At age 78, Patti Smith has much to celebrate, and not only because of her prolific career, but also because novelties are still present in her life. In honor of her new memoir, Bread of Angels and the 50th anniversary of Horses, which made the iconic singer and poet famous, Smith accompanied CBS Mornings journalist Anthony Mason on a visit to a stationary store to talk about her creative process.
“I have to say, I never get tired of stationary stores,” says Smith, whose previous literary work includes Just Kids (2011) and M Train (2015). “I love everything: the scissors, the pens, the paper clips…it’s all for me, like glorified school supplies,” she says while surveying the stock of paper goods. “Every notebook is a possibility. You open it up, and it’s a new adventure.”
Mason then asks Smith, who refers to herself as an “accidental rockstar,” during their wider interview segment, if she always has to write her work by hand before digitizing it. “I write 80% by hand,” Smith replies. “I never sit at the computer to write something. I’ve always written in notebooks. I like the sense of the mind and the pen, you know, with no technology. You have your paper and your pen. And I love the feel of writing. I loved it so much, I learned to write with a quill and a nib and ink bottle in school.”
Smith then transports viewers back to her childhood in across Chicago and South Jersey. “I used to spend a lot of time trying to copy the Declaration of Independence and that’s why my handwriting is sort of nice,” she explains of her penmanship, “because I spent hours just trying to replicate the way they wrote. Thomas Jefferson’s handwriting is beautiful, really,” she adds.
The foreword to her memoir, which contains reveals such as the true paternity of Patti Smith’s father, is a veritable ode to handwriting. “The pen scribbles across the page ‘rebel hump rebel hump rebel hump rebel hump rebel hump’ What do those words mean, asks the pen. I don’t know, replies the hand,” Smith writes. “God whispers through a wrinkle in the wallpaper, a drop of water bursting like an equation.”
Originally published in Vanity Fair España
