The creative currency of care: The moment Patti Smith met Allen Ginsberg
In Just Kids, the memoir written by Patti Smith, one of the main lessons that comes through is the importance of community and care. More so than any anecdote about any famous person, any tracing portrait of Smith’s own journey from small-town girl to global poet, the book feels like an ode to the essential yet small acts of support people offer to people. It’s these little moments that change everything, serendipitous meetings that become sliding doors simply by reaching out a helping hand or sharing a kind word.
It doesn’t really matter so much that, in Smith’s case, those moments were often shared with major names. She writes of a friend coming over with fish to cook for her when she was down and out; that act of kindness mattered more than the fact that it was William S Burroughs bringing the food. It matters more about the words of encouragement she was given to begin writing music, and less that they came from the likes of Jimi Hendrix or Bob Neuwirth. It’s more about the way a community helped to grow her confidence in her artistry, not so much about the specifics of the facts that Gregory Corso or Sam Shepherd were amongst the biggest advocates.
Instead, Just Kids is an ode to a community she fell into in New York and the Chelsea Hotel. In other books written about the place, that shines through, too. In Chelsea Girls, Eileen Myles wrote about her own experience in the hotel, caring for the poet James Schuyler in his dying days and feeling cared for by the other residents in exchange. It was a place where, in the absence of money, one thing was traded for the other; food for encouragement or friendly company, a tattoo for some camera film, help with one art project for help on another. Smith had many of those moments, but the one she shared with Allen Ginsberg captures it so perfectly, so neatly, and so humourously.
“Can I help?” That was Ginsberg’s opening line as Smith struggled to get a machine working. “There was no mistaking the face of one of our great poets and activists,” she writes of the moment when she came face to face with a hero of hers. And he helped her out. The machine wasn’t working because she was short of cash; “Allen added the extra dime and also stood me to a cup of coffee”.
At the table, they talked about poetry, inspiring Smith even more in a conversation about their mutual admiration for Walt Whitman. It was a simple thing; Ginsberg helped her out with money, got her a drink and even got her a sandwich, opening up an easy dialogue between them to talk about bigger things. But then he stopped; “Are you a girl?” he asked. Smith replied that she was, adding, “Is that a problem?”
“I’m sorry. I took you for a very pretty boy,” Ginsberg admitted, but the friendship endured. After it was cleared up, they chatted longer about Jack Kerouac, Arthur Rimbaud, what he was working on and what she was working on. The openness of a simple act of care led to a long connection that, in both their eyes, always rooted back to that.
“He once asked how i would describe how me met,” Smith recalled of the poet who from them on what a mainstay in the crowd of her reading and shows, vocally supporting her career, “‘I would say you fed me when i was hungry,’” she said, because it was as simple as that.
