Mrs. Smith and polished stone
(on We were so young of Patti Smith)
There is a belief religious and romantic thing that says the final day will be judged by our actions, we will see brightness, darkness and glow our lives, from those final seconds. We were so young in , Patti Smith's autobiography, the first thing that happens is that we were glued to the book. The second is that we feel that this day has arrived.
Reading of Rimbaud as a teenager, reading in recent years Bolaño, tireless reader since childhood, poet, painter, singer, icon of punk (etc., etc..) Patti Smith chooses to narrate from the distance afforded by the passage time, dedication and grief, his artistic beginnings, and in the center of them, his relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989). That means focusing less on narration successful years in arduous and miserable day: there is Patti, alone, fleeing from his family home, leaving his career and giving up for adoption to her first child, standing before the statue of Joan Arc, no money, hands in the empty belly, promising to do something with your life. There is Robert, alone, away from his family, wandering in no man's land, after having tried LSD for the first time, bowed before his drawings and films, writing "Destruction of the universe. May 30, 1967 "and promising that thereafter will artist, at any cost, whatever that means. We were so young
is thus a document of time, a portrait of artists in New York in the late 60's and 70 whose central episode takes place at the famous Chelsea Hotel and is also a manual on rules art and success and failure in the art, surrounded by early adolescents and emerging artists gathered around Mr. Warhol and his shadow, so concerned with an art form as the rules of courtesy, hunting contacts and forms of dress (there are photos of the book, reminding us that, ingenuity and the power in that.)
happens that Patti Smith's autobiography is first all, a declaration of love. And you might think that the purpose of this declaration of love is Robert Mapplethorpe, a central figure in the book, which at times Patti speaks as if he were a ghost in front or on top of us. But we could also go further, think that the purpose of this declaration of love are Patti and Mapplethorpe, immortalized, sealed by writing, detained forever in one of the photos in the book, one in which just awakening, he yawns, she reads or does it reads. And dawn.
Or go even further, understanding that the declaration of love is not only the subject yas or history (the past) but about love and art (in a sense vital and deeply religious). That is the only certainty of teenage boys, Patti Smith's book, that is the reason that they share and that the blanket and that nearly tears them apart: the decision to be artists, and live to see the world differently. Thus, in this version that Ms. Smith makes the "game of life" motherhood is not an imposition, not monogamous love, love is not monogamous, genres do not matter, art is not a point of arrival ( the book hardly tells the unpredictable input Patti Smith in the world of punk) and all the stars in the sky, one was thrown out the window, another hanged himself, a faded nciosamente sile, another died of an overdose and the most important symptoms of AIDS.
not a very comforting picture, but it was because it was Patti, recovering the lost days, polishing them like a stone from which it draws strength. Surrendering the force. We were so young
is thus a charm, like the Persian collar Patti goes to Robert and he to her, all along the book, a precious object that is alive (runs back and forth ) and that we have here before us, invisible as a belief, as the will or energy.
Thus, we have never been to an autobiography or a novel, but a model nte. A model that opens and shows us a world. A world that is a spell or blessing. The problem is that, like in the good books, and now prefer not to go home and stay to live in it.
(published in City X April) 
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