Patti Smith: "Kick doors open yourself."
Patti Smith was called the “high priestess of punk” in the 70s, but in a recent interview she admits, “I didn’t feel that I was growing as an artist at that point. All of my energy was being put into peripheral things - interviews and getting my picture taken. Constantly. And concerts and touring and every minute going to radio stations.
“In the end I wasn’t growing, so the things that I had to talk about… I just didn’t know about life. And I thought, I haven’t done anything to merit this kind of attention.”
“I spent the 80s learning quite a bit about our world, about our political situation, about sports, learning how to be a citizen, learning to cook, learning how to sew hems on my kids’ uniforms, learning how to nurse children, learning how to scrub diapers and a toilet. I mean, there’s a lot to learn and I was, for a short period of time, living a very sheltered, privileged position for doing very little; for singing rock’n'roll songs. And I felt that I had to reassess that.”
She advises others to “kick doors open yourself. When people come up to me and say, ‘Patti, nobody wants to hear my CD and I don’t have enough money for equipment,’ I say, ‘Well, get a job, y’know?’ That’s what I did. You get people who say, ‘The government won’t give me a grant and I can’t do my art.’
“I say, ‘Fuck you, it’s your own fault, you expect the government to give you a hand? The government is corrupt. Do what it takes. You do babysitting jobs, you work in the factory, you work in the bookstore or become a pickpocket, y’know? But whatever. Get a job.’ Work is really good for an artist.”
[From interview article by Laura Barton, The Guardian, Jan 19, 2007]
Photo from book Patti Smith: American Artist
Her book of poetry: Auguries of Innocence
Related Talent Development Resources page: self-limiting
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