“Red and gold shot through the waves, in rapid running arrows, feathered
with darkness… The waves, as they neared the shore, were robbed of
light, and fell in one long concussion, like a wall falling, a wall of
grey stone, unpierced by any chink of light.”
As Patti Smith read the above passage from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves,
her daughter Jesse played the piano. This homage of sorts was true to
form for Patti, an artist in love with art – the writer-musician will
famously make a snap decision to go on a pilgrimage to see a writer’s
grave and her referential writing is an A to Z of people whose work you
should know. These few minutes were to celebrate Woolf’s birthday,
another pioneer of a literary and artistic movement, a woman, now dead
and aged 136.
On Friday night Camden hosted two sold out shows. This “Evening Of Words
And Music With Patti Smith” was held at the Roundhouse, and down the
road Azealia Banks, a rapper unfortunately now known more for her
controversies than work, had fans shrieking along to her pussy-eating
anthem at KOKO. It’s not surprising that a genuine icon can quickly fill
a 1,700-capacity venue in London, selling out the pricey tickets and
rendering any extras impossible to get hold of. But Patti’s ability to
draw a big, committed crowd may be surprising when you consider hers was
a short performance (only an hour and a half with no support),
consisting of a 72-year-old reading poetry to an audience of 18- to
80-year-olds.
The Waves is a dreamy, lyrical book, a stream of
consciousness with moods, snippets, random events. A keystone of the
modernist period, it suggested that art can exist outside a point in
time, that our minds are part of the world, and the world is a part of
our minds. None of its six characters are more important than the other
and all the voices merge to create a wave greater than the sum of its
impressions. This flow and sharing of minds feels central to what Patti
here achieved in true 1970s-style.
She transformed The
Roundhouse into an intellectual’s New York apartment or a coffee shop.
Her earthy attitude and calm movements around the stage set the tone for
a relaxed and thoughtful evening. She’d pick up another author’s book
to read from here, or go speak to her daughter or son, Jackson, playing
guitar, there. She paused to tell an anecdote or a joke – she is
understatedly funny – and although everything was planned, it didn’t
feel that way.
Patti doesn’t involve herself in fiery spats with other artists, nor
can you imagine her arguing with people on the internet. She did
terminate one man during this set. “Can we love you now?” he shouted
from the crowd, a reference to the lyrics of a song she’d just covered.
She replied with vague disgust: “You’re weird.” His daughter next to him
piped up in his defence, laughing, “That’s my dad” to which Patti
responded: “You’re fine… no, seriously, you’re fucking weird.” Not long
after this exchange, a man seated at the front, directly in her eyeline
pulled out a huge iPad to film her. Sure enough Patti clocked him and I
wondered, cringing, what she was saying in her head about him. ... [mehr] https://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/article/43zvyw/patti-smith-roundhouse-london-2019-review
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