Me and Patti Smith

Everyone has a picture of themselves in their mind. A fictions picture is really what it is. Maybe everyone has more then one picture, I don’t know. I have one. Honestly I have a few but there is one that sticks out to me the most today. This picture, and let’s say everyone’s collective pictures, come from all sorts of places at different times in our lives. This one picture of mine comes from childhood, I think, from a poster in a record store, most likely. It is the picture of Patti Smith on the cover of the Horses album. It’s a black and white shot of her from the hip up against a white wall. She’s wearing tight dark jeans, a white men’s shit, suspenders that don’t really ever show up in my mind, and has a jacket slung over her shoulder, real casual-like. A suiting picture to have in one’s mind about one’s self: it’s not too specific about the time, her age, her livelihood, or anything. She’s not smiling but not frowning, her hair is a mess, and her eyebrows look fantastic. I guess the pictures in our minds are of how we want to look. She has no baggage here, she’s ready to go. I like to think that I’m ready to go.