I need to thank you for being such a generous and genuine performer. I saw you live for the first time at the Palladium in London.
I'll never forget this moment, it was a true gift.
I now can sense what I'd like to do with my life, how to take it and be taken.
Seeing you all, you and your band, communicate with joy and respect and for art, it gave me the strength to take a big step and to listen to my instincts while "working on music" and the freedom to let things happen. I found my instrument, the way I wish to approach it.
Thank you and your band, and the road managers for giving your everything, your best.
And the brilliant Connie Constance and Nadine Shah and their respective bands.
(Pardon, I have a tendency to be cheesy.). A baby Space Monkey.
PS: Greetings to the lovely lady from Slovenia and to the British lady painter if you're here by chance.
I've been reading wonderful personal accounts of you as a schoolgirl. Many have stated that you were very bright in intelligence, personality, and spirit. A true rising star. I was bright in personality and spirit, but struggled terribly in the classroom and I was labeled like a can of beans and stored in the back to be seen and not heard. Much of what I've learned is self taught, though I am not a very good teacher. Everywhere i go is my classroom. Everyone one i meet is my teacher. You are by far my favorite teacher. I've decided to try an exercise of revisiting school in my mind and befriending you as my mentor. It's proven to be quite effective. We are both 12 years old and you have suggested I use a personal chalkboard after I told you how I love sound of of writing on a chalkboard. You said that I might have been a physicist in a previous life. We both giggled and and shared a cheese sandwich.
It took me 46 years to get to Austin to see you on a ticket credit from a cancellation last year in the northeast. I appreciate you and your wonderful work through time. Thank You
Take good care! Rest and distract with knowing you built this amazing community, which is much needed in these troubling times. My heart feels full each time I read your words & the words of others in the community. Rock N Roll 💕
I don’t know if you’ll see this. I hope so. I just saw your post and your story with an excerpt of you reading the footnote to Ginsberg’s HOWL. I was, am, overcome.
I have read that footnote every day for 8 weeks in order to prepare for the life-saving medical procedure I had, which was a fecal microbial transplant (“FMT”). That’s when, during the course of a procedure similar to a colonoscopy, the fecal matter of a healthy donor is transplanted into that of someone whose gut biome is corrupted and threatened by a life-threatening infection called c Dificil. The procedure is done for those with recurrent cases of c dif, as I have had for a year and a half.
It is an elegant solution to an urgent problem, as the infection runs rampant in hospital settings, as well as in nursing homes. Every time I’ve been sick with it I think of all the elderly people who get it and what suffering they must endure. It’s exhausting keeping oneself clean, terrifying being unable to eat without crippling diarrhea. It is an illness that brings one clear into contact with one’s wretchedness. Not to be able to keep food in, everything running out of one in an incessant stream, is terrifying.
But it was hard for me to psychically adjust to the idea of having someone’s shit put into me. I kept envisioning it as a violation, for in my late 20s I was raped, beaten, and left for dead by three young men in what was in the late 80s in New York City known as a “wilding spree.” I gratefully have no memories of the event, during which I lost consciousness, but the prospect of the fecal transplant began bringing back to me sense memories of an experience surpassing language, “at the mind’s limit”, to use the phrase of Jean Améry’. Were such ugliness not being acted out in the world, every day, it would not cause the panic in me that it does.
For it to work, I have to welcome the transplant, not fear it. It won’t take if my body is unrelenting in experiencing it as an invader. One of the ways that I have tried to help my body and mind is by religiously reading Ginsberg’s footnote to HOWL:
“The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!”
That poem also helped me greatly in doing the death penalty work I did. I would sit with people that the state considered not fit to live, talk to them for hours upon hours, listening and feeling for their holiness, in order to find a way to convey their humanity to a jury, that they may have mercy.
Ginsberg had a genius for speaking to the state of our wretchedness, as in his “Sunflower Sutra” which I love so much I painted a mural that includes lines from it on one of my living room walls. What better words for us in wretchedness than:
“Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen,
—We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.”
