A Book of Days Page 2
24 FEBRUARY
My sister’s sewing basket, spools of a humble seamstress.
25 FEBRUARY
Lincoln death mask. We honor his elegant simplicity.
26 FEBRUARY
This was my father’s cup. On occasion he would call us into the kitchen, pour some coffee, then read aloud “Abou Ben Adhem,” by Leigh Hunt. It contained his personal philosophy that seems fixed within his empty cup.
27 FEBRUARY
Happy birthday to Ralph Nader, whom my father admired for his lifelong service to the people. He felt that Ralph lived up to the words in his favorite poem. “Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”
28 FEBRUARY
With Lenny Kaye by the sea, Byron Bay, Australia. Fifty years of work and friendship.
29 FEBRUARY
Fred Sonic Smith and I made a wish on this date as the full moon rose over Michigan; the following day we leapt into our new life. Thinking of that night, I sometimes toss a coin in my old Spanish well, sending future leap year wishes to all.
01 MARCH
With Fred before the Mariners’ Church of Detroit, where we were wed on March 1, 1980. When alchemy was real.
02 MARCH
This table was used in the famed World Chess Championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1972. Though the table is modest in appearance, every move made on its board reverberated around the world, as the brilliant upstart Fischer royally defeated Spassky, the reigning champion from the Soviet Union.
03 MARCH
This is the grave of Bobby Fischer. As he craved solitude, he chose to be buried next to a small white clapboard church near the village of Selfoss, a stone’s throw from where Iceland ponies graze.
04 MARCH
These photographs of Antonin Artaud by Georges Pastier were kept in a cigar box near Artaud’s bed in the asylum in Ivry-sur-Seine where he died. I imagine the poet alone in his room gazing at them, the double of himself.
05 MARCH
Happily working with the gentle and indefatigable Werner Herzog on English and German interpretations of Artaud’s Peyote Dance for Soundwalk Collective at the historic Electric Lady Studios.
06 MARCH
Georgia O’Keeffe’s bed.
07 MARCH
Everything in the adobe dwelling and studio in Abiquiú breathes of Georgia O’Keeffe. The surface of the walls, the ladder, the surrounding landscape, and the dry bones beyond.
08 MARCH
On International Women’s Day we remember the graceful Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, the only woman to win the Fields Medal, mathematics’ highest honor. She was the maestro of curved spaces, and one can barely conceive of the celestial landscape of her elastic mind. Mirzakhani died of cancer at the age of forty, counted in the stars as the queen of geometric imagination.
09 MARCH
Jesse on the march.
10 MARCH
All I needed in Paris.
11 MARCH
Rockaway Beach. My trusty CD player is all I need to listen to my favorite music. In another corner, awaiting rotation, are Ornette Coleman, Philip Glass, Marvin Gaye, and REM.
12 MARCH
At the Waldorf Astoria hotel with Michael Stipe. We were about to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and entered the ballroom together, each comprehending the other.
13 MARCH
The Alexander McQueen T-shirt given to me by Michael upon the designer’s death. I have worn it so many times performing, thinking of McQueen, the Mozart of cloth.
14 MARCH
On the birthday of photographer Diane Arbus, I am spending time with Revelations, a magnificent presentation of her work and process. Gazing at her face, I picture her in 1970, entering the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel with a manifest sense of purpose and ever-present camera, her third eye.
15 MARCH
My bed in Rockaway.
16 MARCH
Wo Hop in Chinatown, frequented by musicians for over eighty years. In the early seventies, after a third set at CBGB, we’d all head to 17 Mott Street, where the wooden tables held the scent of oolong tea, and a big bowl of duck congee cost under a dollar. It still remains, below the stairs, visited by hungry ghosts.
17 MARCH
My bass player Tony Shanahan, the son of Irish immigrants. His father was a revered baker; Tony has the flour and soil of Ireland dusting his musician hands.
18 MARCH
My cup, a gift from Jesse.
19 MARCH
This is my mother, Beverly Williams Smith, who gave me life and guided my first steps.
20 MARCH
The Vernal Equinox ushers in World Storytelling Day. This is Sophie Gengembre Anderson’s portrait of Scheherazade, literature’s most beguiling weaver of tales, whose stories famously stayed the hand of the sultan, who fell in love and spared her life. Her legacy is the classic One Thousand and One Nights.
