53 Brentwood Blog

Monday, January 29, 2007

Patti Smith 2: Artists should work.

Smith is nothing if not a grafter. She prickles at the modern notion of rock as a glamorous vocation, of stars made overnight, of the MTV generation's iPodded consumerism. "You have to kick doors open yourself. When people come up to me and say, 'Patti, nobody wants to hear my CD and I don't have enough money for equipment,' I say, 'Well, get a job, y'know?' That's what I did. You get people who say, 'The government won't give me a grant and I can't do my art.' I say, 'Fuck you, it's your own fault, you expect the government to give you a hand? The government is corrupt. Do what it takes. You do babysitting jobs, you work in the factory, you work in the bookstore or become a pickpocket, y'know? But whatever. Get a job.' Work is really good for an artist." Her features sharpen and there is a fierce set to her mouth. "My son is one of the best guitar players I've ever heard. And how does he make his money? He does manual labour, he does landscaping, he digs ditches. He's out there sometimes eight to 12 hours a day because he lives in Detroit and it's hard to get work there. But it's good, it's good. Artists should work."

Monday, January 22, 2007

Patti Smith 1: lot of guts back then.

She smiles gently. "I guess I had a lot of guts back then; I thought that this was my mission." Rock'n'roll, she claims, was something she was "just gonna do for a little while and then get back to work". Work, to Smith, meant writing and painting, the ambitions she had held growing up in New Jersey. "And somehow I got drawn in to it and wound up making a record."

Friday January 19, 2007
Guardian

Friday, January 19, 2007

We are free to be free.

Nelson Mandela

Monday, January 15, 2007

Happy 2007

Where is the life we have lost in the living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T. S. Eliot