Devotion - Patti Smith

DEVOTION – PATTI SMITH

The premise of Devotion, by Patti Smith, is to answer the question 'Why is one compelled to write?' It's a very straightforward question that demands a straightforward answer but then when you ask a writer such a thing it's never going to be simple because writers tend to ponder, dwell and contemplate. Or at least the good ones do.

Patti Smith twirls the question around: 'Why do I write? My finger, as a stylus, traces the question in the blank air. A familiar riddle posed since youth, withdrawing from play, comrades and the valley of love, girded with words, a beat outside. Why do we write? A chorus erupts.'

Patti's answer is concise and to the point: 'Because we cannot simply live.'

If you think about it, Patti's answer makes sense. The act of writing is living plus something more, as is any act of creativity. Or it should be. Why does an artist paint? Is not a landscape or a bowl of fruit, for example, enough in itself? Why does a man desire to render a vision upon canvas? Is not the vision enough? Why does a photographer need to capture an image? Is the image in itself not enough? For posterity, you might say? But photography is an art so capturing an image with a photograph is the act of turning an image into art.

Art isn't just limited, however, to the obvious forms of it such as writing, painting, sculpturing, etc, etc. Baking bread, for example, is also an art. As is building a house, tending a garden, raising a family, etc, etc. Anything that involves creation, really. And it doesn't even stop there. Dancing is also an art, as is playing football, climbing a mountain, swimming in a sea, and so on. Nothing is being created from these things but that's not the point. It's the act of 'doing' that matters. Creating something ephemeral. Something of, in and for the moment. Existing one moment but gone the next. Art is the act of living. Your life is your art.

In Devotion, Patti Smith very cleverly reveals the process of her writing. The main plank of the book consists of a story about an ice skater who lives for her art (of skating) and a possessive collector and dealer of rare artefacts. It's the story of the relationship between the two and of how obsession and possession become entwined.

What Patti does, however, is to book-end the story with her travel diary, detailing a trip to France and England. In France she visits the family home of Albert Camus where she is invited to see the unfinished manuscript of the book he was working on prior to his death in a car crash, provisionally entitled The First Man. In England she visits the grave of political activist and Christian philosopher Simone Weil so as to pay homage.

Along the way she notes various incidents, memories and observations all of which end up in the main story of the ice skater and the art collector. If Devotion is a crime, as Patti explains, then all these notes she has taken during her travels is the evidence.

So, from the art of her life – and Patti Smith's life is indeed an artistic one – is forged the art of her book, Devotion. It was Henry Miller who once wrote: 'Certainly I want to write but I don't think it's the be-all and end-all. First comes life.' This isn't to neglect, however, the importance of dream as Henry Miller again once wrote: 'We are all dreamers, only some of us wake up in time to put down a few words.'

In her song Free Money, from her Horses album, Patti famously sings 'When we dream it, we dream it for free. Free money free money free money.' What Patti means by this (or what it can be translated as Patti meaning) is that dreaming is a currency allowing the dreamer to purchase other, possibly even better dreams. It is these dreams that are rendered upon a page, a canvas, film, in a song or whatever.

From the art of life and of dreams, then, is born another kind of art.

Devotion by Patti Smith is a work of genius. It is a book that captures the essence of art and the process that goes into the creation of it. It's a very generous book that offers a rare insight into the secrets and innermost thoughts of one of our greatest – in my opinion – living day artists. For someone who obviously has a love for the written word, Patti Smith has created something whose value is actually beyond words.

John Serpico