an interview with
patti smith on auguries of innocence

page eight

TODD BAESEN: It's a strange coincidence, but your piece on Janis Joplin appeared in Circus Magazine right next to a poem by Jim Morrison called Dry Water and I know that you've visited Jim Morrison's grave in Paris several times.

PATTI SMITH: Actually, the first time I visited Pere Lachise cemetery was when Jim Morrison was still alive. It was in 1969 and I was 23. I went to honor the painter Amadeo Modigliani and his tragic lover Jeanne Hébuterne, who lies in the grave right next to his. Back then I wanted so much to look like the models in Modigliani's paintings.

But when I returned to Pere Lachise in 1972, it was because Jim Morrison had been buried there in the summer of 1971. Standing upon Jim's grave, I realized how much he was inspired by Rimbaud and how much I was inspired by both of them. I guess I found a part of myself visiting that graveyard-my inner inspiration. A little part of that I expressed in the song Break It Up.

DRY WATER
Jim Morrison

The velvet fur of religion
The polish of knife handle & coin
The universe of organic gears
or microscope mechanical
embryo metal doll
The night is a steel machine
grinding its slow stained wheels
The brain is filled w/clocks & drills
& water down drains
Knife-handle, thick blood
like the coin & cloth
they rub & the skin they love
to touch

the graveyard, the tombstone,
the gloomstone & runestone
The sand & the moon, mating
deep in the Western night
waiting for the escape
of one of our gang
The hangman's noose is a
silver sluice bait
come-on man
your meat is hanging
on the wing of the raven
man's bird, poet's soul

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh
the thin rustle of weeds
the voice comes from faraway
inside, awaiting its birth
in a cool room, on tendril bone
The insane free chummy cackle
of infants in a ballroom, of a
family of friends around
a table, laden w/feast-food
soft guilty female laughter
the bar-room, the men's room
people assemble to establish
armies & find their foe
& fight

TODD BAESEN: You quote William Blake in Worthy the Lamb Slain for Us. What was the idea behind that poem?

PATTI SMITH: I wrote Worthy the Lamb Slain for Us in response to the mass slaughter of lambs in Britain, which needed to be done, but I saw a photograph of a farmer in Wales who had to slaughter all of his lambs because of the fear of hoof and mouth disease. This picture showed a huge cremation pile of all the lambs being burned and beside it, this farmer was weeping, which I found very touching.

TODD BAESEN: Here are a couple of things that I'd like to show you. This is the catalogue for the Brancusi retrospective that was at the Guggenheim Museum. It was marvelous to see it at the Guggenheim because the curves of Brancusi's sculpture were matched by the curves of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. Did you see it at the Guggenheim?

PATTI SMITH: No, I saw it earlier, when it was at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Oh, I love these shots showing Brancusi working in his studio.

TODD BAESEN: After you saw the show in Philadelphia, you channeled a memorable rap about Brancusi into Not Fade Away when you sang it the next day:

I went down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art
I walked up those stone steps
Into that hall
Into that place where as a child
I had made my first great vow
I went into that hall
I walked through it and
I looked at a few Picasso's
And a few Van Gogh's
It was pretty cool
I looked at the Duchamp's
I was transported for a while
Then I went into the Brancusi exhibit
Which you better get to before it closes
In fact, I would take you all there if I could
But instead I will tell you what I saw there
I saw a column
A column of wood
A simple endless column
It didn't look like much
Just inverted triangles going up into the sky
Made by the hand of man
One man who confronted nature and said,
"Oh mighty tree made by God,
If I must kill you
I will make you adoring
I will make you sing
I will make your worth it
I will put in you everything
That the mind and the soul, and the heart of man has to offer
And Brancusi made this column
This endless column
And I stood in front of it
I stood there and time
Sweetly and unexpectedly stood still
Like it was falling in love
Time so sweetly was standing still before me
Erect and sweet
I sniggered and said,
"Thank you Lord for the mind and the soul and the heart of man"