-- spidermoon cobweblog --

E-mail message
Subject: greetings from Patti Smith

greetings

I'm writing a bit early as we are heading for Madrid. We will play the Festimad and certainly spend time in the Reina Sofia Museum contemplating Guernica.

For decades we had it right here at MOMA. One merely mounted the stairs to find it. In 1981 it returned home. It was sad to see it go. It was a good thing. It is where it should be. In Spain.

i would be amiss if i didn't mention that yesterday was Bob Dylan's birthday. It's a good day to throw open the shutters, put on The Times They Are A Changin' and take those worn, encrusted boots out of the closet or from under the bed and give them a good cleaning.

There have been times in history when men have tramped trough the ice and snow, or manned the trenches, the soles of their shoes nearly gone, young soldiers, under Washington, Lee or Napoleon with no foot covering at all. So it is good to show appreciation for our well trodden soles.

So, as we sail off to Spain we send a salute to Bob.

My trusty boots await and when we return I shall resume my quest for the perfect laces.

all good wishes
patti smith

---

Visit: http://pattismith.net

jezebel 20:39 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

[Site "www.ChessWorld.net"]
[Date "2003.5.25"]
[Round "NA"]
[White "Lacomolza"]
[Black "jezebel"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Termination "Black king mated"]
[Mode "ICS"]
[DateLastMove "2004.4.28"]
[Board ""250110"]

1. e4 Nb8c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 f6 4. f4 g5 5. Qd1h5 Ke8d7 6. Qh5f7 Ng8h6 7. Qf7xd5 Kd7e8 8. Bf1b5 Qd8xd5 9. Bb5xc6 Qd5xc6 10. Ng1f3 Qc6xc2 11. Nb1d2 gxf4 12. O-O Qc2c6 13. exf6 Qc6xf6 14. Nd2e4 Qf6f5 15. Nf3g5 e5 16. dxe5 Qf5xe5 17. Bc1xf4 Bf8c5 18. Kg1h1 Qe5e7 19. Ra1e1 Bc8e6 20. Ng5xe6 Bc5d6 21. Bf4xh6 Qe7h4 22. Ne4xd6 Ke8d7 23. Nd6f5 Qh4c4 24. Ne6d4 Ra8e8 25. Re1c1 Qc4xa2 26. Nd4b5 c6 27. Rc1d1 Kd7e6 28. Nf5g7 Ke6e7 29. Bh6g5 1-0

...


jezebel 03:27 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

This is an interview translated from French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur.

It was translated and posted on the Joni Mitchell discussion list (a lot of patti talk in the last two weeks there)
http://absolufeminin.nouvelobs.com/people/people2059_085.html

Patti Smith: This is Radio Baghdad
by Francois Armanet

Always inspired, always the rebel, Patti Smith has just released a new album, Trampin'. Its opening title, Radio Baghdad, denounces Bush's cynicism. Francois Armanet met her in Paris before she went to visit Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

Her face as pale as an El Greco painting, a penetrating look, charming squint in her left eye, a light down on her upper lip, thin arms, big hands, rough voice and pose like a little girl, knees turned in, feet in front. A diamond cross, given by her companion, decorates her graceful neck, another, in gold, a gift from her best friend, accentuates her charcoal tee-shirt. The back of her jacket says, Vote Nader. Lace-up boots, pants to her knees, a black ribbon on her left wrist.

Androgynous rage and grace as captured by Robert Mapplethorpe on the cover of her 1975 album, Horses.

That year, Patti Smith, decked out like Baudelaire, thrust herself into the male universe of rock. On this album, one song, Gloria, its first verse: Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine, inspired by Camus, and she became the icon of the Blank Generation.

Four years later, after four albums, the underground heroine, oldest child of a working class New Jersey family, announced her retirement because she refused to become rich and to stay famous. She married Fred Sonic Smith (of the same name), former guitarist from MC5, and moved to Detroit.

Eight years of the proletarian dream and domestic exile to learn humility and raise two children, writing books and doing the cooking and washing. In 1988, to get back into the swing of things, she returned with the hymn, People have the Power. Then, another absence.

In 1994, her husband died of cardiac arrest and, the following month, her brother. She went back to New York, got her group back together and re-entered the scene.

