Last night’s News Hour on PBS included an interview with Patti Smith on her book, “Just Kids”. I picked it up recently at a bookstore, but decided to hold off on purchasing it.
There was a classic point in last night’s interview worth noting. Here’s the exchange with PBS host Jeffrey Brown:
JEFFREY BROWN: There’s a lot of famous people who move in and out of the story. Sometimes, they are in the background. Sometimes, they’re — and there’s rock stars — Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix — and then there’s artists, like Warhol, of course.
But there’s a passage where you write, “I was — this is a quote — “I was there for these moments, but so young and preoccupied with my own thoughts, that I hardly recognized them as moments.”
It’s kind of interesting that we don’t recognize our moments as we’re living them, huh?
PATTI SMITH: Well, it’s true.
I was sitting at the feet of Janis Joplin as Kris Kristofferson was teaching her “Bobby McGee,” and preoccupied with a poem I was trying to write. You know, it’s — and I think that that’s normal for young artists. These people were only a few years older than me.
It was a time where the cult of celebrity wasn’t so big, and we weren’t so separated from — from the people who were creating our cultural voice, because we were also trying to add to it simultaneously. And — and we were all living in the same house, the Chelsea Hotel.
That’s so true. Having the good luck, or good fortune, to actually recognize those “moments” that are destined to become “history” is something special.
Are journalists any better at it than others? I would like to think so, although it just may come from their natural advantage in writing contemporary accounts that become the raw material of those histories, when they are written.
Not wanting to leave the mention of journalism on such a heavy note, you might enjoy Stuff Journalists Like, a funny look at life in the business.
The List of said “stuff” is fun to browse. It begins:
#3 free food
#5 deadlines
#6 photogs
#7 election day
#8 the first day
#9 coffee
#10 drinking
#11.5% statistics
#12 inverted pyramids
#13 awards
#14 bylines
#15 reporter’s notebooks
#16 police scanners
#17 breaking news
There’s more, of course, but that should get you started.
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Some of the New Thought religions/churches teach that “living in the now moment” Being in the present moment” is all there is. People waste a lot of energy thinking about the past (it is over and can’t be changed) and thinking about the future and they completely miss what is happening right now; they completely miss what is happening with themselves right now, with their loved ones right now. But with practice that can change if you choose.
Maureen Dowd wrote a fine article about Patti Smith for the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26dowd.html?_r=1&ref=pattismith
And here’s a NYT article about some Bob Dylan/Patti Smith moments:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904EED71639F930A25751C1A963958260&ref=pattismith
Speaking of moments, I saw Janis Joplin perform weekly at a small folk music gathering on the campus of U.T. Austin in 1960/1961. I was so awed that it never occurred to me to walk up to her and tell her just how much I appreciated what she was doing.
Interesting the guy listed “free food” on the list. I’ve never seen local journalists helping themselves to food at an even they were covering.
As far as journalists being in the moment, it’s one thing to be there when the “moment” happens, it’s quite another to be responsible for making the “moment” happen.
“There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.”
“All You Need Is Love” John Lennon
Have a safe New Year people.
You can’t cover something if you’re busy noshing. We simply don’t accept free food, nor anything else. It calls for some verbal footwork when people are pressing snacks upon you, though! You don’t want to be rude.