Patti Smith, Cryptic

photomontage by Heidi Utz

Graf by Kryptik

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The City of Your Final Destination: A Review

Omar Metwally

The City of Your Final Destination may just be my favorite recent DVD discovery. (We won't count the latest guilty pleasure, Girls.) I know that some find Merchant Ivory productions a bit cloying, and sometimes I'm just not in the mood. But, I promise, this totally absorbing 2010 film doesn't get treacly or involve British authors (just British accents and South American authors). And it's solo Ivory, no Merchant.

Simple Premise: Omar, an Iranian-American grad student in literature, hopes to write a biography of obscure author Jules Gund, who has recently offed himself. (Lord knows why—he's bedding Laura Linney and Charlotte Gainsbourg!) But young Omar (Omar Metwally) lacks the approval of Gund's remaining family, who live on an isolated estate in Uruguay. Omar's a get-along guy who's saddled with a controlling shrew of a girlfriend—the kind who has plans for his entire life and assumes he'll inevitably screw them up. When she packs him off to Uruguay to get their permission, he does a great job of looking lost. Until he meets the cultured Gunds--and specifically Jules' mistress, Arden (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Along for the ride are Gund's black widow, Caroline (Laura Linney); his gay brother, Adam (Anthony Hopkins); Adam's two-decades-younger lover (Hiroyuki Sanada); and Gund's young daughter, Portia.

While it's no surprise that 81-year-old James Ivory wrings stellar performances from his veteran cast, the star of the show could just be the home. With its stained glass windows, chandeliers, ubiquitous art and cascading draperies, this place positively drips finely fermented Euro bucks. (We won't mention that jewelry in the safe...) Fictionally nestled into a rural part of Montevideo, the aging estate actually sits near Punta Indio, Buenos Aires. And I've booked my flight.

In this cocoon the family enjoys the kind of existence I could easily warm to: painting, keeping bees, horseback-riding, sangria-soaked 3-hour lunching at the Parisia, and sipping Manhattans under the portal at 5. But since Jules' death, they've kept each other in a state of suspended animation, trying to preserve the life they've shared together for many years.

Thus, it appears unlikely that Omar will succeed in loosening their vice grip on the past. And indeed he must work slowly to gain their trust and prove that he can turn out a biography that will be both truthful and discreet. Treading like a cat, he manages to endear himself and prove his sincerity and affection for Jules Gund...and...well, others close to Jules.

Laura Linney

If it's Ice Queen you're looking for, Laura Linney as Caroline is your tigress. She of the blood-red lipstick and turned-up collars, whose only pleasure in life is saying no to everything. A painter, she spends her days copying the masters so as not to reveal her true emotions in her art. Not only does she have a wardrobe to die for, her edge is something we women could all take a lesson from. Give. Them. Nothing.

And ah, Gainsbourg! Humble and quietly pining away over cigarettes and sweet-tempered angst. She fully embodies the young Patti Smith, making her mesmerizing in terms of sheer resemblance. [When IS that Just Kids film going to be made??] 

Two plus hours with these pretty people in their pretty estate in leafy South America under the lush cinematography of Javier Aguirresarobe and I am now a fully transformed human being. Well, not quite. But it's a terrific, transporting film, and I recommend you ask Netflix to take you to Uruguay, rapidamente!

And just in case you came here to see Charlotte Gainsbourg (which I thoroughly endorse), here are a few shots I quite like.

Please god, in the next lifetime, make me this svelte. Capable of playing any rocker, male or female. And 100% French, certainement!

Want to Be an Artist in NYC? Move to SoHopeless

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Skull)

In the early '80s, just about everyone I knew wanted to be an artist in NYC. It was cliche, de rigeur, and a la mode all in one. Of course, most of us lived about 20 minutes away, so running across the GWB wasn't a huge leap. But back then it also seemed feasible. People were doing it, often in grand style. Look at Basquiat, Schnabel, Haring. There was art to be made, and even money to be made as an artist. Obviously not for the many, but for the few, and for most of my friends, those were good enough odds. But as journalist Christopher Ketcham points out in "Gilding the Big Apple" (March/April 2012 Utne Reader/ Orion), http://www.utne.com/politics/income-inequality-zm0z12mazwar.aspx, NYC's circa 2012 demographic no longer holds much room for those willing to trade "salad days" for pursuing creative dreams. NYC's population has radically changed, and for these F-the-poor alterations, we can tip our threadbare hats to the One Percenters.