Ten years have passed and now she has come out with her ninth album. Eleven titles which resonate with the Book of the Dead, Simon of the desert, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, William Blake, ballads of inconsolable angels, and one long improvisation, Radio Baghdad, which depicts the city as both centre of the world and city of ash.

- -- Radio Baghdad --

You must first go back to September 11. I was living in SoHo, 20 minutes walk from the World Trade Center. That morning, I kissed my daughter good-bye on her way to school and, just like every day, I looked at the towers on one side, the Empire State Building on the other. Then I went back to bed. I was woken up by the sound of the plane. It was flying so low that my daughter and her friends could see it pass just above their heads.

The telephone rang and someone told me, Get dressed, theyre attacking us! I was horrified, but first I reacted like a mother. I ran into the street to look for my daughter and I could only be reassured when I held her in my arms. You would have thought it was an atomic explosion the sky was filled with black smoke, everywhere white dust was falling, and I knew that dust was the remains of the towers and the human beings who had been there.

In the street, we came across people who were bleeding and we said to ourselves, This is what war is like.

I really became aware of the hugeness of this tragedy for Americans and all of humanity. But once this reaction of horror had passed, I began to reflect. I said to myself, Yes, its terrible, but in some countries, people live this all the time famine, war, terrorism.

Terrorism for some is the only possible way to respond. After all, at the time of the American War of Independence, Thomas Paine was a kind of terrorist with words. And he was jailed in England and France. America has weapons of mass destruction and despite this, were shocked when some people use bombs. Were Goliath pointing the finger at David.

Yes, September 11 was a tragedy, but Im sorry that we didnt use the occasion or take the time to get together with the international community to think about these problems together, and to ask why certain people feel so dispossessed that they resort to this kind of act. International opinion by and large sympathized with our pain, because no one wants to see that kind of thing happening. September 11 could have opened up an era of dialogue. Instead, the situation is now worse than ever.

I wrote Radio Baghdad from the point of view of an American mother who loves her country, but who sees it in trouble and says, If something is bothering us, lets get together and change things. We must always remind the government that the people exist. Bush exploited the fears of the American people and created an atmosphere of paranoia. I improvised the words to Radio Baghdad in the studio. I tried to express the impotent rage of an Iraqi mother the night the Americans unleashed that deluge of fire. It came out on its own, the mother singing a lullaby to her child celebrating the past grandeur of the earth.

So, here are two women who love their countries, who experience these torments and who come together in a song.

- -- My dreams --

I didnt really betray my dreams. Certainly I made a lot of mistakes, often by being too self-centred. But I always refused to compromise my art, and I dont need to be ashamed of my work. And Im still alive and I still have time to accomplish things. In fact, my childhood dream was to write a great book, like Pinocchio, a magical book that everyone loves and would want to read again. I always adored books. When I was little, I read under the covers with a flashlight instead of sleeping. I would love to write a book that changes readers lives the way some books changed mine.

My greatest shattered dream, the great tragedy of my life, was my husbands death. Today, I lead a happy life. I have wonderful children and a companion.
But I couldnt achieve this one dream to spend the rest of my life with the father of my children.

When I was a child, my mother gave me a copy of Songs of innocence and experience. William Blake described a little chimney sweep and protested against child labour. He never had any children, but you can tell he loved all the sad and mistreated children he met.

Later, when I lived with Robert Mapplethorpe, we spent a lot of time studying Blake's drawings and paintings, and this influenced me both as a poet and as a painter, before I discovered the greatness of the man. All his life he struggled with poverty, lack of recognition, even sarcasm, but he never gave up believing in his vision.

Blake's humour is an inspiration. Its in that spirit that I wrote the song, Rock-n-Roll Nigger instead of allowing yourself to be insulted, why not reclaim the term? You dont need to call me your your kind or a person of colour, you can call me Negro, I know how to take it.

- -- God --

The idea of God has always fascinated me. When my mother, who was a Jehovahs Witness, talked to me about God and the angels for the first time, I found some consolation we were haunted by the atomic bomb. And then I was happy to have someone to talk to, someone I could tell everything to. Jehovahs Witnesses place a lot of stock in reading and studying the Bible. Even if I grew away from it when I was around 12 or 13, because I refused to belong to organized religion, I still studied it and that piqued my curiosity about other great sacred texts the Koran, the Torah, Hindu and Buddhist manuscripts.

