Patti Smith Blues

Well, this isn't going to get posted either but I mighth as well write it up. Listening to Patti Smith talk about her new book, an autobiography of her early years in New York, where she moved when she was just twenty in order to become an artist and her relationship with a then also newly arrived Robert Mapplethorpe, who was also struggling to find his way into the art world, and the struggles they endured and their ultimate successess and his ultimate death. As with the Sonia Sotamayor story, here is someone finding their path in life. Listening to or reading such stories are just depressing these days. There is no other way to put it. The lesson is to find your passion early and follow it. This is precisely what I did not do, and now I must live with the consequences.



Response: Again, I hate to leave a negative thought just hanging there. There was a reason I did not pursue the path I would have listed as my passion, and that is writing, a reason I did not find that courage. And I need to take responsibility for that, as much as some of it was circumcstances beyond my control. It's right now that matters. Right now I would at least admit I took a courageous step and that what follows is up to me. It's also important to point out that not ever path is that of a steady rise. I need to broaden my definition of success. And it has to be one of being true to your own nature more than of following any pre-defined model. Melville, toiling away in obscurity, working on a poet no one will read while he spends his days in some drudgery job. And so it is all now about following that path of truth and not in looking back in regret