Poet, artist, and punk-rock legend Patti Smith sat down last week with journalist Amy Goodman to discuss, among other things, Smith’s memoir Just Kids—reviewed by us in February—about her life and friendship with the late artist Robert Mapplethorpe.
Smith was interviewed before a live audience and parts aired on Goodman’s Democracy Now! program. It is a funny, serious, and very entertaining interview.
“My political views or my humanist views have caused me a lot of censorship, but I don’t have a problem with that,” Smith told the audience. “I mean, it isn’t right, but what I would have more of a problem [with] is if I had to look back on my life and say, yeah, I compromised here and, yeah, I did this so I could get that. Once you start doing that, it’s like a house of cards. It all falls apart. You know, you can’t make any short cuts. It’s all a question of what you want out of life, you know?”
Then she turned to the progressive, graying Goodman and added in fun: “If you wanted to be an anchorwoman on Fox News, perhaps you could make certain choices that would… put you there, including, you know, becoming a blond.”
This past weekend, Smith sat down again for a live interview, this time with writer Jonathan Lethem, in the Great Hall of The Cooper Union. After their talk, Smith took questions from the audience and a woman asked Smith if it was still possible to be a young artist in the city.
With honesty and optimism, Smith said that New York City “has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city.”
