Podcast #69: Patti Smith on Loving to Learn

By Tracy O'Neill, Social Media Curator
July 14, 2015

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To hear Patti Smith sing "Gloria" or "Birdland" for the first time is to let the ears introduce the rest of the body to love. Over the last four decades of her remarkable career, the singer has released eleven studio albums and published the National Book Award-winning memoir Just Kids. This week on the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present Patti Smith discussing her love of learning.

Patti Smith LIVE from the NYPL

Patti Smith LIVE from the NYPL

As a child, Smith found in libraries that books were passageways to other worlds. "I’ve always loved books since a small child," she explained. "I wanted to learn right away, as soon as—even as a toddler, and my mother taught me to read quite early, and when I was about seven or eight years old, we moved to South Jersey from the Philadelphia area. A perhaps nice place to play, but not a very cultured area, and my only respite was the library. My only hope in living in a lower-middle-class area where people really didn’t read or didn’t seem to have any aspirations to leave South Jersey, the library gave me many worlds. Travel. I learned about Tibet, Simón Bolívar, Joan of Arc. All of these things I learned about in the library."
Of course Smith's education arrived not only through books but also music. One of the most important memories of her childhood is listening to opera during a school music class:

"My love of opera started very young. I remember I had this music teacher named Mr. Myers when I was in grade school. Poor Mr. Myers had a very bad stutter. And to have to have a bad stutter and say the word music was very difficult for him and the children were very cruel to him. And I sort of felt sorry for him but I remember sitting there and one day he brought—he would bring his record player in and he put a record on and played the aria from Madam Butterfly and I thought it was—by Eleanor Steber—I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. I mean, it was the same reaction. I had the same reaction to 'Un Bel Dì' as I did when I first heard Little Richard, a very—as a child, a very visceral reaction, a physical reaction, a sensual reaction as much as a child can have and I just fell in love. I fell in love with the emotional range of the aria and I for a long time my focus was on Italian opera, loved Verdi and loved Puccini and in later years discovered Wagner. But why this particular aria was so important, 'Vissi d’arte,' and sorry I don’t pronounce this stuff very good, I am an American. And I mean it’s always been, it’s such beautiful words, especially by Maria Callas: 'I have lived for love, for art, I have never hurt a single soul so why must I suffer?' And I just—that first line: 'I have lived for love, for art.' It just says it all, really."

Smith has, indeed lived for love and art, but it's apparent that she's also lived to learn. She described school tenderly, as a place offering wonders unlike those available in the routines of domestic life:

"I loved school as a kid. It still opened again. I couldn’t wait to go to school, I didn’t want to stay home and help with the dishes or, you know, do housework, or, you know, learn to cook. I loved going to school and finding new books in the school library and looking at the really cute guys, but mostly, truthfully, I’ve always loved education. I don’t always agree with how teachers are taught, but it was a treasure box at school, so I can’t say that I—I don’t have any real criticism of my schooling. I have more criticism about my spiritual education, my religious education, than I do about schooling."

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