"Take me now baby here as I am
Hold me close, try and understand
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is a banquet on which we feed
Come on now try and understand
The way I feel when I'm in your hands
Take my hand come undercover
They can't hurt you now,
Can't hurt you now, can't hurt you now
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
Have I doubt when I'm alone
Love is a ring, the telephone
Love is an angel disguised as lust
Here in our bed until the morning comes
Come on now try and understand
The way I feel under your command
Take my hand as the sun descends
They can't touch you now,
Can't touch you now, can't touch you now
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
With love we sleep
With doubt the vicious circle
Turns and burns
Without you I cannot live
Forgive, the yearning burning
I believe it's time, too real to feel
So touch me now, touch me now, touch me now
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
Because tonight there are two lovers
If we believe in the night we trust
Because tonight there are two lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us"
- The lyrics to Because the Night by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith, 1978. Translatable lyrics.
***
Because the Night was Patti Smith's first and last (commercially) Big Hit, but, listening to it today, it seems less like a mere pop tune and more like an ectoplasmic incantation worthy of the Eleusinian Mysteries. And, Patti Smith, like one of the key figures in those Mysteries - Persephone, the girl Goddess, beloved by her mother, betrothed to the King of the Dead - guides us through the Underworld to the Temple of Love; the gateway of immortality. That an almost pagan chant would be popularly embraced - and there have been a number of covers throughout the years as well - is not all that unusual. Love is our primary motivation; Love is our night-blooming flower (Sub Rosa) and that its power unfolds in darkness is a very primal conception. Eros, the God of Love, was born of darkness. We are all born of darkness: the womb, the birth tomb (with its secret passageway outwards).
Patti Smith has always struck me as a kindred spirit. She and I were both born during the last days of December, for one, and, regardless of whether you're astrologically literate or not, I find that people who are born at the turning of the year share specific traits... specifically, we're very often outsiders, and outside of time as well; as if being born on the cusp of a year endowed us with the ability to slip through time's cracks. And we have a strange relationship with death. Once again, we seem to be psychically placed at a portal. Psychologically, on the other hand, we're like Peter Pan; we can't really "grow up." We grow inwards.
(Inset right) is a photograph of Patti by Robert Mapplethorpe which appeared on her 1988 album, Dream of Life.
In any case, I'm guessing that for many an outsider artist, Smith's unexpected emergence into the rock world of the late 1970s was a many-splendored thing. She was the wild child of her time... and she never resorted to playing the gender card. It wasn't as if she couldn't, but, like an androgynous little kid - and we all start out that way - it quite possibly never occurred to her...
Like Jim Morrison she had (and has) a shamanic appeal, but hers is essentially that of a sibyl or Pythian priestess who (via Wiki): "Once a month, thereafter, the oracle would undergo purification rites, including fasting, to ceremonially prepare the Pythia for communications with the divine. On the seventh day of each month, she would be led by two attended oracular priests, with her face veiled in purple. A priest would then declaim:
Servant of the Delphian Apollo
Go to the Castallian Spring
Wash in its silvery eddies,
And return cleansed to the temple.
Guard your lips from offense
To those who ask for oracles.
Let the God's answer come
Pure from all private fault."
During the past few years I've been doing a lot of reading at night and, really, I've read a lot of great books. Strangely enough, a number of contemporary woman writers (of fiction) seem to be preoccupied with ghosts these days. I'm not sure why this would be true but I find it encouraging. No, I've never seen a ghost; my ghosts have been internalized. But, ghost stories sans the stereotypical horror aspect transform the genre into something spiritually and metaphysically satisfying.
Patti Smith has internalized her ghosts, as well; something I learned from 3 books of hers: Just Kids, M Train - and recently, a compilation of her interviews (Patti Smith on Patti Smith edited by Adrien Levy.)
Just Kids was my favorite - a memoir of her intense, multifaceted relationship with photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe (website): a touching, alchemical tale of two fiercely creative outsiders who, more or less, climbed in and out of each others psychic (& corporeal) skin, enabling both to achieve the highest of their creative potentials.
M Train - which I'm presently reading again - is pretty much like it sounds... its a travelers tale. Smith isn't exactly down and out... but, she's close - she's in mourning... for her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith (formerly a member of the very subversive rock band, MC5) - and the world she encounters along her (mysterious) existentialist journey is woven with dreams, codes, spontaneous reveries, tarot cards, her own starkly illustrative Polaroids, and, well, graveyards. There is also mention of her two main muse men: Bob Dylan and Arthur Rimbaud, and a few muse women including Frida Kahlo and Sylvia Plath. Best of all, she can be ironically funny; very wry and dry. Even during her darker moments, she's never maudlin. It's a good read. (A few excerpts can be found on her website.)
But, let me make one thing perfectly clear: Patti Smith still owns herself.
So, this is a tribute to Patti Smith: singer, songwriter, poet, writer, photographer, activist, mother, sibyl... and a self-described "bum." "Bum" being the alternative to the "well respected man" (and/or bottom-feeding capitalist slave). Keep in mind that the bum (hobo, flaneur, etc.) accrued a respectful place in the world of arts & letters... amongst the Beats and French Symbolists, for instance. Destitution - the starving artist, the rolling stone, the wandering minstrel, the Tarot's Fool - was, if not a requirement, an indication of ones artistic integrity... paying ones dues to the Muse, so to speak, but not to "the Man."
The moral to this story being: if one feels compelled to follow the dictates of ones inner bum, by all means, do it like Patti Smith. With courage. With imagination. With heart. With finesse.
Below are two interviews with Patti in chronological order featuring bits of live shows and a music video.
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Patti Smith in Concert 2021-2022
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***
Addendum
" Myself, I have not yet seen a man who is not God already."
- Austin Spare from The Psychology of Ecstacy.
Note: The graphic appearing inset left above in the text (a line drawing of Capricorn) was the work of the artist Austin Osman Spare, who was born on December 30 - Patti Smith's birthday - in 1886 and died in 1956. He is well-known in some occult circles but little known otherwise; he died in destitution. Oddly enough, although he is known mostly for his contribution to automatism, he is also considered an early pioneer of Chaos Magic and if you jump down that rabbit hole you will find the writer, the late William Burroughs, a former acquaintance of Patti's. Below is a video featuring Alan Moore discussing Spare and his work. For more information on the artist, try here and here or here. For a Trans-D post on the subject of automatism try here.
Superb tribute. The last paragraph sums it all up perfectly!
ReplyDeleteThanks, BG!
ReplyDeleteActually, the last word sums it up: finesse. It's a beautiful but overlooked word... meaning purity, delicacy and (in my eyes) integrity and grace.
In reality, my tribute was incomplete. In retrospect, she was more influential in my life than generally occurs to me. I shudder to think what my life would've been like without the presence of Patti Smith. But, it's a subtle thing; like finesse. :-)