Until recently, I had no idea there was a Turrell Skyspace at UIC. Josh was saying the viewing pavilion looks kind of lame on the outside, and I have to agree: The Jetsons meets a boring university bldg. The cascading water along the circumference of the observatory is kind of lame-o as well. Inside, however, all that matters is the oculus in the roof that frames the sky of the moment. Even the college girl sitting on the bench across from me eating Burger King and yapping on her cell phone couldn't detract from the quietness of the view.
The morning glories are taking over the garden! (But cool jewelry, no?)
September has been a month of live music: Neu!, Disappears, Sleep, High Places, Pavement, No Age, &c. Showgoingagogo.
No HP visit would be complete without banh mi!
Jenny's vegan Double Down. Truly intense—to both the mind and stomach!
More sky.
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BOOK REPORT: Finally finished Just Kids, Patti Smith's moving memoir about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe and their creative coming of age in studios, clubs, matchbook-sized apartments, and other boho corners of late '60s/early '70s New York: The Chelsea Hotel, Max's Kansas City, St. Mark's Church... The throughline, as the two twentysomethings slowly carve out a social and artistic niche for themselves, is their intense bond and inseparability. A la Frida and Diego and Bonnie and Clyde, they're each other's inspiration, partner in crime. Like the twins in Slapstick, they're joined at the hip.
One can't forget that Smith is a poet with a soft spot for the mystical, and this bleeds into her storytelling. At times her recollections are shrouded in wispy spirituality (angels and guiding stars and small prophecies) and other times brought down to earth with a refreshing straightforwardness and transparency. In writing about Mapplethorpe, the "artist of her life," who died of AIDS in the mid-'80s, Smith told Interview: "It made me miss him. Sometimes I'd remember the atmosphere of our youth with such clarity that it hurt."
As with Born Standing Up and other artists' memoirs I was reminded once again how much WORK WORK WORK—experimentation, rejection, reflection, revision, half-filled venues, and crumpled drafts—usually precedes artistic arrival (and by "arrival" I simply mean the ability to live off one's art). This shouldn't bear reminding but in our age of quickie blog-to-book deals and YouTube-made superstars, it (kinda sadly) does.
Reading Just Kids, you want the kids to succeed because that's the narrative we love and are used to, and because, of course, we know they will—though not without each other's support and urging. It's a testament to their bond that long after Mapplethorpe's death, Smith still draws inspiration from that wellspring of memory.
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