A voice of New York: the legacy of Patti Smith

By Natasha Ranawake

Every generation has a voice that seamlessly comes out of thin air; their resurrection is something of a myth, reserved for the mediocre biopic. There is the romanticism and the intrigue that comes with adapting a life from archives, songs and manuscripts. Patti Smith has somehow reclaimed the genre and subverted it almost entirely. Her extraordinary life and rise in the rock-and-roll genre can be pieced together by her memoirs — this seems obvious at first, but the majority of Smith’s work is unapologetically personal and autobiographical. As a reader and someone who regularly listens to the 70s and 80s music scene, I see Smith as the voice of an entire generation; grappling with creative freedom, aimlessness and the want to break the narrative set in stone.

My first real interest in Smith was sparked by the Hozier track, Nina Cried Power. She was a name amongst several others that Hozier placed on a pedestal, and I didn’t think too much about it at the time. Then, as a freshman in University attempting to connect with the New York craze and female writers, I finally found her again. I wish that I had found her sooner, because there was something profoundly honest and raw in everything that she put on paper. At first, I saw Smith as a memoirist, penning her own experiences as an overall creative powerhouse. Then, I discovered her music, and the puzzle pieces came together. I could almost see her life and truths through her music, and it was a revelation.

When I first picked up Just Kids, I didn’t quite know what to expect. Immediately, Smith began to recount moments of her life that seem unassuming at first. She doesn’t focus on time as something exact, and plays around with it. She prioritises moments that really shaped her earliest bursts of creativity; like “glass plates…an old boathouse…stone bridge“. One thing that Smith does well is talking about the mundane, in her eyes everything is worth pieces of poetry. Just Kids, chronicles everything from Smith’s relationship with her faith to her lifelong relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. Yet there is also something quintessentially New York about Just Kids; be it the Chelsea hotel and its artists, or her work as a photographer. This honesty bleeds right into her M Train, which continues the theme of appreciating the mundane things in life. M Train is affectionately known as Smith’s road trip across small cafes and anecdotes that almost function as ornate internal monologues.

Anyone can become a memoirist, but Patti Smith is more than just memoirist. She writes with a passion and enthusiasm about both the ordinary and extraordinary things in life, and at times there’s a remarkable neutrality in the way she writes. This is reflected in her description of her routine meals and her encounters with Janis Joplin. This reflection serves as the foundation for her music, and she finds a way to translate prose into eloquent pieces of contemplation. At times, M Train feels philosophical and at times it feels like a stroll; except you are taking that stroll with one of the most visionary writers of an era.

As a memoirist, Smith is also vulnerable in the way she looks back at her relationships. She immortalises the human connection by diving into an extensive web of relationships and stories. Smith meets at these crossroads of human frustration and love, and delivers a ballad on the collective messiness of being. People have tried to identify Smith as a rock-and-roll icon, and that is a fair reasoning, as she has collaborated with several artists like Bruce Springsteen. In all honesty, I’d say that Smith and Springsteen belong to a modernist Beat Generation, that used words to explore the political and social landscape of war-torn America. Smith is your essential beat writer, with a flare that is reminiscent of both Ginsberg and Kerouac. Like Ginsberg, her M Train and Just Kids are poetic and unorthodox. They also have the same restlessness that is similar to Kerouac’s On the Road.

Ultimately, Smith is a character unlike any other. Seeing her as a singer erases the incredible vulnerability she possesses as a writer, and simply appreciating her writing takes away from her political activism. Patti Smith isn’t just a rock-and-roll icon, but a voice that continued to influence generations of writers and poets. Ultimately, Smith’s writing is for anyone who wants to appreciate both the remarkable and mundane. Her writing opened my eyes to a way of life that I can’t quite place. I think Hozier said it best: “Patti cried power”.

Image: Maddison Neal