Just Kids by Patti Smith

[m_oonmoon]

I started this book while I was on a spontaneous weekend trip. Reading it in a different city, surrounded by art and nature that I normally don't get to encounter in my hometown really elevated the experience for me. Not that this book required much atmospheric or scenic help. Truth be told, I read much of it back home but I still felt different, as if life could be so much more.

This book reminded me of the movie Kill Your Darlings. I'm not one for movies but I loved watching these people whose lives revolved around their art. Just Kids had the same effect on me. I was completely drawn to the image of artists who want nothing more in life but to make art, people who were surrounded by art and seem to have a magnetic attraction to others who were just as invested in their craft. The portrait of a struggling artist is one that I am enamored by. I know it's completely romantic on paper and probably only in retrospect. I imagine the financial struggles are not as dreamy when you are actually living in those moments. Nonetheless, I am drawn to it and I love reading about people who make a name for themselves out of sheer passion. I have always harbored a disdain for my mediocrity. I have a completely unrealistic dream of my name being immortal, leaving something for the world long after my death so that only a portrait of me, shorn off of my ugliness, remains. Stories like this help me live vicariously through them because I know in my heart that I will never be great.

I think that's also the thing that I really appreciated about this book - the unapologetic self-assurance. Patti and Robert never doubted their artistry. They were proud of their work even when they had only each other as audience. The question of recognition to them was only a matter of when, not if.

I love stories of passion and love and art. It's not a world that is open to me as I have never been passionate about anything in my life. I have love to give but I do not possess the necessary vulnerability to express it. Art I have always chased after but never fully gotten ahold of. These things are unattainable to me, which is precisely why I love them so much.