Devotion (Why I Write)

"I guess everybody knows who Patti Smith is. She was one of my heroes when I was younger, when Horses came out. She was the godmother of the punk generation, but that’s only a very small part of the Patti Smith story. She’s not only a great singer but also she knows how to write. They didn’t come out in 2017, but Just Kids and M Train are magnificent stories of her life, what it was like to live in New York in the 50s and 60s. She’s a phenomenal writer and she’s one of the most erudite people I’ve ever met. She comes from the world of Bob Dylan and pop culture. She is a great artist herself, but she knows Bulgakov. She knows Brecht. She knows Paul Valéry. She knows Simone Weil. Devotion is a very odd, small book, which I absolutely adored because it consists of three parts. The first part is how she goes to Paris for the promotion of her book, but then uses her time to go to the south of France and to see the graveyard of Paul Valéry and from there she goes to London, to visit the graveyard of Simone Weil. In the meantime, she’s working on a story, and the story is the second chapter of the book. It’s about a young girl of only 15 or 16, an orphan. She is trapped by an older man, who wants to make her live her life according to his rules. So he gives her a new name, Philadelphia. She asks why Philadelphia and he says it’s because it’s a hotbed of freedom. Anyway, at the end of that story in which she just has to follow him, she kills him and goes back to the world where she came from. For me, I read it as an astonishing story about the meaning and the quest for freedom. To be a free human being, not to have others tell you how to live your life and what you have to do. Then you get to the final part of the book, where she is invited by the daughter of Albert Camus to go to Lourmarin, and to visit the house and to see all the manuscripts. And that makes her, again, reflect on the world of the muses. What is artistic life? What is writing all about? What is this gift, trying to express the inexpressible? Then she also, in a very honest way, explains what her dream is, which is to use the world of the imagination to show something to the world that is meaningful, to be better than she is. George Steiner says that liberal education is about finding your better self—through a novel, through a piece of music you hear, through a movie you have seen. When they are good, it is always a confrontation with yourself. And with this moment of self-knowledge, you can move forward. You can try to be better, to do something better. This very small book of Patti’s is a beautiful example of that. Patti is amazing."