Just Kids

Happy Friday! I'm super excited about today's post; it's a diary entry form earlier on in the week:

It’s Monday May 14th 2012. I just finished reading Patti Smiths’ book Just Kids.(Thank you Rachel for the recommendation!) It’s an amazing love story between herself and famed photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. I can’t recall reading a more beautifully written book. For a couple of days, I time traveled to the 70’s; I felt like a part of their lives in New York City. I found myself wandering the streets and the Chelsea Hotel along with them. As I read the last pages, I cried. For a few minutes afterwards, I sat in my chair while at Griffith Park, the sun warm on my face and I closed my eyes; I wondered about what to do with all this emotion.


Back on May 1st 1993, I surprised my boyfriend, Carlos, by renting a room at the Chelsea Hotel. It was his birthday and I had plans for a beautiful day. Just like Patti and Robert, we were ‘just kids.’ Though I didn’t know as much as I do now of this then famous hotel, I wanted to see it and feel it’s energy. As I write now, I wonder what had happened in that room we stayed in, whose ghosts were we in the presence of? That evening, we took plenty of photos just as we had for the two years we spent together. We were each other’s muses/ supermodels. The piece here is a photograph taken while at the Chelsea Hotel. Madonna’s Erotica video had just come out a few months prior. But aside from Madonna, it now feels like we were channeling Robert; I think he would have been proud. Is it possible that we could have been staying in their room? Later that evening, we got dressed up in our designer clothes and we explored the city like two little boys playing dress up. It’s an evening I won’t forget. Especially not now!

As I was reading the last pages of the book, she writes about her newborn child and Robert's death from AIDS, I got emotional, almost numb; I didn’t want it to end. And then I realized that soon after his passing, I was lucky enough to have seen his work exhibited at the UC Berkeley Campus Museum. It was a posthumous retrospective exhibition, “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment. It was about a year after his death and though I didn’t know who he was at the time, I was drawn to his homoerotic images. I had just come out of the 'closet.' What an honor and blessing it is to have been so fortunate.

(Interesting note: this exhibition created a lot of controversy and the original opening at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. was cancelled due to a political debate over the NEA’s distribution of government subsidies to so called ‘obscene’ art.)

Thank you Patti for keeping your promise and writing your story. I won’t ever forget; it’s changed my life. And though I feel some sadness, I mostly feel inspired to keep writing and to keep all creativity flowing. I’m an artist; it’s who I am and always will be.


To be continued...

Have a beauty of a weekend!