Great Interview

There was a really wonderful interview on Fresh Air today with Patti Smith. I highly recommend that you check it out at the Fresh Air website. Toward the end they had this, my favorite exchange.

GROSS: My guest is Patti Smith. Her new memoir "Just Kids" is about how she became a poet, songwriter and performer. It's also about her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe, who became her soul mate when she moved to New York in 1967. He died of AIDS in 1989.

You say that one of the people who you were with when he died was Allen Ginsberg. And in your memoir, you mentioned some advice that Ginsberg had given you. After your husband died, he said let go of the spirit of the departed and continue your life's celebration. Having experience as much death as you have, is that a good advice, do you think?

Ms. SMITH: Yes. I mean, I think that, you know, there - the idea that time heals all wounds is not really true. Our wounds aren't really ever healed. We just learn to walk with them. We learn that some days we're going to feel intense pain all over again and we just have to say, okay, I know you. If - you can come along with me today, in the same way that sometimes we start laughing out in the middle of nowhere remembering something that happened with someone we've lost.

And, you know, life is the best thing that we have. We each have a life. We each have to negotiate it and navigate it. And I think it's very important that we enjoy our life, that we get everything we can out of it. And it doesn't take away from our love of the departed. I mean, I take Fred along with me in the things that I do, or Robert or my father or my mother, you know, whoever wants to come along, they can be with me. And, you know, and if I want them, I can sense them.

You know, we have our own life, but we can still walk with the people that we miss or that we lose. And I think it's very important to not be afraid to experience joy in the middle of sorrow. When my brother died, my sister and I sat with his body, our beloved brother, and we wept. And then I don't know what happened, one of us triggered laughter in the other. My brother and sister and I used to laugh so much that we would get sick. And my sister and I started laughing, sitting with my brother, as if he had infected us.

And we laughed so hard that we were scolded by the funeral director. And which - you know, my brother, who was so mischievous, I'm sure caused all of this. But it's all right. You know, we knew the depth of our sorrow. So it was all right for us to also, you know, experience some joy in his presence because, you know, that's what our life is - you know, it's the fearful symmetry of Blake, you know, joy and sorrow. You don't want to just feel one of them. They're both valuable to the spirit.