I don’t remember the first time I listened to Horses and I’m not even sure if I liked it that first time; I probably didn’t understand it. However, it still felt like something important. It’s an album I’m still figuring out, an album I’m still in the process of discovering; I go back to it often and I always like it more. “Gloria” is my favorite song and “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine” is like a punch in the stomach every time.
http://youtu.be/xxygqSTO1lQ
Much of the book feels like it’s building towards Horses, and I hear new things after reading it. I feel her power and her creative instinct to merge poetry with the violent sound of rock n’ roll. I picture her in Electric Lady Studios. I hear Robert Mapplethorpe saying, “Patti.” The album’s cover is just as iconic as the music, and my favorite moment of “Separate Ways Together,” maybe even the whole book, is when Smith describes her morning before the photo is taken.
“I rolled out of bed and noticed it was late. I raced through my morning ritual, going around to the Moroccan bakery, grabbing a crusty roll, a sprig of fresh mint, and some anchovies. I came back and boiled water, stuff the pot with mint. I poured olive oil in the open roll, rinsed the anchovies, and laid them inside, sprinkling in some cayenne pepper. I poured a glass of tea and thought better of wearing my shirt, knowing I’d get olive oil on the front of it.”
I love how Smith chooses to slow down the narrative right before such a climatic moment, as if to drain all the excitement out of it; her description of that day is quiet and unassuming, and I was happy to sit with her and dwell in that morning. Even though the photo is probably the most famous of her (I could, again, use the word iconic), the day is described as simple, just like any other. “We never talked about what we would do, or what it would look like,” she says. “He would shoot it. I would be shot.” The photo also brings the story back to Patti and Robert, “When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us.” The reader is reminded of the importance of their relationship here; of course Robert would take the photo, who else could capture her so truthfully?
I really enjoy that aspect of the memoir as well, she’s essentially showing her audience the realities of her development as an artist and as a person. There’s a slow harshness to her descriptions that work toward a sincere account of her feelings throughout it all. Even the day she’s photographed for the iconic “Horses” album is just another day. But more than that, I feel as though a running theme from what I’ve read of the memoir so far are the references to the people who have helped her, directly or indirectly on the way. Reading about this morning, we know what an important day it is, but she doesn’t. Even in retrospect, the photograph is about her and Robert. Fighting together to fulfill their fate, so to speak. While she’s the focus of the memoir it functions undoubtedly a silent nod to those people who guided her in the smallest of ways, some bigger than herself.