21 MARCH
World Poetry Day. The convalescing child’s bible.
22 MARCH
Jay Dee Daugherty, meditative master of cymbals, my extraordinary drummer since 1975.
23 MARCH
West Virginia. A light snow fell as I listened to the Seventh Symphony, carried away from all cares.
24 MARCH
The Empire State Building, our queen, was once the world’s tallest building. Though now surpassed in height, none has eclipsed her stoic beauty.
25 MARCH
Poet Frank O’Hara—on a lunch break—cigarettes and telephone.
26 MARCH
This is my other camera, the equalizer.
27 MARCH
Freedom Tower. The geometry of architecture obscured by cloud.
28 MARCH
Cairo is mesmerized by the history of the medicinal properties of the lemon.
29 MARCH
Taking some time out from spring-cleaning to consult my childhood mentor, Little Lulu, champion of mischief and imagination.
30 MARCH
Tokyo. A close encounter with Ultraman.
31 MARCH
Jesse and I making self-pictures.
01 APRIL
Today is the birthday of Nikolai Gogol, the great Russian-Ukrainian writer, who once wrote, “A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away with an axe.”
02 APRIL
Black coat with handkerchief.
03 APRIL
Black coat without its peak.
04 APRIL
The poet Arseny Tarkovsky and his son, Andrei. One can only imagine the interior world of the child who would one day gift us with Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Nostalgia, The Sacrifice: a body of cinematic masterpieces. On the birthday of Andrei Tarkovsky, we celebrate both him and his father.
05 APRIL
Michigan, 1991. Little Jesse keeping up.
06 APRIL
Jesse before Rome’s Pantheon, the burial place of Raphael, the youthful Renaissance master who died on his thirty-seventh birthday. Known for his beauty in countenance and spirit, it was said that Nature wanted him for herself.
07 APRIL
The last painting of Raphael, depicting the Transfiguration, the alchemized Messiah.
08 APRIL
St. Michael and All Angels Churchyard, East Sussex. The poet Oliver Ray in close proximity to the unquiet grave.
09 APRIL
Charles Baudelaire was born today in 1821. He believed that genius was childhood recovered at will. This belief carried him through his darkest hours, when he dipped his pen into an inkwell yet another time.
10 APRIL
This palm, woven in Barcelona, represents Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem, where the people lay their cloaks and palms on the path before him. Jesus knows what lies ahead, accepting a brief moment of triumph, comprehending the consequences.
11 APRIL
Drawing energy, channeling the path of Andrei Rublev.
12 APRIL
Sam reading Beckett. Midway, Kentucky.
13 APRIL
Samuel Beckett, the great Irish playwright, was born in 1906 on Friday the thirteenth. He was Sam Shepard’s literary hero. Sam would recite whole passages of Beckett’s work by heart. We often quoted his line “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” No matter the circumstances, it always made us laugh.
14 APRIL
Anne Sullivan, the American teacher who led young Helen Keller out of the darkness. On her birthday, we mark with gratitude the generosity and sacrifices of our teachers.
15 APRIL
Good Friday, Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires.
16 APRIL
Though her transient life was one of sacrifice and physical suffering, Bernadette Soubirous, a peasant girl from Lourdes, had a vision in a grotto that manifested as a healing spring that strengthened the faith of others.
17 APRIL
He is risen. Drawing of the Mystic Lamb by e.g. walker.
18 APRIL
Jean Genet, poet, dramatist, author, and activist, died in Paris but was laid to rest in an old Spanish cemetery by the sea in Larache, Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima. He is surrounded by the scent of wild flowers, stinging salt, and the laughter of children.
19 APRIL
By the poet’s grave, the child Ayoub handed me a silk rose. A small miracle.
20 APRIL
Uluru. The formation of dreams.
21 APRIL
Privileged to touch its sacred skin.
22 APRIL
Earth Day.
Supplication to Nature
If we be blind, if we turn away from Nature, garden of the soul,
She will turn on us. In place of songbird, the shrill cry
of the locusts devouring the harvest, the terrible crackling
of the blazing rainforest, the peatlands smoldering, the seas rising,
cathedrals flooding, the Arctic shelf melting, the Siberian
wood burning, the Barrier Reef bleached as the bones
of forgotten saints. If we be blind, failing in
our supplication to Nature, species will die, the bee
and the butterfly driven to extinction.
