“Tomorrow will be wonderful”
Patti Smith stands on a tiny stage in a cavernous marble art gallery in Sydney. She wears her signature jeans, T-shirt, scruffy old boots. She’s here to read a little poetry, sing a couple of songs, chat informally with fans (who run the gamut from 20-something fourth-wave feminists to gnarly old artists). They’re expecting maybe a little shouting, a little swearing from this pioneer of the New York punk movement. Instead, Patti quotes her mother on the importance of counting one’s blessings:
“‘I wept because I had no shoes, then I saw a man who had no feet.’ That was what my mother always told us,” she says, in her soft New Jersey drawl. Then she goes on matter-of-factly to impress upon the audience the importance of sensible woollen socks.
At 72, Patti sees her mother’s aphorisms (of which there were many) as solid preparation for the travails that life has flung her way. She has weathered more than her share of storms since her 1975 album, Horses, took music by the collar and shook it hard. Patti has outlived many of those she’s loved best and her most recent book, The Year of the Monkey, reads almost as a meditation on letting go.
“This is what I know...” she writes. “My brother is
