Patti Smith: The Melting

The Melting 50

Patti Smith — Tue, 24 May 2022 18:25:51 GMT

The prismatic eyes of a dog sees, but these eyes do not speak, observe nor judge; they see and that is all. I scanned the interior of the outpost. Everything was there; every shred of evidence needed to map out the state of mind of the missing young scientist. All the intuitive senses, research and knowledge gleaned, and the pain of comprehension. The…

The Melting 50/3

Patti Smith — Mon, 23 May 2022 04:16:15 GMT

I thought about Bruce Lee in the film Enter the Dragon. The forces were closing in on him and he sat on the floor crosslegged and waited. I did the same, I sat for hours it seemed but the digital clock on the white metal table registered no time at all. I wanted to get up and unroll the screens and see if I could make out anything else besides a blank e…

The Melting 50/2

Patti Smith — Sat, 21 May 2022 16:31:59 GMT

I awoke as light streamed through a lone window, which was not glass, but soft durable plastic distorting the view, which was hardly a view at all. The dog was outside and the air was perfectly still. The pages I had hung in the evening had dried and taken on the look of parchment. I placed them in some order, though besides some of the dated material…

The Melting 50

Patti Smith — Sat, 21 May 2022 01:39:55 GMT

The Melting 49

Patti Smith — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 15:45:12 GMT

The moon was a perfect circle as if drawn by the hand of Giotto. The stars were immense, unreal. As we drew closer to the Outpost, the dog at my heels, I suddenly stopped. Something glinting in the moonlight, a bit of prismatic light, not unlike the strange shimmer within the dog’s soulful eyes. I bent low and extracted it, and felt an instant shock of …

The Melting 48

Patti Smith — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 14:30:31 GMT

It was raining and the full moon was rising. I had a sense Easter was approaching; Passover colliding with Good Friday. All of remembrance compressed within a series of masterpieces scrolling the screen of interior recollection. Last Supper of Da Vinci, Garden of Gethsemane by Rembrandt and the Transfiguration by Raphael. I thought of the Mystic Lamb in…

The Melting 47

Patti Smith — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 14:30:48 GMT

My hands were tingling and the blood seemed to be rushing, circulating back to my heart. A sensation that was not painful, but strange, akin to physical and spatial acceleration. What was the footage that came to mind, which war? Apocalypse Now or something edited from the future? I could not tell but my palms were burning.

The Melting 46

Patti Smith — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 14:30:27 GMT

I made my way through the labyrinthine forest. A particular forest, where paths led to a multitude of ends that were not dead, but rewinding; where the mind never ceases to circumfuse. The abstract sector was composed of pencil lines diffused in giants breath. How beautiful the trees, even bereft of finery, an unbroken composition of black slashes risin…

The Melting 45

Patti Smith — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 17:59:43 GMT

I worried that these regressional tangents, both physical and mental, had wasted precious time. I wondered if the Secretary was disappointed in me, and if I had failed in the preparations for my mission and thus the hopes for the salvation of the young scientist. I sat on the floor and wearily extracted everything from my bag of tricks. All seemed usel…

The Melting 44

Patti Smith — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 16:00:34 GMT

Sonic beeps, flashing lights, all very faint, precise yet random. A moment when the stars realigned and for one moment the glass coverings would rise and one was granted just that moment to grasp the object of choice. Perhaps the amber beads of a prophet or the winding cloth from Byron’s turban. An endless possibility of choices in this remote and dusty…

The Melting 44

Patti Smith — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 16:32:55 GMT

I had projected from the not-so-distant past into the future present. The Palindrome is a day of power, not to go forth nor backward, but expand. The Meteor is a manifestation of this concept, which is more than a concept, an actual spiritually mathematical fact. I had to physically locate it or figure out the mental exercise that would lead me to i…

Audio for Melting 43

Patti Smith — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:06:57 GMT

One must be prepared

The Melting 43

Patti Smith — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 17:00:46 GMT

I knew what I was seeking before I sought it. A compound; a component really. A rock more than a rock. A piece of heaven’s ore that plummeted to earth maybe a hundred thousand years ago, and holding within it, the bird and death of certain stars. Stars that were already the stuff of legends in the time of Pythagoras, and found in the lost works of G…

The Melting 42

Patti Smith — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 19:31:18 GMT

Bright green fields and flowering trees, strangely silent. The song of laughter omissive, no birds nor children. Homes dotting the edge of the forest abandoned, overgrown. The trees had taken root, growing through pounded dirt floors, with branches extending through broken windows. An urban Angkor Wat, I was thinking.

The windows intact are covered i…

The Melting 41

Patti Smith — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 02:45:21 GMT

I sat there on those concrete stairs for hours, perhaps days. The song, Smalltown Boy by the Bronski Beat was looping somewhere in the background. I went backwards and forwards, examining various portals, like petals unclassified flowers, those created by imagination, and those that might be discovered the way an amateur archeologist might find on some …

The Melting 40

Patti Smith — Sun, 30 Jan 2022 16:30:05 GMT

So, I had a party for one in room 140. I danced to the entire album of The Gods of Seafood and felt happy. It may appear that I was regressing, but when I thought about it I came to the conclusion that as long as I held onto the thread, a bit of regression here and there was not so harmful. It may slow things down, but since time here is arbitrary, w…

The Melting 39

Patti Smith — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 00:10:21 GMT

The hallway was green. Standing there I was reminded of the train track running past the cemetery narrowing and disappearing into a nonexistent distance. I stopped at Room 137. The number interested me. A prime, like 23, but not as perfect.

The Melting 38

Patti Smith — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 23:25:08 GMT

I studied the Almanac until I dropped off to sleep. I had been searching for the optimum time and date, the coldest night and the newest moon; a black sky with nothing to guide me but an inner sense. I woke late, skipped breakfast, and followed my usual route to the Pasternak. The Secretary was unrolling a sheet of tracing paper marked with numbers and …

The Melting 37

Patti Smith — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 17:00:51 GMT

Snow! Snow everywhere as I walked, but only where I walked. I stopped and it swirled around me. It was like being in a snow globe, one with wheels that moved as I moved. Snow. It did not lay upon the ground, but continued to fall. A cold mist rose from the ground and I walked quickly past the train tracks, turned left at the street of the water tower…

The Melting 36

Patti Smith — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 16:00:41 GMT

Hubris. Not of Shakespearean proportions, but hubris nonetheless. I wanted to surprise and please the Secretary by progressing without her, but in doing so I had broken the thread of her council. I let myself be distracted by memory and imagination- major components in accomplishing my own work, paramount in my own process, yet the key to my undoing.

…