All of Nature nothing more than an empty
husk, the unholy ghost of an abandoned
hive.
23 APRIL
A small corner of treasured things. My father’s cup, my Ethiopian cross, Sam’s knife, the Libertine’s ring.
24 APRIL
The Ethiopian ceremonial cross represents everlasting life and contains within it an elaborate latticework, an intricate world of small consonant systems.
25 APRIL
Paris. Jack’s Hotel, in the thirteenth arrondissement. Jean Genet died here, in a small room on the second floor, on April 15, 1986. Suffering with throat cancer, he spent his last days correcting the galleys of Prisoner of Love.
26 APRIL
Coffee and Anna Kavan, on the birthday of the enigmatic e.g. walker.
27 APRIL
Mexico City. The clock on the wall of Café La Habana, where the Savage Detectives used to meet, spar, write, and drink mescal.
28 APRIL
This is the birthday of the Chilean poet and writer Roberto Bolaño. At the end of his fleeting life, he sat upon this chair, threw a net over the twentieth century, and articulated its degeneration in 2666, the first masterpiece of the new millennium.
29 APRIL
These days some plans are made optimistically, knowing they have a great percentage of not happening. Yet the Imagination reigns. In that respect we can go anywhere, save by the plot of doubt.
30 APRIL
1951. Germantown, Pennsylvania. An image of pure happiness—my first bicycle. In my Easter coat, ready to ride off into the world.
01 MAY
When I was young, May Day was also called children’s day, a time of ribbons and white dresses, turning in circles in the bright fields and fashioning garlands of wildflowers.
02 MAY
In the garden of Pinacoteca Comunale Tacchi-Venturi, a small but wondrous museum harboring the slippers of St. Celestine. I have visited many times, due to my affection for the Putto with Dolphin by Andrea del Verrocchio, set upon a modest fountain.
03 MAY
The putto, or cherub, is renowned for its spiral design, where all angles have equal significance. But it is his empathetic little face that continues to touch me deeply and draws me to return.
04 MAY
I am grateful for seemingly small things, as my glasses, without which I could not read.
05 MAY
The bookcase by my bed, each volume a journey.
06 MAY
In my travels I chanced upon this laundry basket in an alcove at Egeskov Castle, Denmark. The light was exquisite and the basket evoked memories of my mother hanging sheets on a line to dry in the sun.
07 MAY
This is my mother’s key ring. The B is for Beverly. She always carried it in the pocket of her housecoat.
08 MAY
Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers, holding keys to their children’s hearts.
09 MAY
J. M. Barrie was small for his age but distinguished himself as a remarkable storyteller. In adulthood he gave us the monumental Peter Pan. Barrie commissioned this statue in Kensington Gardens, where Peter had his first adventures. It is often surrounded by lively children eager to fly.
10 MAY
This sculpture in my garden of a boy with birds reminds me of one of the Lost Boys of Neverland. I imagine the bronze birds taking wing when no one is around to hinder potential magic.
11 MAY
Seneca Sebring and his father made me this little birdhouse for my bungalow. Perhaps one day I will find a tiny bronze nestling within.
12 MAY
Coffee in Zurich on the artist’s birthday.
13 MAY
This is the felt suit of Joseph Beuys, hanging on the wall of a gallery in Zurich. I took a Polaroid and slipped it into my pocket. Later I unpeeled it, revealing the suit of an artist whose work was his activism.
14 MAY
Bolshaya Sadovaya ulitsa no. 10, Moscow, where Mikhail Bulgakov created his satanic Professor Woland, anonymously sketched on the stairwell wall.
15 MAY
Mikhail Bulgakov, born this day in Kyiv, in 1891. He gifted humanity with a true masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, which includes the immortal statement “Manuscripts don’t burn.”
16 MAY
A city of burning days and consecrated nights, utterly transformed from the New York I once knew. And yet, somehow it is still my city.
17 MAY
My old Italian cowboy boots experienced much tramping about until the soles wore through. One evening they seemed to be urging me to abandon my work and take off again. I put them on, sat at my desk, and wrote through the night, adventure enough.