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mallorys_camera
Didn’t realize Tina Brown had been tapped to be Newsweek’s new editor till I read this. If I was feeling more articulate today, I could do a brilliant contrast and compare between Tina, trenchant daughter of privilege, and Patti Smith, shy blue collar girl, whose memoir Just Kids I finally read last week. They’re both cultural icons with a long reach. I feel more intellectually drawn to Tina but Patti moves me more in the purely emotional sense.
What's startling about Patti is her humility. Art is not a manifestation of ego for her but a consecration. Think of the people who are famous while they’re alive and the people who become famous after they’re dead – the former achieve success through marketing themselves or being marketed, but I suspect it is the latter who have a more profound effect on the collective unconscious. Patti Smith is one of those rare humans who’s experienced posthumous fame while still alive.
Just Kids took me out of myself back to a time when I, too, lived in a series of rabbit warren apartments whose walls I splashed with fuscia paint. I read Tarot cards, I cast astrological charts. I wove elaborate beaded jewelry and lined my eyes with kohl and dropped acid and took lovers, and stayed up for days talking and dancing. I was part of a tribe.
(I will say the one thing I didn’t do much was laugh. In those days I took myself way too seriously to have much of a sense of humor.)
What happened to that tribe?
Well, Patti Smith became famous – though she’s retained her humility; her art remains a devotional calling.
And the rest of us? Well, I’m sitting here in my living room, staring at six inches of freshly fallen snow, trying to figure out why this paragraph I’ve been fiddling with for the past three days is so fucking hard to write. Really, all it needs to say is, She was a big girl. But she liked to be treated like a little girl. Well. It needs to say that, but it also needs to convey status detail about the city of San Jose circa 1920s – the fruit canneries, the railroad switching yard.
My art remains a devotional calling too. Though if I'm ever famous, it won't be until after I'm dead.
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Decade Check
Date: 2011-02-21 03:42 pm (UTC)Re: Decade Check
Date: 2011-02-21 03:47 pm (UTC)Re: Decade Check
Date: 2011-02-21 03:59 pm (UTC)Re: Decade Check
Date: 2011-02-21 04:03 pm (UTC)the 60's 70's.......20's
Date: 2011-02-21 04:27 pm (UTC)Re: the 60's 70's.......20's
Date: 2011-02-21 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 06:30 pm (UTC)My late step father (who was English) theorized that it was because we didn't have a monarchy.
My art remains a devotional calling too.
Good, keep it that way. If the art is it's own reward, it's a win-win situation. If you're in it for the fame, odds are very much in favor of disappointment.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 06:35 pm (UTC)http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_n83/ai_15607932/?tag=content;col1
no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 07:14 pm (UTC)Bring it on.
FTR, Michael's (late step father) theory was that since humans have a hardwired capacity-desire to feel themselves to be in the service of some 'greater' entity, that Americans rendered the same fealty to "stars" as English yeomanry does to the queen.
It's also a political safety valve. You can criticize elected officials (who are, after all, transitory) but still be loyal to Queen and country.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-22 08:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-22 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-22 02:15 pm (UTC)Fame is a superpower. All superpowers are great.