Just Kids (2010, this version 2012) is part memoir—a
prelude to fame—and part love story. It is about her relationship with photographer
Robert Mapplethorpe, whom she met in Brooklyn at Brentano’s bookstore in 1967.
The book begins and ends with his death. It spans the years 1967 to 1989.
Separated into five sections, the book deals with:
(1) her childhood and sense of destiny, (2) meeting and loving Mapplethorpe in
Brooklyn, (3) the infamous Chelsea Hotel in New York where they lived, a place
that seals her destiny, (4) the permanent split from Mapplethorpe and the
beginning of her success, and (5) Mapplethorpe’s illness and death.
The book tells of their dreams, thoughts, realities,
inspirations, books, records, songs, artists, and art. It was always about the
art and the arts. “I drew comfort from my books … I imagined myself as Frida [Kahlo]
to Diego [Rivera], both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love
and support and work with side by side.” But she also writes of the historical
milestones, which are invariably about death: Martin Luther King’s shooting,
Robert Kennedy’s shooting, Andy Warhol’s shooting, Patty Hearst’s kidnapping,
the Charles Manson murders, and the death of her friends through illness or
suicide.
Smith and Mapplethorpe were inextricably intertwined;
they had a shared destiny. Both were born in 1946, on a Monday—he first in
November in Boston and she in December in Chicago. They met on a Monday. They
were broke, co-dependent, struggling artists. “Married” in the eyes of his
Catholic parents, they never actually wed, but they held vows to be together
until they could both be financially independent. That time arrived on October
20, 1972: “We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one
another.”
Her destiny changed when she cut her hair like Keith
Richards of the Rolling Stones. Her destiny came into play from the time of the
Chelsea Hotel, the period of her writing that I like best, with the
publications of her poetry. It was here, when she parted from Mapplethorpe that
she met playwright Sam Shepard and music producer Sandy Pearlman. “Sandy
Pearlman, in particular, had a vision of what I should be doing … He saw me as
fronting a rock and roll band, something that had not occurred to me, or that I
have even thought possible.” After writing and performing a play with Sam, for
one night only, she felt the desire to explore songwriting. “We began with the
song I wrote for Janis [Joplin], the song she would never sing.” In 1974 she took the microphone and struck a
chord.
Smith’s memoir is elegantly written. It is powerfully
raw, painfully honest, and poignantly revealing. Smith is probably the one
person on Earth who understood Mapplethorpe and his art. Consequently, the book
is written with profound love, admiration, and respect. In telling his life,
she is telling hers. Never embarrassed by their abject poverty, never arrogant
by their rising fame, but all the while moving toward her first album, Horses, released in 1975, with the
iconic black and white cover photograph of her, taken by Mapplethorpe. Horses, the album, is often cited as one
of the greatest in music history, and the cover was described, by writer
Camille Paglia, as one of the greatest pictures even taken of a woman.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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