'Just Kids' by Patti Smith

Ever since I finished ‘Just Kids’ I feel like Patti Smith has been with me, or at least I’m seeing her everywhere.  So even though Patti is this incredible icon in ‘Just Kids’ I felt wrapped in a mutual love story, lost in an almost mythic creative world where there was still magic. 

Patti kept her promise to Robert Mapplethorpe and wrote their story, or at least a few of them, I can imagine it was hard to narrow it down. But in this sample we are painted with an entity not of Patti and Robert as single people but as a partnership. This partnership grew as they evolved and in this beautiful support they nurtured each other through struggles and choices that paved the way to turn their passions into their legacies.

Interestingly the feel that the rest of Patti’s life is somewhere else is incredible. This focus on Robert is beautiful with the continuous inkling that this is for ‘you’. Yes Patti and Robert paths skew but ‘Just Kids’ is their path, it folded over their own and fed and inspired them.

The romantic community where Patti tells the majority of their story is not always idyllic but abundant in opportunity and made me never want to return to my own reality.  Where money came as a means to get by and not the worth connoted with it  ‘Just Kids’ immerses you in a fluent path of creation, of ideas, reading, writing, drawing and photography.  In this beautiful world we as readers are filled with a touch of every joy that Robert brought Patti, and although we may want to sit in the halls of the Chelsea and read with her or intently listen to a description of an exhibit only one of them could see we cannot but we are blessed with this insight.

As I found myself nostalgic for a time I was not present for I realised what a magic moment Patti and Robert were a part of, a time of talent and urgency of expression that online presence would sweep over now. I understand the hilarity that I am writing this with the intention of posting it online at some point, but meetings destined to fate and a space to express without instant response are gone which is part of what possibly makes ‘Just Kids’ so romantic.

With Robert and Patti engaged in shared experiences and pushing their own boundaries as well as creative boundaries the world had yet to witness the book alights this ray of hope, of inspiration in pure connection. There are moments in ‘Just Kids’ that seem surreal now but form a cultural connection to us the reader, names, pieces and songs that are now iconic were just finding their feet. These icons pass through in stunning descriptions that keep you wrapped in Smith’s recollections.

As all the pieces form together into elegy to Robert you cannot help but see them come together to fit the two of them.  They found themselves in their equal and in this pure and beautiful relationship they became in all art forms storytellers, artist and muse to one and other.

Get it here: Just Kids