The Ezra Klein Show Patti Smith on the One Desire That Lasts Forever
The Tortoise Communion
- As a child Patti Smith spent hours communing silently with a huge snapping turtle by a pond and lost track of time.
- She later explained the episode as a genuine, wordless journey that shaped her early sense of other worlds.
Performance As Empathic Channeling
- Smith links her stage improvisation and empathy to a shamanistic channeling of consciousness.
- She sees performance as extending empathy and improvisational conversation with audiences and characters.
A Mind Is A Country To Build
- Patti Smith's father treated the mind as a country to be developed through wide reading and questioning.
- That ethic seeded her lifelong love of study and personal evolution despite modest origins.
Patti Smith, “the Godmother of Punk,” has lived a wild life and accumulated so much wisdom in the process. In the 1960s and ’70s, Smith was a fixture of the New York City creative scene — hanging out with the likes of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Allen Ginsberg and Robert Mapplethorpe. Merging her own poetry with an ace backing band, she became a global rock star. Then she gave it up, moved to Michigan, raised a family, and remade herself into a best-selling author. Her stunning memoir “Just Kids” won the National Book Award and is one of the books that I’ve kept returning to, again and again.
There is clearly something unusual about Smith. People who know her have described her as “shamanistic.” But even for those of us who will never become rock stars, there’s something inspiring — and oddly relatable — in how she thinks about life. So I was excited to have the opportunity to sit down with her and learn more.
Smith is out with a new memoir, “Bread of Angels,” and is on tour for the 50th anniversary of her breakthrough album, “Horses.” We talk about that book and that album and so much more: the boundless curiosity that drives her; the books that shaped her; her childhood communion with a snapping turtle; what Andy Warhol was like; what color she thinks the soul is; and a lot more that’s hard even to describe.
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
“Pan’s Labyrinth” by Guillermo del Toro
Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
Bread of Angels by Patti Smith
Just Kids by Patti Smith
“The Dark Blot” by Gérard de Nerval
“Genie” by Arthur Rimbaud
“Guernica” by Pablo Picasso
“The Last Supper” by Andy Warhol
Book Recommendations:
The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Poetry of Sylvia Plath Edited by Claire Brennan
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Michelle Harris, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Caryn Rose and Annika Robbins.
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