Thank you Patti. I could listen to you read all night. Sitting next to the furnace,keeping warm while I knit a scarf for my son. A wonderful way to pass the evening ♥️
Thanks for sharing this reading. I just received your Thanksgiving wishes also. Happy Thanksgiving to you and Cairo! Also it's my 75th birthday today (Nov 24)! Rock on! Loved the Pinocchio story!
I wanted to congratulate you on your new book and also to say how wonderful your interview with The Guardian was yesterday. It was an interesting experience to see you speaking from the same place where you so often address this group. In some mysterious way, the invisible presence of a larger audience filled and transformed the room. (Of course it was also different because you had an interlocutor.)
Your remarks about how being an artist who moves in different mediums as opposed to just one (and I can’t recall the painter you cited as example of the latter -- I want to say Agnes Martin but it wasn’t her) as well as how being an artist takes one out of experiences, how you’d like to go someplace -- say, to the grave of Isabelle Eberhardt in Algeria -- without your camera and just be, were thought provoking. I agree that being an artist (or having an artistic temperament) transports one out of the moment because one is always “reorganizing,” reframing, translating. But I think, too, that in the first place (and paradoxically) the artist inhabits experience in a much more intense way, with all the senses susceptible, the consciousness available for being in the moment as the moment is encountered and then carrying it over, an act that reminds me of what you call “the blessed task of remembrance.” I know you use that phrase with regard to how we carry those we have lost, but it seems to me that they are both blessed tasks that ultimately lend a measure of immortality, and for the one who carries out such missions, there is no rest. As Stevens said, “Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.”
I hope that makes sense.
I haven’t received my book yet, but I love the photo that it begins with of you on the shore. It reminds me of a too little appreciated poem by Robert Frost (I often think Frost is too little appreciated, dismissed as a mere poet of nature, as if there were anything “mere” about nature).
This Frost poem sprang to mind as soon as I saw the first photo in your book. It seems so fitting for you and the stance you keep toward life, loss, and unshakable belief.
NEITHER OUT FAR NOR IN DEEP
The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.
As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull
The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be—
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.
They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?
🌊🌊🌊
Congratulations again Patti, and happy birthday to Cairo.
I’m writing herein with the hope that you’ll see this. I have a request, but please don’t feel that you have to fulfill it.
Today being Neil Young’s birthday, I thought it would be wonderful if you could sing a Neil Young song, in tribute to him. “Helpless” comes to mind because your cover does it the most justice of any I’ve ever heard. It is haunting, complex, and beautiful, making a beeline to the soul. Many a time it’s given me what Stevens called “a planet’s encouragement.”
Please don’t feel obliged. Given the occasion, how lucky we are to be alive with him, it just seemed a waste not to ask.
This brought back not only reading Just Kids, which filled in a lot about y'all during that period, but the year I began teaching at the college level on and off when I could. My friend from grad school and I both got a job at Transylvania University in Lexington. Ky, where I already lived. One day he said his friends af the UK gallery said there was an alternative show up in the New student studio section.
When we got there, it was Robert's work. I was spellbound, because it was mainly the BDSM and leather photos, completely uncensored ( this was 1990 or '91). It took the top of my head off, actually, as i was just coming to accept my bisexuality and nonbinary gender. Thanks to Robert for that, and thanks to you for reading about him on his birthday.
I would love to hear you read and speak about meeting Camus' daughter from Devotion.
that photograph!
Thank you Patti. I could listen to you read all night. Sitting next to the furnace,keeping warm while I knit a scarf for my son. A wonderful way to pass the evening ♥️
Patti has always encouraged the need of good oral health…brushing and flossing…everyday! Smart woman!
Thanks for sharing this reading. I just received your Thanksgiving wishes also. Happy Thanksgiving to you and Cairo! Also it's my 75th birthday today (Nov 24)! Rock on! Loved the Pinocchio story!
🖤
I vote for you to read chapter 1 of your latest book….that way I won’t be behind! Thank you,
S
"We will make it. With or without the rest of the world." Beautiful.
Dear Patti,
I wanted to congratulate you on your new book and also to say how wonderful your interview with The Guardian was yesterday. It was an interesting experience to see you speaking from the same place where you so often address this group. In some mysterious way, the invisible presence of a larger audience filled and transformed the room. (Of course it was also different because you had an interlocutor.)
Your remarks about how being an artist who moves in different mediums as opposed to just one (and I can’t recall the painter you cited as example of the latter -- I want to say Agnes Martin but it wasn’t her) as well as how being an artist takes one out of experiences, how you’d like to go someplace -- say, to the grave of Isabelle Eberhardt in Algeria -- without your camera and just be, were thought provoking. I agree that being an artist (or having an artistic temperament) transports one out of the moment because one is always “reorganizing,” reframing, translating. But I think, too, that in the first place (and paradoxically) the artist inhabits experience in a much more intense way, with all the senses susceptible, the consciousness available for being in the moment as the moment is encountered and then carrying it over, an act that reminds me of what you call “the blessed task of remembrance.” I know you use that phrase with regard to how we carry those we have lost, but it seems to me that they are both blessed tasks that ultimately lend a measure of immortality, and for the one who carries out such missions, there is no rest. As Stevens said, “Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.”
I hope that makes sense.
I haven’t received my book yet, but I love the photo that it begins with of you on the shore. It reminds me of a too little appreciated poem by Robert Frost (I often think Frost is too little appreciated, dismissed as a mere poet of nature, as if there were anything “mere” about nature).
This Frost poem sprang to mind as soon as I saw the first photo in your book. It seems so fitting for you and the stance you keep toward life, loss, and unshakable belief.
NEITHER OUT FAR NOR IN DEEP
The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.
As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull
The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be—
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.
They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?
🌊🌊🌊
Congratulations again Patti, and happy birthday to Cairo.
Warmly, as ever,
Robin
I watched your live event with the guardian last night, and would love it if you could read us The Dark Blot here x
Patti are you out there?
i like to listen your reading very much
Patti,
Do you have a favorite number, or a specific time that you often look at your clock or watch and it always seems to be those numbers/time….
Curious,
S
Anyone who voted….Thank you!
Dear Patti,
I’m writing herein with the hope that you’ll see this. I have a request, but please don’t feel that you have to fulfill it.
Today being Neil Young’s birthday, I thought it would be wonderful if you could sing a Neil Young song, in tribute to him. “Helpless” comes to mind because your cover does it the most justice of any I’ve ever heard. It is haunting, complex, and beautiful, making a beeline to the soul. Many a time it’s given me what Stevens called “a planet’s encouragement.”
Please don’t feel obliged. Given the occasion, how lucky we are to be alive with him, it just seemed a waste not to ask.
Warmly, and with good wishes to everyone,
Robin
This brought back not only reading Just Kids, which filled in a lot about y'all during that period, but the year I began teaching at the college level on and off when I could. My friend from grad school and I both got a job at Transylvania University in Lexington. Ky, where I already lived. One day he said his friends af the UK gallery said there was an alternative show up in the New student studio section.
When we got there, it was Robert's work. I was spellbound, because it was mainly the BDSM and leather photos, completely uncensored ( this was 1990 or '91). It took the top of my head off, actually, as i was just coming to accept my bisexuality and nonbinary gender. Thanks to Robert for that, and thanks to you for reading about him on his birthday.