by Susan Smahl
Bob Dylan probably didn’t win any extra love from the masses when he received his Nobel Prize (those who love him love him and those who don’t, well, you know); Patti Smith surely did, win extra love that is, in that plush auditorium; dignified and other worldly, filled with crowns and satin gowns
It begins with a lone guitar, a beat up old Martin. Must be a perfect guitar, I think, to be chosen for such an auspicious occasion. Certainly the camera man agrees as he provides numerous close-ups of the scratches, the tiny cracks in the guitar’s weathered body. Weathered like the singer, like the prize winner, the Nobel Laureate. A distant steel guitar chimes, a lonely prairie dog, then Patti’s first stumble. I could tell it was coming: it was the meter, something was off; one word left out and you can’t get it back. How do we remember songs anyway? We need the beat, our inner metronome. A common mass inhale as everyone, every crown and gown hopes for recovery. Patti simply stops, humble, apologetic, then continues. Not a titter nor a sneer among all those tuxes and gowns. Each musician on stage is expressionless, faces flat, waiting for their next cue; even the guitarist who has followed the stumble so precisely.
An omniscient camera, a silent, hovering eye finds a woman wiping a tear. Surely, she knows the song. A perfect folk song, an oral history, a traditional, written by a skinny kid from Minnesota, listened to by thousands, maybe millions of other skinny kids, then sung, over half a century later to queens and kings, sung beautifully, imperfectly, by a friend he once told a joke to.
Susan Smahl imagined she might be a writer someday, in the future. She’s finally working on that goal with short pieces about her life and thoughts about this crazy world.