Before Covid and even now over zoom, I work with young people who have life threatening illnesses and I always use Ginsberg in some way. With little children, we would draw big sunflowers and recite, “We’re not our skin of grime! We’re golden sunflowers inside!” On several occasions, I read the footnote to HOWL to men I was representing who were either facing the death penalty or on death row. And I recited it to my brother, as he lay dying of AIDS.
I’m sorry for writing so much, all. I was overcome by seeing and hearing Patti reading exactly what I am urgently reading because I have become again very sick. Since it’s not c Dificil, it means the transplant has not failed, which is encouraging. But my body is in an uproar and I’m unable to eat, requiring nurses every day to administer IVs to keep me out of the hospital. The goings on in the world contribute greatly to this as I’m enraged by so much and turn it inward toward my gut.
If I get through this, then my life will have been saved by someone’s shit, an almost comical example of putting one’s money where one’s mouth is. I have spoken a good game. Now is the real test.
Patti, I wanted to ask whether you would be willing either to share a recording of your HOWL footnote reading from the concert or if that’s not possible, to at some point do another reading of the footnote for this forum. I know how busy you are, so please don’t even consider it if it’s too much. I understand completely.
Whatever you do, it means the world to me to have seen even a clip of you reading it. As I watched I recited it along with you.
(waving back) Glad to hear the Substackers' comments have bolstered your spirit. Yes, resting and bucketloads of water are wonderful therapies for dealing with this icky virus. Stay hopeful and positive; we, in turn, are here to pick you up should you need us. The fatigue will wane, and you'll be writing again in no time. I'm certain of it.
Hello Patricia. I hope all is well and wonderful.
I see I've missed a few entries. I'll be catching up on this quiet cloudy morning. I hope to see you here soon. 🍒
Dear Patti,
I hope you are feeling healthy again.
I need to thank you for being such a generous and genuine performer. I saw you live for the first time at the Palladium in London.
I'll never forget this moment, it was a true gift.
I now can sense what I'd like to do with my life, how to take it and be taken.
Seeing you all, you and your band, communicate with joy and respect and for art, it gave me the strength to take a big step and to listen to my instincts while "working on music" and the freedom to let things happen. I found my instrument, the way I wish to approach it.
Thank you and your band, and the road managers for giving your everything, your best.
And the brilliant Connie Constance and Nadine Shah and their respective bands.
(Pardon, I have a tendency to be cheesy.). A baby Space Monkey.
PS: Greetings to the lovely lady from Slovenia and to the British lady painter if you're here by chance.
My Dean Saint Patti,
I read you every time with such happiness I went through covid also but I was thinking about you sending good vibes always
Patti, we love and appreciate you!
I've been reading wonderful personal accounts of you as a schoolgirl. Many have stated that you were very bright in intelligence, personality, and spirit. A true rising star. I was bright in personality and spirit, but struggled terribly in the classroom and I was labeled like a can of beans and stored in the back to be seen and not heard. Much of what I've learned is self taught, though I am not a very good teacher. Everywhere i go is my classroom. Everyone one i meet is my teacher. You are by far my favorite teacher. I've decided to try an exercise of revisiting school in my mind and befriending you as my mentor. It's proven to be quite effective. We are both 12 years old and you have suggested I use a personal chalkboard after I told you how I love sound of of writing on a chalkboard. You said that I might have been a physicist in a previous life. We both giggled and and shared a cheese sandwich.
🍎 🍏
Thank you and please go slow and know we have yr back as we know you have ours...all my love
Please stay safe and well
It took me 46 years to get to Austin to see you on a ticket credit from a cancellation last year in the northeast. I appreciate you and your wonderful work through time. Thank You
Glad to hear you're well and rested. Loved the Ginsberg reading. Thank you 💚
I missed you but so happy to hear you are feeling better .Thank you for sharing your journey.Wishing you continued good health
Take good care! Rest and distract with knowing you built this amazing community, which is much needed in these troubling times. My heart feels full each time I read your words & the words of others in the community. Rock N Roll 💕
Dear Patti,
I don’t know if you’ll see this. I hope so. I just saw your post and your story with an excerpt of you reading the footnote to Ginsberg’s HOWL. I was, am, overcome.
