave in West Yorkshire, Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne‘s grave photographed at the Père Lachaise in Paris in 2010…) In 2013, she told Bordercrossings magazine : « A lot of people might think I’m morbid, but that’s really not the case. I don’t think of these things and people as part of my past; they are part of my working life. I don’t think of Robert Mapplethorpe or my husband as part of my past, and while I never knew Rimbaud or Blake or Bolaño, they are always with me, and they have made my life more inspiring. »
Patti Smith, c. 1974, Polaroid, Robert Mapplethorpe estate.
More recently, when her 2022 book “A Book of Days” was published, she told the New York Times: « I wanted to do a book that, even though it acknowledges certain political things, just gave people a respite. » What’s striking about Patti Smith is that, albeit being a very prolific artist, she does not fear solitude, she seeks it.
This week, while I was running out of time because of professional meetings, I could not help to feel like Alice, when she thinks she’s surrounded by madmen and madwomen. They all seemed oblivious of the utter usefulness and pointlessness of these reunions : « don’t they have kids, loved ones, lovers to run to? They’d rather numb themselves than being at home? » I asked myself, just wanting to quit and be free at last.
A respite is what Year of the Monkey offers us. Despite the transgressive nature of their work, Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith have been deeply spiritual persons. This time of the year is called ADVENT from the latin adventus. In Year of the Monkey, Patti just takes time for herself to wonder what’s ahead of her. Why don’t we just do this ? Take some time off to think, imagine, create, love and do what’s really important in our lives.
Robert Mapplethorpe, Untitled, 1968, collage. © R. Mapplethorpe Foundation.
« In the Dream Motel, I was certain I did not dream, yet the more I thought about it, I realized I did dream. More precisely, I skated along the fringe of dream. First it was morning, then night, then dawn, and the rays of the sun warmed everything. I left all thoughts of the world behind and followed my dream to the sea. The seals were sleeping, save the king, more like a walrus, who lifted his head and bellowed at the sun. There was a sense that everyone was gone, a J.G. Ballard kind of gone. »
