“I lived in the Chelsea once on 7th and 23rd
We came to live inside the myth of everything we’d heard
The poets on their barstools, they just love it when it rains
They comb their hair in the mirror and grow addicted to the pain
And it makes no sense
And it makes perfect sense”
—Alejandro Escovedo, “Chelsea Hotel ’78”
The mythology surrounding the Chelsea Hotel is massive. It’s a mythology that Patti and Robert are keenly aware of as they move in, and a mythology that they seem eager to live into themselves (though perhaps Robert more so than Patti at this stage). Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, Bob Dylan, and Edie Sedgwick all get casual mentions in these pages, names that scratch the mere surface of the hundreds of influential artistic icons who have lived at the Chelsea at one time or another.
Patti’s description of their arrival and early days at the Chelsea seems like it simply must be mythological. The first person they meet is Harry Smith, the eccentric polymath whose Anthology of American Folk Music was absolutely essential to jump-starting the mid-20th-century pop-music revolution. They secure a room with apparently little more than a wink and a smile, with hopes of using their artwork as rent, hopes spurred on by the stories of others who had done so successfully. Allen Ginsberg stands behind Patti at the Automat, buying her food for her because he thinks she’s an attractive boy. Everyone they encounter is somehow connected to the creative arts, or talking about the creative arts. It all seems so unreal, so unlike most of our own mundane experiences, so unlike the Manhattan we encounter today. Yet, given the Chelsea’s mythology, it seems so nonchalantly believable at the same time. It makes no sense. And it makes perfect sense.
My discipline of sociology has a fondness for puncturing these mythologies, for exposing the mundane social structural conditions that produce them. It is standard sociological orthodoxy that great advances forward are the work of organized collectives rather than the singular achievements of unique individuals. This orthodoxy includes the work of Thomas Kuhn on scientific revolutions, Randall Collins on philosophical innovation, and Robert Wuthnow on the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism. Art is no exception here. Howard Becker’s classic book Art Worlds makes clear how art is the result of collective action on the part of an extensive network of collaborators following fairly routinized conventions, not the romantic vision of the isolated special artist. Richard Peterson has argued that the birth of rock and roll occurred not because uniquely gifted artists like Elvis Presley fell from the sky in the mid-1950’s. Rather, it was an act of Congress that regulated monopoly control of the music industry, the advent of television which changed the nature of radio, and a quirk of shoddy market research that over-emphasized the role of teenagers in these new radio formats. These social-structural conditions allowed upstart independent labels to sign and promote new artists on the spot, artists who were then played by freewheeling radio DJ’s responsible for forging new niche markets in American radio. Had these structural conditions changed earlier, popular music would have gotten far more interesting much earlier than in the mid-1950’s. Conversely, had these structural changes not paved the way, Elvis Presley would have been just another talented kid to whom nobody paid any attention.
What does that have to do with Patti and Robert at the Chelsea Hotel? If you can strip away the romanticized mythology that surrounds the Chelsea, it can be seen as simply one node in a profoundly important social network of support systems for artistic production that existed in New York City at the time. It stands alongside and in informal collaboration with the other places Patti and Robert begin to haunt in these pages: Max’s Kansas City, Brownies, the Factory, even Nathan’s hot dog stand at the pier or the Automat itself, suppliers of very cheap and easy food that artists must live on. These places are essential for artists to accomplish their work. They provide a tenuous material and physical security. They pass on insider knowledge and maintain the conventions of the trade. They allow the essential collaborations to emerge. They encourage and support (I’m struck by the number of times Patti says she had to tell Robert over and over again “You should take your own pictures”). They care for each other when sick. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine Patti or Robert even surviving into the 1970’s had these places not existed in the way that they did, let alone emerging as the artistic icons we now instantly recognize.
(As an aside, do these kinds of places even exist anymore? The Chelsea Hotel finally ceased operations for good last year, but I think the Manhattan it represented was over long before then. I’m curious where these crucial artistic incubators exist currently. The Wham City collective in Baltimore perhaps? The scene around Constellation Records in Montreal maybe? If you know of a good one, please mention it in the comments.)
At the same time, however, it’s clearly still a struggle to make it in these settings. Chelsea Hotel’s sometimes fearsome Mr. Bard does not accept their art as rent, and Patti reluctantly returns to her job at the bookstore and tirelessly scours other places for cheap used books that she can sell there for additional income. Robert’s ambitions and savvy in navigating the pathway through this particular art world lead them to make nightly pilgrimages to Max’s Kansas City, carefully dressing up in an intentionally constructed performance designed to catch the attention of Andy Warhol’s inner circle (which Patti seems to endure as a chore for her friend). The Alejandro Escovedo song quoted above also said that “The Max’s Kansas City light makes everyone a star,” yet it’s clear from the competitive jockeying for attention that went on there that only a few stars will eventually emerge from this art world. Just being a part of this scene is no guarantee.
Yet a transition is clearly about to emerge. Patti comments throughout this section on how the 60’s were ending. Retrospective accounts mention the murder at the Rolling Stones Altamont concert as the end of the 60’s, but she sees it as “punctuat[ing] the duality of the summer of 1969, Woodstock and the Manson cult, our masked ball of confusion.” While reading about Harry Smith and Allen Ginsberg and Brian Jones and Andy Warhol, I kept thinking that these were the precursors to Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, not their contemporaries. They seemed out of place. The wrong decade. But then I remembered. Patti and Robert were Just Kids here after all. This section of the reading ends with them, both 23 years old, putting the 1960’s to rest and looking forward to the 1970’s. “It’s our decade,” Robert affirms confidently.
I was listening to this song in the car this morning while driving my twin 8 year old daughters to school. “This song makes no sense,” said my daughter Emma. “It makes perfect sense,” I replied.