I’m sure most of you have read this by now, but just in case: Patti Smith has written a devastatingly gorgeous piece of mourning, loss and celebration for her long-ago boyfriend and long-time friend Sam Shepard. I read it and felt like I needed to go take a nap. Or get drunk. Or collapse in a puddle of tears on the sidewalk. On some level, I was waiting for her words. I knew that they would come.
Going over a passage describing the Western landscape, he suddenly looked up and said, “I’m sorry I can’t take you there.” I just smiled, for somehow he had already done just that. Without a word, eyes closed, we tramped through the American desert that rolled out a carpet of many colors—saffron dust, then russet, even the color of green glass, golden greens, and then, suddenly, an almost inhuman blue. Blue sand, I said, filled with wonder. Blue everything, he said, and the songs we sang had a color of their own.
For The New Yorker: My Buddy: Patti Smith Remembers Sam Shepard.
Beautiful and sad and devastating and meaningful and perfect.
I read it with my heart in my throat.
I am only slightly kidding when I say that I want to befriend Patti Smith so she can write such beautiful and devestating things about me after I go. I can feel his whole character in this piece. Puts the dry word ‘tribute’ to shame.
I know what you mean. I felt the same way reading Just Kids.
Her art has always been acts of tribute to those who have helped inspire her – I don’t think I really understood the depth of it until I read Just Kids. She would dedicate shows to Rimbaud, etc.
and she treats her friends that way too.
For some reason the part about the blue sand really got to me.
Thanks for sharing this. I have had my head down in Ulysses and also avoiding Trump news and can’t believe I missed hearing about Sam Shepard’s death. i’ve loved him since Days of Heaven and Frances, more recently saw a revival of Buried Child at the Magic in SF… what an artist and an inspiration.
Angela – I so agree about his artistry – in acting, in writing. I miss him already.