I have read that footnote every day for 8 weeks in order to prepare for the life-saving medical procedure I had, which was a fecal microbial transplant (“FMT”). That’s when, during the course of a procedure similar to a colonoscopy, the fecal matter of a healthy donor is transplanted into that of someone whose gut biome is corrupted and threatened by a life-threatening infection called c Dificil. The procedure is done for those with recurrent cases of c dif, as I have had for a year and a half.
It is an elegant solution to an urgent problem, as the infection runs rampant in hospital settings, as well as in nursing homes. Every time I’ve been sick with it I think of all the elderly people who get it and what suffering they must endure. It’s exhausting keeping oneself clean, terrifying being unable to eat without crippling diarrhea. It is an illness that brings one clear into contact with one’s wretchedness. Not to be able to keep food in, everything running out of one in an incessant stream, is terrifying.
But it was hard for me to psychically adjust to the idea of having someone’s shit put into me. I kept envisioning it as a violation, for in my late 20s I was raped, beaten, and left for dead by three young men in what was in the late 80s in New York City known as a “wilding spree.” I gratefully have no memories of the event, during which I lost consciousness, but the prospect of the fecal transplant began bringing back to me sense memories of an experience surpassing language, “at the mind’s limit”, to use the phrase of Jean Améry’. Were such ugliness not being acted out in the world, every day, it would not cause the panic in me that it does.
For it to work, I have to welcome the transplant, not fear it. It won’t take if my body is unrelenting in experiencing it as an invader. One of the ways that I have tried to help my body and mind is by religiously reading Ginsberg’s footnote to HOWL:
“The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!”
That poem also helped me greatly in doing the death penalty work I did. I would sit with people that the state considered not fit to live, talk to them for hours upon hours, listening and feeling for their holiness, in order to find a way to convey their humanity to a jury, that they may have mercy.
Ginsberg had a genius for speaking to the state of our wretchedness, as in his “Sunflower Sutra” which I love so much I painted a mural that includes lines from it on one of my living room walls. What better words for us in wretchedness than:
“Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen,
—We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.”
Before Covid and even now over zoom, I work with young people who have life threatening illnesses and I always use Ginsberg in some way. With little children, we would draw big sunflowers and recite, “We’re not our skin of grime! We’re golden sunflowers inside!” On several occasions, I read the footnote to HOWL to men I was representing who were either facing the death penalty or on death row. And I recited it to my brother, as he lay dying of AIDS.
I’m sorry for writing so much, all. I was overcome by seeing and hearing Patti reading exactly what I am urgently reading because I have become again very sick. Since it’s not c Dificil, it means the transplant has not failed, which is encouraging. But my body is in an uproar and I’m unable to eat, requiring nurses every day to administer IVs to keep me out of the hospital. The goings on in the world contribute greatly to this as I’m enraged by so much and turn it inward toward my gut.
If I get through this, then my life will have been saved by someone’s shit, an almost comical example of putting one’s money where one’s mouth is. I have spoken a good game. Now is the real test.
Patti, I wanted to ask whether you would be willing either to share a recording of your HOWL footnote reading from the concert or if that’s not possible, to at some point do another reading of the footnote for this forum. I know how busy you are, so please don’t even consider it if it’s too much. I understand completely.
Whatever you do, it means the world to me to have seen even a clip of you reading it. As I watched I recited it along with you.
With gratitude, Patti, and warm wishes to all.
As ever,
Robin
Here’s to a fast recovery. It’s a sigh of relief to know that you didn’t get hit atrociously and are mending quickly. Just get better.
Thank you so much for your amazing performance in Prague! Get well soon.
(waving back) Glad to hear the Substackers' comments have bolstered your spirit. Yes, resting and bucketloads of water are wonderful therapies for dealing with this icky virus. Stay hopeful and positive; we, in turn, are here to pick you up should you need us. The fatigue will wane, and you'll be writing again in no time. I'm certain of it.
A full recovery I wish for you dear Patti.
ROCK ON 🖤
It's really the main thing with covid: this deep fatigue, where you feel all your energy is being sapped. I'm glad you're feeling better! Take care!