BEGUILED BY FAME
The below are my favorite Patti Smith quotes from piece in INTERVIEW. Every single time I get off track or can find a genuine thing in my life I can take from her wisdom to keep me going. She is a form of artistic purity to me and someone who calms my fears when I am overwhelmed by the shit of Los Angeles and the shit of life. The misconceptions on gall and drive and what it takes to live freely are rampant in our society. We’ve exposed, exploited and sexualized ourselves to a point of boredom/mass consumption/candy/coated/shit/balls. She represents what it takes to consider life a process and to consider that process a creative one.
“I wanted to do something great, and you can’t do anything great if you don’t have mental clarity.”
“I know art got us, because if art gets you, you never can be normal. You can never enjoy. You can’t go anywhere without trying to transform it, you know? You go into church to pray, and you start writing a story about being in a church praying. You’re always observing what you do. I noticed that when I was young going to parties. I could never lose myself in a party unless I was on the dance floor because I was always observing—observing or creating a mental scenario. That’s why performing is probably the truest thing I do socially, because everything is natural. There’s nothing fake in the way that my band performs. We’re always in the moment, communicating with people. I’m not the greatest in social situations. But onstage, my whole reason for being there is to serve, so I’m giving everything of myself that I know how.”
“I didn’t set out to hurt anybody’s feelings, or to shock parents or anything like that. But you know, sometimes we make choices that seem to bother everybody but ourselves.”
“Sometimes in my life I’ve been given too much credit, and sometimes I’ve been ignored, but to me it doesn’t matter. I know what we did, and I know what we’re doing, and the most important thing is the maintenance of the cultural voice.”
“It’s a dark period now because everyone is beguiled by fame.”
“If you attach anything harmful to the creative process, you have to do that. If you learn nothing else from me, this is a really important lesson. I’ve seen a lot of people go down because they attach a substance to their creative process. A lot of it is purely habitual. They don’t need it, but they think they do, so it becomes entrenched.”
