Chasing Patti Smith Through the Haight, & through History

Patti Smith, 1970’s

There she was, just within reach, the famous punk rocker poet, the shamaness beamingraw mystic power, the one, and only Patti Smith. There she was, right on Haight Street hoveringin the San Francisco sunshine her presence breaking through the fog, still amongst the raggedstreet kids all refusing the capitalistic agenda, while they push bunk acid on Starburst wrappers and oregano shag.

There she was with a flayed notebook in one hand, a black coffee with no coaster on the other. There she was, the one who had sung in poetic howls, Go Rimbaud! Go Rimbaud! In the bowels of CBGB; there she was the one gifted Because the Night by The Boss himself; there she was the friend of beat poet laureates like Burroughs and Ginsberg. There she was, just like my girlfriend had screamed at me just ten minutes ago.“She’s here you dope! Get off your ass and get over here! Manifest destiny!”

Patti Smith & Allen Ginsberg in 1977

I was pondering on this long lost moment some four years later typing away at somemundane task listening to Patti Smith’s new book Year of the Monkey (Alfred A. Knopf). In myoffice chair, I leaned back to feel the morning sun colliding with the fog outside my window andthought of how confused I was the day I saw her, thinking why none of the cars were screechingto a stop or how people weren’t running up to Patti Smith for an autograph.

As I listened to the chronicle of her 2015 concert at the Fillmore, her travels down to San Diego and beyond beyond, her thick Molotov voice burning me with its traces of her beginnings in Chicago and then her upbringing in New York (it kills me how she pronounces tea ), I thought how special an artist/writer has to be to take the form of a traditional memoir and make it one’s own.She’d done it before with titles like Just Kids and M Train, all of which I had devoured, but still her ability atform and narrative shocked me. Only she could spin prose and poetry together around a quietmoment of black coffee with a side of black beans. Painfully heart-wrenching, joyfullyphilosophical, listening to her words was like being on a slow-moving rollercoaster, eyes wet,open, and all-seeing.

Patti Smith

Year of the Monkey cleanses the mundanity of reality, showing us how deep she is willing and able to think and feel – her scope seemingly infinite – as she tries to hitch a ride, experiences their 70th birthday, finishes a set, or hears the news about a very old friend falling ill. Patti Smith takes us to those places with effortless familiarity and friendliness doing what all good artists do: invite the world into their greatest joys, their most painful lows, and their most spontaneous epiphanies.After my girl let me know the news, I scrambled to get my pants and shoes on, chucking DonDellio’s White Noise on the ground. Frantically, I snatched a shark tooth from French Polynesiagifted to me by mother, ripped a random page from Rimbaud’s Drunken Boat from its bindings,and then swept up a pair of red dice with white numbering.

I don’t really know why I felt like I needed to give anything to Patti if I actually did findher, but maybe, somewhere in my unworthy mind and soul, I saw those items as a kind ofoffering just to be near her, if only for a second.

For some dumb reason, I went straight to where my girlfriend had spotted Patti – the t-shirt store on Haight and Ashbury.“Jesus,” she sighed. “That was like an hour ago.”“Really?” I blurted.Time had seemed to stop, but in fact, it had sped up without any warning.I flew, scouring Taco Time praying she was treating herself to a margarita; went to GoldCane to see if she was playing pool; Ploy II Thai in case she wanted a bite; Traxx for the music;Whole Foods but there were only those long lines like forgotten train wrecks squished with thehordes of cart pushers; and then the Bindery, Booksmith, Zam Zam’s with their beautiful flowingmartinis but nothing. She was nowhere, yet in my defeat, it dawned on me: why expect anythingless from someone that had always been that – nowhere and everywhere.

Making my way home, I thought of one of Patti’s lyrics, I like it like that I like it like that/ I like it like that I like it like that. On the page, it doesn’t look like much but in my head andeventually on the tip of my tongue, then under my breath then sung, I felt the rapture of thatrepetition, the trance my soul psyche seemed to fall into.

Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith (1969) Photo by Norman Seeff

Then, there she was, the scarecrow seer, the one and bony, Patti Smith.She was admiring one of the curves of Buena Vista Park. Her head was bent to the side asif listening to something only she could hear. Maybe the leaves in the trees or both. Perhaps shewas gathering for something I would later admire and cherish like I did all of her work. Perhaps

Patti Smith, Vogue Magazine

she was right there in front of me creating a world I would one day cherish, love, like a weird oldfriend I saw every so often. For a second I thought to offer my items, but then stopped myself.Time, in all of its duality, was so beautifully relative at that moment. I felt I was witnessing thetransference of beauty surrounding Patti into her own being, where, hopefully, one day, all thatglory, infused with her artistry, would one day be shared with us.