Ketcham's fascinating statistics include one that made my blood boil: 11% of NYC's population (~900,000) live in "deep poverty," earning $10,500 for a family of 4. I have no idea how ONE person can survive on that salary in NY, forget 4, forget nearly a million. In contrast, the average One Percenter household earns that much for a single day's "work" (72-point quotes there). These are of course the finance industry suits, who do nothing but shift money around without designing, building, or selling anything at all, as their predecessors felt at least occasionally compelled to do. A vampirized state that has taken down the masses for the solipsistic pleasures of a few. The net result is a near-cultural genocide, as the bright, talented, and creative are left by the roadside, having to struggle so hard to earn a living that there's neither the time nor space to give the world art.

Soho loft of artists Bill and Yvonne Tarr circa 1970
(Photo: John Dominis/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Ketcham's article is well worth reading not only for its ghastly stats, but also for historical perspective on the city (which has endured this kind of ugliness before) and where it's ended up today: a place where artists, intellectuals, and sundry creatives can no longer afford to live and work. A city where the cast of Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids never could have honed their craft. A locus of metaphor for early 21st century American values.

A quote:

" 'If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money,' writes author Jaron Lanier. 'If money is flowing to advertising instead of to musicians, journalists, and artist, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than with truth or beauty. If content is worthless, then people will start to become empty-headed and contentless... Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising." No surprise then that the most lucrative 'creative' jobs in New York for the 'aggregating' of 'content' are not in journalism but in corporate media, advertising, and marketing--the machines of manipulation and deceit."

The Lanier quote is from a fascinating sounding book entitled You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. Buy from your local independent bookstore, as an act of rebellion.

If you do feel inclined to order from Amazon, may I suggest reading this Mother Jones cover story first?

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor.

It's the kind of real journalism that seldom is seen anymore: Mac McClelland's firsthand reportage about how online retailers submerge their warehouse workers in Dante-esque Infernos in the name of offering you free! lightning-fast! shipping.

Patti Smith ^Ask the Angel^

I do so love this piece...

"Across the country through the fields
You know I see it written 'cross the sky
People rising from the highway
And war war is the battle cry
And it's wild wild wild wild.


Armageddon, it's gotten
No savior jailer can take it from me
World ending, it's just beginning
And rock and roll is what I'm born to be
And it's wild wild wild wild
Wild wild wild wild..."
"Ask the Angels," Patricia Lee Smith

My Hang with Patti

Patti Smith rode off on her shiny grey steed (aka, a Lexus SUV) without me last night. Thus proving, as ever, that you can’t always get what you want, but…you get what you need. Or what something out there thinks you need, even if they're offbase.

The emboldened young men who'd surrounded me moments before walked away with signed copies of various Patti products, which instantly spiked in value. I could visualize their eBay listings in my head. And I stood there with my pristine copy of Witt, her rare 1973 poetry chapbook that I knew she’d be so happy to see, untouched by its author.

A small coterie of us said goodbye and thanked her as we tucked her into her host’s incongruous chariot. And gratefully, as Patti had given a funny, heartfelt, sweet, honest, and intimate performance—all the while exuding the Jersey girl she is. She’d sang, played guitar, brought out REM’s Peter Buck to accompany her on “People Have the Power,” read from her new book, fielded audience questions (even when they were ridiculous), and seemed to crack herself up as she presented herself, in ski cap and oversized bifocals, without affectation.

Seconds before I had been 6 inches away from her, leaning in as she signed 2 album covers for the troll-like young man who had lurked by the stage door with me. He had a bit of a Mark David Chapman vibe that scared me, and by God, he was going to get his vinyl signed no matter what. Standing immediately behind him, I had pulled out my vintage volume and had it at the ready. But for some reason, Patti zigged when I thought she would zag, and our paths did not cross, our eyes did not meet, and…sniff, sniff…she didn’t even know I was alive.

And given the icy stare Mark David had received when he’d asked her to sign, the way she’d said, “Got a pen? I DON’T have a pen,” I could tell that it was not the right moment. Not the time for me to tell her that I’d cried the whole way through one of the songs she’d played. “Beneath the Southern Cross,” the lyrics to which I’d posted on my blog at the depth of my depression when I fervently desired to be “not anyone…gone.” At that moment I had no inkling that I’d ever see Patti Smith in my very own state, be alive for her giving such a touching performance just a few rows in front of me. I connected with this person who has experienced so many deaths in her life and realized how profound such a cord can be between spirits. This in fact seemed the point of my 5-hour drive: that when the depths of despair corner us, when we feel hopeless after years of continual anguish, we need to trust that transcendent, amazing moments lie ahead of us—moments we may be happy to be alive for. Even if all we can see are the murky depths of a void that howls not with chaos but with still, black despair.