What excites me is how, over the centuries, man has interpreted God through poetry, mystical texts and above all, art. There is so much beauty in Michelangelo, the primitives of Sienna or Rodin, so much beauty in Islamic texts or Buddhist painting. And theres beauty in prayer. I'm really sorry about the dogmatic or sectarian side of religion I have a more abstract and aesthetic approach.

- -- The Beat Generation --

I had the chance to get to know Allen Ginsberg, Williams Burroughs and Gregory Corso. Oliver Ray (Patty Smiths current companion) and I watched over Ginsberg during his agony. I was very close to Burroughs and we visited Corso up until he died. I still keep the memory of their friendship and everything they passed on to me. Gregory taught me to be very demanding of myself and of other artists. Allen taught me the work ethic. And William, dearest to my heart, taught me to behave like a human being. He was a gentleman, full of humour and dignity, even in the way he moved and dressed. The further along in life I go, the more I think about him, wondering what he would do in my place in one situation or another.

And he was always perfectly chivalrous with me. When I visited him after my husband died, he invited me to dinner, held my hand, came down the stairs with me, despite how old he was. Yes, they left us their work, but they also gave me a lesson in life.

- -- Paris --

Of course Ill go to visit Pere-Lachaise. The graves of Nerval, Jim Morrison, Apollinaire, Eluard and so many others.

I love tombstones. At Montparnasse, theres Baudelaire and Brancusi. And near the Place d'Italie, the hotel where Genet died. I dont go to the taverns or parties. I prefer to get up early and pace the streets in the rain, in the footsteps of Genet or Nerval. Nothing makes me happier than putting my feet in the footprints of those whose works Ive loved, those friends, those sisters of my soul.

- -- Rock --

If our music could influence talented young people, that's great. I have older tastes. I listen to Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Maria Callas, Beethoven. I spent half my time at the opera. I listen to the same music I listened to when I was young. But I'm happy that people keep on creating. I would like to see a new wave of artists appear that would sweep away the materialism and the cynical merchandising that dominates today's culture and that this generation would give music back its content, and make it a political and spiritual voice.
Rock as I see it is a popular art form that can be the voice of change, unity and exaltation of the people.

- -- Compassion --

Thats something I really learned when I had kids. One day I saw a report!on Audrey Hepburn's visit to Somalia when she had incurable cancer. She was with a mother and child, both famine victims. And the child died. I was just about to give my daughter her bottle. I looked at my child, happy, plump, cared for, and wondered what I would feel if I saw her as a skeleton with a swollen belly. I felt that mothers pain so strongly that I was overcome by it. Maybe thats what compassion is.

Remarks collected by Francois Armanet.

Trampin', by Patti Smith, Columbia.

Born December 30, 1946, in Chicago,
Patti Smith published Seventh Heaven, her first collection of poetry, in 1972, and put out many albums, including Horses (1975), produced by John Cale, Radio Ethiopia (1976), with its Rimbaud theme, Easter (1978), which included Springsteens Because the night, and Dream of Life (1988). She lives in New York.

jezebel 03:56 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

This is an interview translated from French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur.

It was translated and posted on the Joni Mitchell discussion list (a lot of patti talk in the last two weeks there)
http://absolufeminin.nouvelobs.com/people/people2059_085.html

Patti Smith: This is Radio Baghdad
by Francois Armanet

Always inspired, always the rebel, Patti Smith has just released a new album, Trampin'. Its opening title, Radio Baghdad, denounces Bush's cynicism. Francois Armanet met her in Paris before she went to visit Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

Her face as pale as an El Greco painting, a penetrating look, charming squint in her left eye, a light down on her upper lip, thin arms, big hands, rough voice and pose like a little girl, knees turned in, feet in front. A diamond cross, given by her companion, decorates her graceful neck, another, in gold, a gift from her best friend, accentuates her charcoal tee-shirt. The back of her jacket says, Vote Nader. Lace-up boots, pants to her knees, a black ribbon on her left wrist.

