Just Kids

When reading is a priority you find yourself reading many books. Especially in pandemic times escapism seems to be the most important goal when reading. Looking at my shelves I can see many genre books waiting to be read: Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter, Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson, Network Effect by Martha Wells… and the list goes on. We want space skyscrapers and long magical blades. Dragons, robots, nymphs. Anything but what is happening outside our front door where we dash around maskless neighbors like they are lumps of fiery hot magma.

There comes a time in all of this fantasy that one may tend to get burnt out. If you are a writer you will find yourself writing about things that could not exist on Earth’s terra firma, writing within a bubble on an astroid hellbent on crashing into a lunar ocean.

So we turn to a different TBR pile. Memoirs, biographies, science, nature. Instead of escapism one decides that they want reminders that the world, under all of this sickness and pain, is still a beautiful place. A place that has beauty in spades but we, if only for a moment, forgot. We’ve been sipping air through our masks and haven’t gotten the sharp scent of grass that had been our lifeblood. Learning tends to be its own kind of escapism. Especially when we can exit our own brains and follow the life of another.

This brings me to Patti Smith’s Just Kids.

I am not entirely sure why this book hit me at just the right time. I have always noticed that Smith had published books and it has always left me curious. Isn’t she a musician? When does she have time to write? This all through the lens of someone who didn’t know a thing about her. Now that I do, I understand.

Patti Smith was a poet before she was anything else. The fact that she came into music was merely a small twist of fate. Just Kids is not a book of poetry but it still reads like one just the same. The relationship between Smith and Robert Magglethorpe, the late renowned photographer, is unlike any I have heard or read before. Filled with love, frustration, friendship and, most importantly, trust. Just Kids is a look at two artists and how they bolster one another through each other’s creative endeavors. This fact alone is very inspiring to me. To me there is no greater love than helping another rise to their fullest potential, no matter what you fear about their art. It is selfless and beautiful.

Without giving anything away there is much heartache, as is in most of these kinds of relationships. But that doesn’t mean it ends on a negative note. Smith turns everything into poetry while at the same time never sounding pompous of over-elegant. Her prose, as I’ve found with nature writers like Annie Dillard and Mary Oliver, forces you to pay more attention to your world and your relationships. To love with reckless abandon when you have the chance. To make time for your art and to find the ones who see the spark in you and help keep it alive.