Early on in “Separate Ways Together,” a director at what would become the famous downtown avant garde theater La Mama, in whose germinal years Smith had performed a few times as an actor, threw up his hands in irritation. He was sure he’d typecast Smith as a lesbian junkie. In spite of all leading appearances, however, she assured him that she was most certainly not, and in rehearsals, Smith just couldn’t muster up the requisite lust, or even a passable facsimile of it, during a same-sex love scene. When he learned that Smith was neither-nor, he laughed incredulously. And he then wondered aloud: So, if Smith didn’t shoot up, or have sex with women, then just what was it that she did do?

It was a little mean of me, but I laughed out loud at the guy’s exasperation. Honestly, I’d been wondering them same thing, too. I’m not talking about her sex life or drug use; I don’t have an interest in the prurient contours of people’s lives. I had, however, been seriously ruminating on just what the bleep she had been doing up until this point.

She’s done a great deal, certainly, most of it experimenting with buddies; going to lots of parties (albeit often shyly, as Robert’s awkward arm candy); talking about art; creating some art; writing some poetry. In other words, she’d been doing a lot of hanging out. But is hanging out the same thing as doing something?

For Mapplethorpe, yes. It led him directly to what he wanted to become. As we learn throughout Smith’s tracing the arc of the friendship, Mapplethorpe was, as he invariably was, Smith’s foil: the evil or good twin of the duo’s dual natures. Mapplethorpe, though many times despaired that he would never arrive at it, had, in fact, nailed his goal early on. He went about cutting away at it, like an Inuit statue hiding in a stone waiting for the artist to carve it out, until he unearthed the precise style he had been working to pry out of his mind’s eye and into galleries. Simultaneously, he worked to achieve his twin goal—fame—by developing a circle of powerful fans and benefactors. Hanging out was helping him achieve his goals.

Smith, however, had no other goal than to become an artist, though she had no real notion of what kind of artist she would like to be, or, moreover, be any good at. After the failed play, she knew she wasn’t an actor. She’d been too shy to read her poems in front of an audience, in spite of Mapplethorpe’s urging. She worked drawings, played with clothes. Smoked a little weed. Even in this section, she persists in hanging out, taking a solo pilgrimage trip to Paris to visit the various historic sites of her favorite poets.

But then, we see her—finally free of Mapplethorpe’s constant presence—
find out exactly what kind of artist she wants to be: her own. It is in this section that we see all the components of Smith’s hang-outs gel into creating an utterly original, strange, ferociously intellectual, and gritty form of performance art. To answer the director’s question—what did she actually do?—she had been the unwitting Inuit sculptor of her own image and mind.

So while they walked hand in hand—and hung out a lot—we finally see what Mapplethorpe will ultimately become known for: a provocative photographer and social butterfly. Patti Smith, however, will become known for something far more complicated and original: Patti Smith.