The Wisdom of Patti Smith
Patti Smith gave a commencement speech at Pratt Institute on Monday night:
“I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to talk about: Moby Dick, the slaves of Michelangelo, Hans Hoffman, My Bloody Valentine, but now that I’m here, my greatest urge is to speak to you of dental care. My generation had a rough go, dentally.”
Listen to the whole speech here. No one is wiser, funnier, or cooler.
Tags: Patti Smith, teeth
May 20th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
Did you read her book ‘just kids’? I can totally recommend it, such a great read!
May 21st, 2010 at 2:52 am
Amazing and all manner of words that can’t capture her brilliance.
May 21st, 2010 at 4:09 am
Let’s hear it for dental care!
Ironically tomorrow I meet my friend the endodontist (specialist dentist dealing in tooth pain) for brunch.
SW I just made Mr FF watch the Stones in Exile with me. It loses nothing in its 2nd viewing and the clothes and hair and house in France are all fab too.
May 21st, 2010 at 4:32 am
God – she should live in England!
May 21st, 2010 at 4:33 am
I count myself blessed to have been around back in the day when Patti was still just hanging out like the rest of us. I thank goodness she isn’t one of the ones that fell into the abyss as I really thought she would, and rose victorious instead!
May 21st, 2010 at 7:31 am
I hate censorship more than toilet paper sticking to my heal after a visit to the potty, so I’ve been censored from hearing the speach. I guess I’ll have to wait to hear it from home.
May 21st, 2010 at 10:37 am
I love Patti Smith, but I don’t think that was one of her finest moments….sorry.
May 21st, 2010 at 11:19 am
She is more brilliant than I thought, since musically it was never my taste and it’s a different generation. I’m glad I’ve heard her speak.
May 22nd, 2010 at 1:27 am
Like Bessie, I’ve been subjected to censorship. Damn.
May 22nd, 2010 at 2:40 am
I LOVE her.
May 22nd, 2010 at 9:20 am
But speaking of commencement speeches, this will have to be superlative beyond superlative if it is to beat J.K. Rowling’s 2008 commencement speech at Harvard (which got listened to by, among others, a guy I knew in school and the teen chick-lit plagiarist who wrote that Opal Mehta book (or most of it, anyway).
May 23rd, 2010 at 5:03 am
The youtube interviews from when she was quite young blow me away (dust, watch these, you might be swayed!). She’s so honest, rude and raw, crawling all over the couch in interviews with Tom Snyder and Conan, directing the questions how she wanted them to go etc and in between all the shit stirring/no bullshit attitude and hilarity, she has these moments of absolute genius where she blurts out the most ironic, spiritual (not normally my thing, but she pulls it off) dazzlingly lucid, human comments that kinda make you realize how BIG a person she is, a force of nature!
And as you mentioned Sister, innately fucking cool. There ain’t that many FUNNY chicks in the world!
June 26th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
I had all 4 wisdom teeth removed at the same time. They were so impacted that they were growing into my jaw. I had local anesthesia in the surgery. The surgery itself wasn’t really too painful (besdies the shots to numb you up). It’s after the surgery when the medication goes away that you will experience A LOT of pain and swelling in the cheeks.