Patti Smith loves a motif. Admittedly, she loves music and her longtime friend and photographer Lynn Goldsmith more, but she loves a motif nevertheless. On Oct. 7 at Oakland’s Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, the two women sit down to peel back the pages of their collaborative coffee table book, “Before After Easter,” a composite of motifs.
After a brief introduction, Patti steps out from behind the curtain in her typical androgynous style –– loose black blazer over a black vest and a pendant hanging around her neck. Lynn struts out behind her, wearing a slouchy gray frock over a tight long sleeve and rugged brown boots. They’re versions of each other after a 50-year friendship –– it’s as if they went rummaging in each other’s closets like sisters. As we come to find out over the next hour and a half, they basically are. If not apparent in their near-identical surnames, then clear in the biting back and forths, like when Patti tells Lynn, “I like your boots” and Lynn looks at the audience as if we’re in a sitcom –– “I’ve been wearing them for 10 years!” Who are these divas?
Despite their apparent sisterly bond, Patti concedes, “I don’t remember when we met at all.” It doesn’t really matter when you met when you have 50 years of friendship to keep track of. What they do remember: their close relationship as photographer and muse. “I don’t really direct Patti, Patti just is,” Lynn says.
The photo projected behind them, grabbed from a page in the book, is playful and wild. At first, I get the sense their photoshoots are childlike in nature –– two girls bored at a sleepover and having fun with an old camera. But it’s a little more serious than that, as Patti makes clear when she says, “I come to Lynn with the mindset of having a job to do and immediately connect with her. It’s not like posing, it’s entering into life at the moment; if Lynn created a moment I would enter it like a character in a scene.”
So not quite preteens at a sleepover, but just as intimate, though Patti’s younger spirit is still present in Lynn’s photos. “When I was young, I liked being photographed,” she says, “I had a very strong sense of self.” If her commanding the room from her seat on stage doesn’t say this loud enough, then maybe the instantly recognizable “Patti” motifs in the pages of “Before Easter After” do.
In between the poems and lyrics and photos is a less obvious but just as classic motif of Patti’s: Her keen eye for well-loved second-hand clothes. A photo of Patti with a tight leather jacket, ever so seductively zipped open to reveal her bare chest, flashes on the projector. She bought it at a thrift store in Camden, New Jersey, and despite its cheap price tag, it couldn’t be more chic.
“I’ve never had to style Patti,” Lynn says, gesturing to a close-up photo of Patti with a Moroccan scarf draped oh-so-casually over her head, “She could take a scarf and do that with it.” The screen flashes a photo of Patti in an emerald-green raincoat, which she says she scored for $5. She gazes up at the photo, with a slight smirk, “I seduced Tom Verlaine in this raincoat.”
Another motif of Patti’s: Her untamed hair. The cover photo of “Before Easter After” tells all –– a close-up so close it’s not even a body, just Patti’s eyes, mouth and wild, wind-swept hair. In the book, it’s placed next to a poem written by Sam Shepard, Patti’s late lover and longtime friend –– the first line gives her wings as a “crowchild.” Her jet-black hair –– spiky and defiant –– adds to the comparison.
But perhaps the most “Patti” motif of them all? Her soulful music, which she offers to us in between conversations. Patti closes the night with a rendition of “People Have the Power” and a big grin on her face. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen a single smile in the photos on screen, despite the way she’s grinning on stage. Smiling is not really on-brand for Patti, so everyone feels lucky to have shared one with her for the night.
About The Author
