Little emerald bird
Wants to fly away
If I cup my hand
Could I make him stay …

To say goodbye, Patti writes a poem.

Departing from Robert and her life in New York to move to Detroit with her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, she composes a work for Robert’s portfolio and he assumes a place as “the blue star in the constellation of my personal cosmology.” The two don’t reconnect until several years later, when Fred Smith suggests Robert photograph Patti for the cover of their album, Dream of Life. Then, Patti’s personal cosmology is shaken by news of Robert’s AIDS diagnosis. Their reunion and the work they create – their artistic and personal connection still strong – becomes a fitting and fulfilling final act.

Dream of Life becomes more than just an album title, but a phrase that encapsulates everything about Patti and Robert’s final months together. Pregnant, Patti’s creative process is both biological and artistic, while Robert must fight the biological destruction imposing a certain end to his powers to exist as both an artist and a man. Both are acutely aware of this: “He was carrying death within him and I was carrying life,” Patti writes. Once again they strive to stay together as circumstances attempt to tear them apart.

Their original connection remains despite the years of separation. In the midst of a beautiful apartment surrounded by expensive furnishings, Robert delights in showing Patti the pieces of fabric, paper, string, and other small treasures he has collected. In response, she tells Robert “he had always been with me, part of who I am, just as he is at the moment.”

Despite her happiness at welcoming Robert’s physical presence back into her life, Patti is acutely aware of that physicality slipping away. Robert experiences the life and love of Patti’s visibly expanding family in the wake of the loss of his lover Sam Wagstaff and his own rapidly declining health. Facing the pain of death, he asks: “Patti, did art get us?” Patti, agonized, refuses to answer in the moment, but in hindsight, rightfully rejects the idea. It is through art that Patti and Robert’s relationship remains alive. Together they created – and inspired each other to create – poems, drawings, songs, photographs, a true legacy. When Robert regrets not having children with Patti, she correctly asserts “our work was our children.”

When Robert’s artistic strength finally is stolen by disease, Patti can no longer take comfort in the power of Robert-as-artist and instead must face his ever-apparent mortality: “I had nothing left to give him but love,” she realizes, lying in the dying artist’s arms. Their last conversation takes place in a hospital, where they pledge their love to each other before Robert is wheeled away for tests. Two months later, she attends his memorial service.

To say goodbye, Patti writes a poem.

… Little emerald soul
Little emerald eye
Little emerald bird
We must say good-bye

Patty Hearst is an unlikely muse. And while it may seem a difficult task to top the larger-than-life aura of her grandfather, publishing icon William Randolph Hearst, Patty makes quite a compelling case.

Hearst makes a two-paragraph appearance in Just Kids, but her 1974 kidnapping, bank robbery, and embrace of the Symbionese Liberation Army – the group responsible for her kidnapping – served to inspire Patti’s first single, a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” with lyrics altered by Smith’s impressions of the Hearst case.

… and Patty Hearst
You’re standing there in front of the Symbionese
Liberation army flag with your legs spread…
And now that you’re on the run what goes on in your mind
Your sisters they sit by the window
You know your mama doesn’t sit and cry and your daddy…
Patty, you know what your daddy said
Patty, he said, he said, he said
Well, sixty days ago she was such a lovely child
Now here she is with a gun in her hand…

There is very little that connects Patti Smith and filmmaker John Waters – that they both appeared in a documentary celebrating the legacy of their mutual friend William S. Burroughs seems to be the sole link – save their joint muse, Patty Hearst.

Enthralled, as Smith was, by the spectacular crime and class circumstances surrounding the case, Waters devotedly attended every day of Hearst’s 1976 trial, despite his disappointment in the defendant’s fashion choices: “… always a letdown, looking so plain in her sensible shoes and private-school outfits… No wonder no one ever recognized her on her cross-country jaunts.”

