Stocking Stuffer: My Encounter with Patti Smith

By Susan M. Silver

PATTI SMITH. Photo credit: Harald Krichel via Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0.

On an overcast day in early December, I was walking along West 3rd Street near LaGuardia Place, lost in my own thought bubble. The Village was exuberant in full anticipation of Christmas, vivid decorations springing up in storefront after storefront. Approaching me, I spotted a familiar face with wideset, smiling eyes, one misaligned, framed with a somewhat stringy white cumulus hair cloud. 

“Ms. Smith, is that you?!”  I half-exclaimed. She nodded; it was indeed musician-author Patti Smith of Horses and Just Kids fame.  Unlike many celebrities I’d encountered in Manhattan, she seemed almost pleased to be recognized. 

We chatted briefly about the imperiled Elizabeth Street Garden, a shared passion.  I offered that I’d worked towards the rescue mission by writing a cover story on the park’s plight for one of the downtown hyperlocal papers. “Isn’t that nice?” Smith responded with a warm, serene smile, the uncoordinated, merry eyes illuminated from within.  In person, this larger-than-life cultural icon, who radiated a broad aura of otherworldliness, cut a rather fragile figure, her shiny new black puffer incongruous with a haphazard thrift ensemble.

I confessed that I’d read virtually every word she’d written, with a special affinity for The Year of the Monkey, my copy of which shows the abuse of multiple readings. “Isn’t that nice?” she said evenly, serene smile intact, looking down with genuine humility.

As she started to go on her way, I realized that this was perhaps the most Zen individual I’d ever run across.  My Christmas stocking was now already full to brimming.