PATTI SMITH: NOT AFRAID TO BE HAPPY
IF I CAN BE OF HELP I WILL
I never even expected to be alive into my 60s but since I’m here, I’m really happy, I hope I’m alive another 40 years. I like to perform, and I like to communicate, and I think I can be trusted because I don’t have any ulterior motives. I like to make people laugh, I get angry about things. I want to inspire people to get politically involved. But I’d also like to inspire people to take good care of their teeth, don’t eat a lot of salt or fast food. I’m a mum, I can be very irreverent, I can still put my foot through an amp but I can help you with first aid or nutrition. I don’t have an image or agenda, I’ve been here a long time and sadly have outlived a lot of my friends, so if I can be of help I will.
One of the tragedies of our modern world is the affluence and the corporatisation of our cities and advertising, money, condominiums… I’m sure you see it where you all live. New York City was always such a great city when I was younger, because it was so cheap, a little dangerous, not so dangerous, but you could come, get a little bookstore job, live in the East Village, meet a whole bunch of other artists and poets, create a scene and exchange ideas, and get political ideas and poetic ideas and feel like you were doing something.
Now its become so affluent and expensive, and they just have come in really, at such a speed, I can’t believe it, right in front of my eyes, and taken over all our neighbourhoods. Not just some of them, all of them. And these developers and these really evil people like Donald Trump, who’s like an evil king, and just buy up all these areas and make condos so expensive so that none of us can live there.
And it’s not just the whole thing in NY, it’s everywhere I go this is happening, everywhere in the world I go. I was in Istanbul and kids are saying yeah this is a cool area but the developers are moving in. It doesn’t matter where it is it’s the globalisation of our world.
To me globalisation should mean everyone can afford health care, Aids drugs are available to everyone, that no one is starving. That should be globalisation. But globalisation is not that at all. It’s becoming that the world is just one big playground for people with new affluence, and a lot of this affluence is made up, because it’s built on credit cards. It’s not really built on a real working-class sensibility where people work hard, it’s more to do with how clever and entrepreneurial you are. I can live with the equal exploration of the arts, but this equalisation of the world for the middle classes, the upper middle classes, it’s such a class conscious thing. In NY City, I don’t have any place left to play any more, all my band have moved out except for me. Every single place we’ve ever practised, they’re finished, they’re condos, galleries, I don’t know where we’re going…
Me myself I’m looking for somewhere to move because it doesn’t represent me any more. I’m giving up. It doesn’t matter any more. I could hold out on my little street, but for what reason? I have no community. I don’t want to be around these people… I mean we never had anything, nowadays they’ve got these stretch Hummers and they’re dressed up with cell phones hanging out of their ears.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE HAPPY
You hit a sensitive nerve, but despite all of that, and despite the fact that to me, our world seems really fucked up at the moment, and my country seems in a really bad place, spiritually, socially, economically, I still believe, and I tell my kids this, we get one life, one specific life, and we have the right to navigate the dark sea of the world as well as we can, and be happy and have some kind of joy and I don’t think that we need to be depressed, angry and feel defeated every day.
I know things are very bad, but I’m not going to crawl into a hole. I’m going to be myself and I’ll be a living thorn and maybe that’s all I can do, but in the meantime I’m also gonna be happy, and enjoy my kids, enjoy arts, enjoy nature, enjoy this moment. I’m just telling you that life, even in its worst, is worth living. There’s always something wonderful to wake up to everyday. It really is worth it. I have seen the bottom, and even seeing the bottom, I still wanted to come back up. It’s great to be alive.
I don’t believe that we all deserve to have a car, or all the different things that are dangled in front of us, but I do believe we have the right to be happy. So even if you feel guilty, don’t be afraid to be happy.
AS A PARTING GIFT
As a parting gift, I’m telling you something I was never told because my generation, being born right after world war two, dental care was not a big issue and my generation have terrible teeth. I’m telling you, please, save your money, and get your teeth professionally cleaned once, twice a year if you can afford it, because when you get older it’s such a pain in the ass, it’s so important. It will save you a lot of heartache. You wouldn’t think that teeth things were such a big deal but it is such a big pain in the ass.
I worry about people, I do, I want people to come to our concerts and have fun, I want people to have as much information about things, even a little thing because if the revolution comes, you don’t want to be with a nerve exposed in your tooth that’s so painful that you aren’t ready for the revolution.
David O’Coy
