Die bekende rockster, Patti Smith, was verlede week ietwat onkant gevang toe dit bekend gemaak is dat haar memoir Just Kids met ‘n National Book Award vir nie-fiksie bekroon is. Volgens die berig op die New York Times se webblad is Just Kids “a sweetly evocative memoir of her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe and life in the bohemian New York of the 1960s and ’70s.”
Met haar bedankingswoord het ‘n aangedane Smith vertel van die jare was sy as toonbankklerk gewerk het by ‘n boekwinkel in Manhattan en terselfdertyd ‘n pleidooi gelewer vir die behoud van Die Boek: “I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf,” het sy glo gesê. “Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”
Amen.
Heelonder volg die gedig “dedication” wat Smith in 1988 as huldeblyk aan Mapplethorne geskryf het. Dié gedig is ook opgeneem in Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment wat deur Janet Kardon saamgestel is.
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Op die webblad was dit maar aan de stillerige kant hierdie naweek. Desmond Painter het vertel van ‘n musiekprogram wat gisteraand uitgesaai is, terwyl Chris Coolsma oor die probleem van slapeloosheid skryf (met wonderlike gedigte by wyse van illustrasie!)
‘n Aangename week word jou toegewens …
Mooi bly.
LE
dedication
It is the Artist’s desire to permeate existence
He does so by the power of his presence
And by will alone he breathes a work into art.
As pumping air into a balloon, that when let go,
permeates the sky.
He sees perfection in a leaf or another man’s
psyche. He is a city of veins and lead;
building and rebuilding the same chapel,
and the same marble stairway
As one walks these stairs and looks around
one notes a gallery of light wars. That is all.
A ship dissolving into the atmosphere, into sea.
And when night falls-the light as well.
And all disappears into walls. No more
luminous than a moon. Composed of love
and will alone.
And the Artist does indeed love.
In love with his own process.
It reaffirms his mastery, his mystery.
A testament of his own life force and also
his gift to humanity.
Certain gifts are chosen and arranged in retrospect.
The Artist machetes a clearance. Here one can be spared
the pain and the extravagance of the entire body and
be transported by snaking thru a glittering fraction.
His gifts, his children, travel beyond the eye
and hand that spun them into existence.
A lifetime of work letting go
of one who has weathered innocence.
Pressed laurels upon intelligence.
All with the generosity
of a transforming
smile.
© Patti Smith (Uit: Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment. Janet Kardon, 1988)