Patti Smith crowns her immense musical and creative career with the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts

M. F. Antuña

She is everything. She is a singer. She is a writer. She is a composer. She is a visual artist. She is a universal icon and the recent Princess of Asturias Award winner ... of the Arts. There are plenty of reasons to choose her among the 55 candidates, as her career is extensive and touches all creative fields. "I was born on a Monday, on the North Side of Chicago, during the great snowstorm of 1946 (...) According to my father, I was born tall, skinny, and suffering from bronchopneumonia," she writes in her memoir 'Just Kids'. Always restless, always attentive, she moved with her family first to Philadelphia and then to New Jersey and was influenced by her mother to love music, with which she educated her ear with blues, jazz, and pop and her eyes and mind with literature. She abandoned the prayer that had also been instilled in her at home and began to read: "Gradually, my love for books displaced my love for prayer," she also recounts about those early years of life who came to feel absolute passion for the work of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud.

Her life was not easy. She had to work hard and suffer before conquering the world. As money was tight at home, right after finishing high school she started working in a factory before getting pregnant and giving her daughter up for adoption. It was then that she headed to Manhattan. And there she met the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, another icon who lived that modern New York and whom she was always connected to until he died at just over forty years old. Then came Paris, in 1969, with student riots, with the street turning into a stage and embracing performance and, back in the US, she joined the St. Mark's Poetry Project collective, and began writing about rock.

It was 1973 when she formed the Patti Smith Group which the following year would release 'Hey Joe'. Producer Clive Davis appeared to see her talent and amplify it and in 1975 they released their first album 'Horses', in which the punk sound and the intense, surrealistic lyrics of Patti Smith combined to create a magical cocktail that ranks among the best in rock history. 'Radio Ethiopia' (1976) followed, and then 'Easter' in 1978 which included the mythical 'Because the Night', a song she co-wrote with Bruce Springsteen. 'Dream of Life' (1988), 'Gone Again' (1996), 'Peace and Noise' (1997), 'Gung Ho' (2000), 'Twelve' (2007), and 'Banga' (2012) would go on to make up an unstoppable and relentless career.

There was a pause for her, though. The birth of her two children kept her away from music for a time between 1978 and 1988 but she returned with strength and even accompanied another great, and Prince of Asturias - in his case of Letters - like Bob Dylan, whom she represented in Sweden when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. The nineties dealt her a couple of very hard life blows, with the loss of her husband and her brother. In 'Gone Again' she sang that pain.

Of course, beyond music, she has also held photographic exhibitions and has written other books besides the one mentioned such as 'Auguries of Innocence' or 'Year of the Monkey'. She was and remains a dreamer. One of her most iconic lyrics, 'People Have the Power' says it clearly: "I believe that what we all dream can come true through unity. We can change the world around us. We can make the revolution on Earth. We have the power." The power to dream, to govern, to fight against the foolish.

She is also an activist for multiple causes and has muddied herself a thousand times in various mires. "I am not political, nor do I want to be, I am an artist and a mother (...), I don't know, it frustrates me a lot that we are in a world where everything has to be either black or white," she said recently, not without pointing out something else: "In my life I have seen a world so driven by power and money."

But she -reports El Comercio- is above all a true stage animal, a creative whirlwind. And she doesn't even know quite why. She does have clear what her desire is, achieved and applauded, also in Asturias, because here she has allowed herself to be loved at the Laboral. "I am socially awkward and I don't like parties, but if I stand in front of 700 or 70,000 people, I feel very comfortable. I will talk to them, laugh with them, sing for them, make mistakes in front of them. It's a strange duality," the new Princess of the Arts has confessed.

Patti Smith: "If I had to summarize what this award means to me, I would do it with two words, art and love"

Patti Smith quickly thanked for the Princess of Asturias Award of the Arts that was awarded to her in Oviedo by the jury this noon. She did so from New York and with genuine enthusiasm. "Upon receiving the news of the award of the Princess of Asturias Award of the Arts this morning, I got up carried by a deep feeling of gratitude. As if a thousand doves had welcomed me and filled me with energy," she said using pure poetry.

The singer and writer emphasized that "this award symbolizes the love I feel for Spain, a country that, for decades and through different generations, has expressed its affection and support for me and where I have always felt supported and loved." She summarizes in two words what this award is: "Art and love." And it is so because of "all the poets and painters from Lorca to Picasso who have inspired me, and for all the affection I have received, especially from young people."

The Princess of the Arts mentions that it happens that October 20 will mark fifty years since her first concert in Spain, which was held in Badalona. And that is the reason why she hopes to arrive in Asturias a few days before the ceremony in which she will receive the award from Princess Leonor. "I will turn eighty in December, but rather than feeling like I am reaching the end of my path, this Award makes me feel rejuvenated. I bless every day as the beginning of something new, in a world that needs more than ever our understanding, our work, and our commitment to keep filling it with love and respect for others."

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