Androgynous rage and grace as captured by Robert Mapplethorpe on the cover of her 1975 album, Horses.

That year, Patti Smith, decked out like Baudelaire, thrust herself into the male universe of rock. On this album, one song, Gloria, its first verse: Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine, inspired by Camus, and she became the icon of the Blank Generation.

Four years later, after four albums, the underground heroine, oldest child of a working class New Jersey family, announced her retirement because she refused to become rich and to stay famous. She married Fred Sonic Smith (of the same name), former guitarist from MC5, and moved to Detroit.

Eight years of the proletarian dream and domestic exile to learn humility and raise two children, writing books and doing the cooking and washing. In 1988, to get back into the swing of things, she returned with the hymn, People have the Power. Then, another absence.

In 1994, her husband died of cardiac arrest and, the following month, her brother. She went back to New York, got her group back together and re-entered the scene.

Ten years have passed and now she has come out with her ninth album. Eleven titles which resonate with the Book of the Dead, Simon of the desert, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, William Blake, ballads of inconsolable angels, and one long improvisation, Radio Baghdad, which depicts the city as both centre of the world and city of ash.

- -- Radio Baghdad --

You must first go back to September 11. I was living in SoHo, 20 minutes walk from the World Trade Center. That morning, I kissed my daughter good-bye on her way to school and, just like every day, I looked at the towers on one side, the Empire State Building on the other. Then I went back to bed. I was woken up by the sound of the plane. It was flying so low that my daughter and her friends could see it pass just above their heads.

The telephone rang and someone told me, Get dressed, theyre attacking us! I was horrified, but first I reacted like a mother. I ran into the street to look for my daughter and I could only be reassured when I held her in my arms. You would have thought it was an atomic explosion the sky was filled with black smoke, everywhere white dust was falling, and I knew that dust was the remains of the towers and the human beings who had been there.

In the street, we came across people who were bleeding and we said to ourselves, This is what war is like.

I really became aware of the hugeness of this tragedy for Americans and all of humanity. But once this reaction of horror had passed, I began to reflect. I said to myself, Yes, its terrible, but in some countries, people live this all the time famine, war, terrorism.

Terrorism for some is the only possible way to respond. After all, at the time of the American War of Independence, Thomas Paine was a kind of terrorist with words. And he was jailed in England and France. America has weapons of mass destruction and despite this, were shocked when some people use bombs. Were Goliath pointing the finger at David.

Yes, September 11 was a tragedy, but Im sorry that we didnt use the occasion or take the time to get together with the international community to think about these problems together, and to ask why certain people feel so dispossessed that they resort to this kind of act. International opinion by and large sympathized with our pain, because no one wants to see that kind of thing happening. September 11 could have opened up an era of dialogue. Instead, the situation is now worse than ever.

I wrote Radio Baghdad from the point of view of an American mother who loves her country, but who sees it in trouble and says, If something is bothering us, lets get together and change things. We must always remind the government that the people exist. Bush exploited the fears of the American people and created an atmosphere of paranoia. I improvised the words to Radio Baghdad in the studio. I tried to express the impotent rage of an Iraqi mother the night the Americans unleashed that deluge of fire. It came out on its own, the mother singing a lullaby to her child celebrating the past grandeur of the earth.

So, here are two women who love their countries, who experience these torments and who come together in a song.

- -- My dreams --

I didnt really betray my dreams. Certainly I made a lot of mistakes, often by being too self-centred. But I always refused to compromise my art, and I dont need to be ashamed of my work. And Im still alive and I still have time to accomplish things. In fact, my childhood dream was to write a great book, like Pinocchio, a magical book that everyone loves and would want to read again. I always adored books. When I was little, I read under the covers with a flashlight instead of sleeping. I would love to write a book that changes readers lives the way some books changed mine.

My greatest shattered dream, the great tragedy of my life, was my husbands death. Today, I lead a happy life. I have wonderful children and a companion.
But I couldnt achieve this one dream to spend the rest of my life with the father of my children.

When I was a child, my mother gave me a copy of Songs of innocence and experience. William Blake described a little chimney sweep and protested against child labour. He never had any children, but you can tell he loved all the sad and mistreated children he met.

