Chiklets

The wild and the solemn; the humble and the arrayed ~ We go through life. We shed our skin. We become ourselves

[creaminmybones]

i remember patti performing ‘dancing barefoot’ with her band on a late night show in 1999 but it’s disappeared from youtube and any information on it has been scrubbed from the internet like i literally cannot find anything on it anywhere :’) i’ve got the audio saved as “late night. 1999” but for the life of me cannot remember who the host was ugh.

[creaminmybones]

“We broke our mother's heart and became ourselves. We proceeded to breathe and therefore to leave, drunken, astonished, each of us a god.” — Patti Smith, Auguries of Innocence

[creaminmybones]

Visit Original Link

Sun is rising on the water

Light is dancing again

Let's go under where the sun beams

Let's go under my friend

Are we sleeping

Are we dreaming

Are we dancing again

[bobdylanyaoi]

[tyger-land]

𝗣𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗶 𝗦𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗵 NYC, 1979, by Robert Mapplethorpe.

[creaminmybones]

“My first and last image of Robert was that welcoming smile and everything else in between. And it was this symmetry, it was like a blessing, you know.”

“Robert was such a part of my consciousness, I was seeing him everywhere, I dreamed of him constantly. I actually saw him like a hologram sitting in a chair while I was folding laundry, that’s how much he was around. I didn’t know even what it was, I mean, it’s a form of grief but it’s also like I was haunted really. I couldn’t get him out my sight line, I couldn’t get him out of my mind. And in going to the sea, the sea is so vast and it’s pure and it’s bigger than us. The sea has seen it all and it’s philosophic but empathetic, and welcoming but you could drown in it or be cleansed by it.”

“Allow yourself all the different things that you feel in losing somebody. You do crazy things when you lose somebody, like all of the sudden you just leave the house and buy something expensive or do something out of character. Don’t judge yourself. Let yourself be angry or let yourself not feel anything, don’t feel guilty. Just allow all of your cells and all of your being to go through it’s process. I mean, I cried more for Fred years after he died, it was like I was in such shock losing him. And I had so much responsibility and I had two young children […] so a lot of the things that I felt were more intense years later. There’s no rules and there shouldn’t be any rules. And there’s all of these phrases like, ‘time heals all wounds’, it doesn’t, don’t look to be healed. You have a sacred wound, take care of it, don’t let it get infected. But it’s not necessarily gonna heal, you just learn to live with it.”

[creaminmybones]

Patti Smith at a portrait session for Le Monde 2 in Paris on February 19, 2008 by Derek Hudson

[irenelichtensteinblog]

Claude Gassian, Patti Smith au cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Paris XXe, 1976

[creaminmybones]

“All I needed for the mind was to be led to new stations. All I needed for the heart was to visit a place of greater storms.” (Patti Smith performing at CBGB in NY on February 14, 1975 by Charlie Steiner.)

[creaminmybones]

Finished reading Bread of Angels a while ago and I’m still thinking about it. There’s something so relatable to the nature of the human spirit in Patti’s writing. Her relationship with Todd/Rachael I’ve always found to be particularly moving and this memoir really fleshed out his/her beautiful spirit and the unconditional love and acceptance between them. Just such wonderful writing and Patti’s rumination’s on death have also been incredibly insightful and comforting.

[butchdeanjohn]

patti smith in rolling thunder revue: a bob dylan story by martin scorsese

[creaminmybones]

“The dark stone in my heart pulsed quietly, igniting like a coal in a hearth. Who is in my heart? I wondered.” — Patti Smith

[hagenlastkiss]

Patti Smith

[unaturalhistory]

Patti Smith by Lynn Goldsmith

[creaminmybones]

“For life is the best thing we have in this existence. And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within. This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions and, most simply put, the embodiment of love.” — Patti Smith

[dk-thrive]

Not a perfect man, nor had he produced any known miracle, yet he had the simplicity of a saint.

I made a brief visit to see my parents...My father was in the backyard feeding the birds. I hesitated to disturb him but felt an urgency to see him and quietly slipped out back. He was standing at the end of the yard with his back toward me with arms outstretched. As I stood in silence the birds flew to him and covered him, as if a fresco from the painter Giotto’s life cycle of St. Francis of Assisi. I could feel the birds’ affection for him, not merely because he fed them, but because they were responding to his innate goodness. At that moment I had no doubt that he was of a hallowed tribe. Not a perfect man, nor had he produced any known miracle, yet he had the simplicity of a saint, and I the saint’s errant daughter. Somehow sensing my presence, he turned as the birds flew above him and looked at me. Hello doll, he said. Hello, Daddy, I answered.

— Patti Smith, Bread of Angels: A Memoir (Random House, November 4, 2025)

[dk-thrive]

But had we words enough? Had I really loved her enough? Did I give her all the time she deserved?

The loss of my mother hit me much harder than I had imagined. I sat weeping, holding one of the last books she sent to me. Sara Crewe. She was, in a sense, my fairy godmother, like the blue fairy that watched over Pinocchio, even as he trespassed again and again. The death of our parents rearranges our universe, for a while things swing out of balance, and one experiences a dizzying orphaned sensation. My mother’s passing filled me with the sense of something left unsaid. Yet she had inscribed my copy of Sara Crewe with the phrase We need no words. But had we words enough? Had I really loved her enough? Did I give her all the time she deserved? I have often wished for one more hour, to sit with her at the kitchen table drinking coffee fully attending to her fanciful often-told stories.

— Patti Smith, Bread of Angels: A Memoir (Random House, November 4, 2025)