Forgiving her for her fashion crimes, Waters persuaded Hearst to appear in a small role in his 1990 film Cry-Baby, and cast her in each of his movies since. In a tongue-in-cheek nod to her notoriety, Hearst played a jury member whose sensible (but out-of-season) white shoes enrage Kathleen Turner’s titular character in Serial Mom.

http://youtu.be/capxvg_b7I8

Despite – or because of – the wildly divergent artistic paths of Smith and Waters, I am fascinated (and more than a little amused) at the inspiration of Patty Hearst and its consequences. Each artist uses a different medium to explore the notoriety-soaked and utterly surreal stakes of her life and crimes with results reveling in the exploitation of themes neatly summarized within Smith’s lyrics:

But daddy, daddy, you’ll never know just what I was feelin’
But I’m sorry, I am no little pretty little rich girl
I am nobody’s million dollar baby, I am nobody’s patsy anymore
I’m nobody’s million dollar baby, I’m nobody’s patsy anymore
And I feel so free

The surreal – yet rewarding – paths continue for the artists and their muse: nobody’s patsy, or even Patty, Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw was granted a full pardon by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office, Jan. 20, 2001; John Waters remains a successful director, author, and enthusiastic connoisseur of bad taste; and, of course, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Patti Smith will be awarded the Hepburn medal on Feb. 7 at Bryn Mawr College. The surreal life ain’t so bad.

“My tears did not stop him, so I sat and watched him dress for the night ahead.”

Some of my favorite scenes in Just Kids are conversations between Patti and Robert ending with Robert gasping, “Patti, no!” in mock horror. It’s a charming glimpse of the gently contrary nature of the two.

But when Robert becomes increasingly involved in the world of hustling while maintaining an intimate relationship with Patti, I too said aloud, “Patti, no!” Admittedly, part of my reaction stems from a post-AIDS purview, but part is a struggle to empathize and understand Patti’s actions. In a relationship as deep and devoted as Patti and Robert’s, it is hard for myself as a reader to permit the entry of anyone else—especially anonymous anyone elses—even for the grand sake of art. I’ve grown to love their love story and, like both of them, am loath to let it go.

“My armor still had its vulnerable points, and Robert, my knight, had pierced a few, though without desiring to do so.”

The departure from the Chelsea Hotel—even just across the street—marks a major shift in Patti and Robert’s relationship. They now share the same living space separately and Robert’s hustling crosses a line when he sleeps with a man sans financial transaction. Still, he assures Patti, “there will always be us.” Shortly thereafter, Patti learns of Robert’s affair with David.

When she writes “Truthfully, I was involved in so many things that the question of Robert’s sexual persuasion was not my immediate concern,” it is one of the few times I questioned Patti’s otherwise—sometimes painful—honesty. Is the “truthfully” meant to convince the reader or the author? A clue, it seems, comes in Robert’s most unintentionally hurtful lines of the book: “Patti, none of this has anything to do with you.” Robert, no…

Robert’s concurrent sexual and social shifts obviously challenge the dynamic of his relationship with Patti. While a new haircut and forays into theater, poetry, and music still leave Patti’s “coarseness” intact, Robert constantly experiments and aligns his image with the Warhol crowd and New York art scene. Patti admits to feeling like an outsider in Robert’s social pursuits and it pains her a bit to see Robert selling his art to strangers. Members of the art world and patrons—strangers—now enter and hold a claim in their once private, shared sphere.

In leaving behind the idyllically bohemian world of the Chelsea Hotel—Patti’s “sacrifice” for Robert—their relationship alters fundamentally. As the romance crumbles Patti assures the reader true love endures. And while I may never be able to empathize with her patient, even loving, acceptance of a broken heart, I respect and admire her hopeful warmth towards an altered relationship with Robert:

“We needed time to figure out what all of this meant, how we were going to come to terms and redefine what our love was called. I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth.”

Shortly after settling into the Chelsea Hotel, Patti reflects on Robert’s future beyond their life together. “I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then, nothing could tear us apart,” she writes.