I’m never terribly skilled at meeting my idols, as many times as my career as a music critic has cast me in that role. The first time I met Jackson Browne, after having talked to him over the phone and written several long pieces about him, he acknowledged me politely but then took a huge shine to Michele, whom he mistook for a woman who’d baked him a loaf of bread 10 years ago in CA. They had a long conversation while I stood and watched from the sidelines, clearly a third wheel. Then there was one of the times I met the Indigo Girls. We were riding on their tour bus through Taos Pueblo. At one point, we disembarked to see the large buffalo herd. Amy Ray turned to me and said, only half-jokingly, “Let’s feed the journalist to the buffalo.” Well, at least she had addressed me, I guess.

In the mid-'90s I created a small stir with Rory Block, after having spoken with her on the phone for 2½ hours and hung with her in her tour bus after the show. The next time she came to town, I went to see her almost blind drunk. After the show, I went backstage and hugged her, which was probably more like careening into her arms trying not to fall down. I said, “Hey, Rory. You got married! That’s great!!! I just got married too!” I turned to introduce her to my spouse, whom I had in my stupor forgotten wasn’t backstage. Or in the bar. In fact, she'd never even been at the show. Darn, I hate it when that happens. Rory looked at me with all the bizarreness her eyes could conjure and made it clear that I should get my pillow and she would drive me to rehab.

With all this history behind me, I did not want to make any of the same mistakes with Patti. I wanted us to meet in a moment of profundity, on a mystical cloud of spirit and poetry only she and I inhabited. I wanted our souls to touch and meld together for all time. And if that couldn’t happen, I at least wanted her to look me in the eye, smile, and take some sort of joy, however minor, in apprehending me. Attachment. I craved a wee bit of genuine attachment.

As the Magic 8 Ball is known to utter, “Ask again later.”

After having been around a lot of celebrities, I believe many things about those we choose to idolize, idealize and fashion into public figures. One is that we must nurture their spirits as they so nurture our own. If an artist looks tired, it behooves us not to bug them, but to allow them to exit graciously, go home, and get some rest. If we want that artist to continue giving shows and interacting with fans at all, it is helpful if we don’t so push our agendas that they grow their nails 10” long and never leave their private screening room like Howard Hughes. We should treat them with dignity and respect, as we would a political dignitary or religious figure—not instantly assume that they are obligated to serve our whims simply because we’ve plunked a few bucks into their savings accounts.

I’m happy to say that I partially met Patti Smith tonight, and yet…part of me wishes I had simply left it at the sublime performance. At the hammy one-liners and self-deprecating wisecracks. At her quipping (after a particularly dumb question), "What are you, on pills??"

Seeing the performer’s mask get dropped and the cranky, impatient, all-too-human being come out ached a bit. And yet, much of why we respond to Patti and other poets in the ways we do is because their humanity shines through their work—and catalyzes us to shine through ours.

Thoughts pre-Leonid

Ohh
to be
not anyone
gone
this maze of being
skin
oh
to cry
not any cry
so mournful that

the dove just laughs

the steadfast gasps

Ohh

to owe
not anyone
nothing
to be
not here
but here

forsaking

equatorial bliss

who walked through
the callow mist
dressed in scraps
who walked
the curve of the world

whose bone scraped

whose flesh unfurled

who grieves not
anyone gone
to greet lame
the inspired sky

amazed to stumble
where gods get lost
beneath
the southern cross

[Patti Smith, "Beneath the Southern Cross"]
Dove by Raymond Allbritton
Southern Cross 1 by Stefan Seip
Southern Cross 2 by Barney McGrath
Santa Fe stupa and Taos Plaza by Heidi Utz

I told you Michelle Malone was going to be huge, didn't I?

I'd be grossly remiss in my duties as a used-to-be rock critic if I didn't say I saw a great performance today. LP. Voice like you wouldn't believe, with phenomenal range--Joan Jett/Linda Perry. And yes, OK, Michelle Malone, if anyone's esoteric enough to actually remember her. (Whatever happened to you, Michelle?) Tearin' it up rock'n'roll. I was halfway down the block walking away and there's this siren call you could probably hear in Pismo Beach. I go back and see this eensy person, probably 4'11" soaking wet, perfectly androgynous, and I'm thinking this has GOT to be karaoke. Haven't heard anything this good in a long time. Check out the website. She's gonna be huge. Oh, yeah, rumor has it they're even from Jersey!

Speaking of rock divas, here's an awesome recent interview with Patti Smith on Pitchfork: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/42536-patti-smith-talks-new-lp-rock-hall-inspiration

Forgive the cell photo. 

L.P., San Luis Obispo, CA, July 6, 2008