Later, when I lived with Robert Mapplethorpe, we spent a lot of time studying Blake's drawings and paintings, and this influenced me both as a poet and as a painter, before I discovered the greatness of the man. All his life he struggled with poverty, lack of recognition, even sarcasm, but he never gave up believing in his vision.

Blake's humour is an inspiration. Its in that spirit that I wrote the song, Rock-n-Roll Nigger instead of allowing yourself to be insulted, why not reclaim the term? You dont need to call me your your kind or a person of colour, you can call me Negro, I know how to take it.

- -- God --

The idea of God has always fascinated me. When my mother, who was a Jehovahs Witness, talked to me about God and the angels for the first time, I found some consolation we were haunted by the atomic bomb. And then I was happy to have someone to talk to, someone I could tell everything to. Jehovahs Witnesses place a lot of stock in reading and studying the Bible. Even if I grew away from it when I was around 12 or 13, because I refused to belong to organized religion, I still studied it and that piqued my curiosity about other great sacred texts the Koran, the Torah, Hindu and Buddhist manuscripts.

What excites me is how, over the centuries, man has interpreted God through poetry, mystical texts and above all, art. There is so much beauty in Michelangelo, the primitives of Sienna or Rodin, so much beauty in Islamic texts or Buddhist painting. And theres beauty in prayer. I'm really sorry about the dogmatic or sectarian side of religion I have a more abstract and aesthetic approach.

- -- The Beat Generation --

I had the chance to get to know Allen Ginsberg, Williams Burroughs and Gregory Corso. Oliver Ray (Patty Smiths current companion) and I watched over Ginsberg during his agony. I was very close to Burroughs and we visited Corso up until he died. I still keep the memory of their friendship and everything they passed on to me. Gregory taught me to be very demanding of myself and of other artists. Allen taught me the work ethic. And William, dearest to my heart, taught me to behave like a human being. He was a gentleman, full of humour and dignity, even in the way he moved and dressed. The further along in life I go, the more I think about him, wondering what he would do in my place in one situation or another.

And he was always perfectly chivalrous with me. When I visited him after my husband died, he invited me to dinner, held my hand, came down the stairs with me, despite how old he was. Yes, they left us their work, but they also gave me a lesson in life.

- -- Paris --

Of course Ill go to visit Pere-Lachaise. The graves of Nerval, Jim Morrison, Apollinaire, Eluard and so many others.

I love tombstones. At Montparnasse, theres Baudelaire and Brancusi. And near the Place d'Italie, the hotel where Genet died. I dont go to the taverns or parties. I prefer to get up early and pace the streets in the rain, in the footsteps of Genet or Nerval. Nothing makes me happier than putting my feet in the footprints of those whose works Ive loved, those friends, those sisters of my soul.

- -- Rock --

If our music could influence talented young people, that's great. I have older tastes. I listen to Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Maria Callas, Beethoven. I spent half my time at the opera. I listen to the same music I listened to when I was young. But I'm happy that people keep on creating. I would like to see a new wave of artists appear that would sweep away the materialism and the cynical merchandising that dominates today's culture and that this generation would give music back its content, and make it a political and spiritual voice.
Rock as I see it is a popular art form that can be the voice of change, unity and exaltation of the people.

- -- Compassion --

Thats something I really learned when I had kids. One day I saw a report!on Audrey Hepburn's visit to Somalia when she had incurable cancer. She was with a mother and child, both famine victims. And the child died. I was just about to give my daughter her bottle. I looked at my child, happy, plump, cared for, and wondered what I would feel if I saw her as a skeleton with a swollen belly. I felt that mothers pain so strongly that I was overcome by it. Maybe thats what compassion is.

Remarks collected by Francois Armanet.

Trampin', by Patti Smith, Columbia.

Born December 30, 1946, in Chicago,
Patti Smith published Seventh Heaven, her first collection of poetry, in 1972, and put out many albums, including Horses (1975), produced by John Cale, Radio Ethiopia (1976), with its Rimbaud theme, Easter (1978), which included Springsteens Because the night, and Dream of Life (1988). She lives in New York.

jezebel 03:50 - [Link] - Comments ()
...