It’s official: I am in love with Patti Smith. Not only did the 63-year-old performer, dubbed the “Godmother of Punk,” kill it singing her poetry-songs and pounding her electrified acoustic guitar during the 10th Anniversary weekend of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, she also used the opportunity to rekindle a sense of our valuable place in the world. She told us that today is the anniversary of the death of St. Francis de Assisi (the 784th one, for the record), a medieval Franciscan monk known as the patron saint of flora and fauna. She proceeded to read his prayer to the audience:
patron saint of the birds 'n' beasts
- Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
- where there is hatred, let me sow love;
- where there is injury, pardon:
- where there is doubt, faith;
- where there is despair, hope
- where there is darkness, light
- where there is sadness, joy
- O Divine Master,
- grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
- to be understood, as to understand;
- to be loved, as to love;
- for it is in giving that we receive,
- it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
- and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
- Amen.
And she reminded us that our own “San Francisco” is named in his honor, then said it’s either that [the prayer] or Metallica. (I, predictably, argued from afar that it can, and should, be both.) I’m not sure whether she meant this as a good or bad thing, but I chose to feel lucky we live on a planet dually aflame with nature saints and thrashy superheroes. Smith did note, for whatever it’s worth, that she owns a Metallica shirt.
Would it be excessive to take this chance to quote from “Blackened,” off Metallica’s ….And Justice for All?
Opposition…Contradiction…Premonition…Compromise/Agitation……..Violation……..Mutilation……Planet dies
Darkest color/Blistered earth/True death of life
Termination…Expiration…Cancellation…Human race/Expectation….Liberation…Population…Lay to waste
See our mother/Put to death/See our mother die
Smouldering decay/Take her breath away
Millions of our years/In minutes disappears
rachel corrie
love is a banquet on which we feed
Between songs, Smith also recalled the needless and violent death of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old protester who was bulldozed by Israeli soldiers in 2003, as well as reminded us that John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban” is still stuck for the next 20 years in an Indiana prison as Bush Jr’s. sacrificial lamb. Ultimately, she finished her set, after a rockin’ version of Them’s “Gloria” (with her added beginning and ending, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” — nice words from a reformed Jehovah’s Witness), by imploring the crowd to live life, be happy, and make the world a better place simply by helping people out. It was a perfect epilogue to a conversation I’d had merely hours before with a couple from Ohio about Big Activism (see Rachel Corrie, for example) versus daily activism (“the principle of having the power to act, every day).
The bigger beauty of Patti Smith’s performance was the honor of watching a musician and poet use her privileged position upon the stage to voice her perspective. Though this can be obnoxious, or tree-huggy corny, in her case it was anything but, and was immensely refreshing in contrast to so many of the bands I typically relish who fail to use their soapbox for anything but face-melting guitar tricks and banal banter. She ended on a note of hope and power which had permeated her entire set:
“THE PEOPLE NEED TO UNITE AND SAVE THIS FUCKIN’ PLANET!”
kiwi leaves like abundant green hearts aloft in the sky (from Green Gulch Zen Center)
A-fucking-men.
Hallelujah!