In an archive interview clip in Crossfire Hurricane, a recent documentary about the Rolling Stones, guitarist and founding member Brian Jones casts a prediction about his future beyond the band: “My ultimate aim in life was never to be a pop star. I enjoy it with reservations, but I’m not really satisfied artistically or personally. Let’s face it; the future as a Rolling Stone is very uncertain.”

Ultimately, both predictions ring true – but with different paths for similar souls.

As much as Patti respects musicians such as Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, some of her most profound emotional moments and artistic inspirations link directly to the Stones—and Jones especially. A particularly prescient example is the effect Jones’ death—from drowning, at the age of 27—has on Patti, inspiring her to begin a cycle of poems dedicated to the musician, “for the first time expressing my love for rock and roll within my own work.”

Jones appears throughout “Just Kids”—in Loulou’s bracelet, as an obsessive character trait in one of Patti’s theater roles, as the hashish-infused soundtrack to Patti’s early forays into music performance, and as an echo in the death of Jim Morrison.

Patti’s depiction of Robert reflects some of the same things she loves about Jones; aside from fair physical characteristics and an obsession with their hair, both men share an adventurous sense of fashion, a willingness to experiment within their art, and a tendency toward a tragic darkness that scares and alienates Patti. Robert describes the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” as “my song” and Patti frets over Robert’s “fear that he had aligned himself irrevocably with darker forces, his Faustian pact”—if not sympathy for the devil, empathy at least.

Meanwhile, Patti’s own artistic development is guided by another Rolling Stone—Keith Richards. Her decision to cut her hair in the style of the Stones guitarist transforms her physically and artistically. “My Keith Richards haircut was a real discourse magnet,” she drily remarks. She is welcomed by the Warhol crowd Robert embraced, is offered and accepts theater roles, and finds the path to a career in music.

In the end, Patti is left to celebrate Robert’s life as flocks of seagulls gather above her at his memorial service; an echo of Richards taking the stage at London’s Hyde Park two days after Jones’ death as hundreds of doves are released in Brian’s memory. In the end, it is Patti Smith and Keith Richards who have written best-selling memoirs. Their memories help ensure Robert’s photos and Brian’s haunting slide guitar live on.

A reverence for religion and prayer can seem jarring from a woman who famously declared that “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” but an earnest devotion lies at the heart of Patti Smith’s quest for vocation and salvation through art.

Patti and Robert are collectors: pieces of found art infuse much of their work. Both attach meaning, identity, and an element of the sacred to many of these objects; a discarded lamb from an FAO Schwartz Christmas display, a thrift store Jesuit cloak, crumbling portraits of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

Smith’s childhood attraction to “talismanic charms” developed concurrently with her love of prayer. Many of her early treasures had direct religious connections: holy cards, scapulars, and damaged statues of saints. She even affirms her artistic “vocation” to a statue of Joan of Arc at the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Robert’s relationship with religion has a more foreboding undercurrent – his strict Catholic upbringing. Yet his relationship to the church centers on the recurrent “funny feeling in his stomach, the thrill of doing something forbidden.”

So it doesn’t seem a stretch to compare the altar boy’s thrill of tasting sacrificial wine (violation of church taboo) and affinity for mystical elements of church aesthetics, to the fascination with shocking visuals in Robert’s later work.

As Patti watches Robert working by the light of votive candles in a castoff monk robe, she worries he will cross the barrier she perceives between prayer and magic. To Patti, art is a two-way conversation with God: “…the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution.”

Devotion is a strong presence in Just Kids: to art, to religion, and Patti and Robert to each other. The letter Robert writes before he leaves for San Francisco is a devotional to Patti and to his acceptance of the fluidity between art and religion: “I stand naked when I draw. God holds my hand and we sing together.” Patti, upon receipt of the letter, “accepted those words as a communion wafer.”

Do these religious allusions add any new insight or understanding to your own view of Patti and Robert’s work?