Just Kids (book)

Pengo’s 2022 Summer Book Club

“I was full of references.”
- Patti Smith, “Just Kids”

Earlier this month, Luke and I had a “New York City 1980” double feature (viewings spaced by seven days) where we watched Alan Parker’s Fame and Allan Moyle’s Times Square.

Fame is, of course, the fictionalized story of a few teenagers making their way through the School of Performing Arts, and as such it had a remarkable effect on me as an aspiring performer. 

Times Square, a lesser-known flick, is a rock and roll love story between the child of a rising NYC councilman and the street-dwelling kid she meets in a hospital as they are both treated for mental health issues.

While this version of Fame is not a musical, Parker employs his talents melding song with narrative, as he also did so successfully with The Commitments. Each tune is from a source – a rehearsal, a performance, a realistic moment alone creating a tune – but each could be its own music video.

Moyle’s film could have been a groundbreaking queer teen fantasy, had the producers not insisted on an alternate ending which is pure Hollywood bullshit. But it’s all worth it just for the scene in which our protagonists, Pam and Nicky, bop down 42nd Street to Life During Wartime.



They are both artifacts of a transitional moment in the history of the city, documenting a Midtown which no longer exists, but also in their own way setting the stage for the MTV era which was to come. Like the man said, don't you wonder sometimes about sound and vision?

“Today the city is populated by benevolent ghosts.”

Patti Smith’s 2010 memoir Just Kids is (tangentially) about another point of major transition in the city. The focus of this book is primarily her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, it is also therefore about their paths, together and apart, as young artists in the very late 1960s and into the 1970s.

Photo by Norman Seeff, 1969

I believe I was only first made aware of Smith when someone produced a lab production of Cowboy Mouth, which she wrote with Sam Shepard in 1971, a roman à clef of a play, a thinly veiled examination of their brief time together. Yes, I knew the song Because the Night, which she wrote with Bruce Springsteen, which was a hit when I was ten years old, but I couldn’t have told you who sang it.

And I first became aware of Mapplethorpe when a retrospective of his works, many of which feature images of a sexual nature, became a convenient focus of attack by those authoritarian forces that are currently Panzer-blitzing their way over a half-century of American civil rights and progress. This, when the artist had died only four months earlier, in March 1989.

What is charming and affecting about Smith’s book, fulfilling a promise she had made to her friend and former lover decades earlier to tell their story, is how unaffected it is. It’s a sweet tale of a young woman and a young man who meet cute and have Downtown boho adventures as they make art and aspire to greatness.

Smith is one of those rare artists who had to become an artist because, by her own admission, she couldn’t hold down a steady job – though her ability to find rare books for cheap and sell them high is a skill I find enviable.

Patti Smith in Cleveland
(Photo by Judie Vegh, 2017)

But as I was saying, transition. Brief encounters with Hendrix and Joplin, shortly before they died. Dylan and Ginsburg make appearances, too. Rubbing elbows with the 1960s as it vanished into the new decade which would entirely define them as icons of rock and art.

“The gratitude I had for rock and roll as it pulled me through a difficult adolescence. The joy I experienced when I danced. The moral power I gleaned in taking responsibility for one's actions.”

Five years ago, we took the entire family to the State Theatre to see Patti Smith perform Horses, her first album, in its entirety. 

At the age of seventy it were a fearsome performance from a white-haired punk, full of grit and passion. Our children, aged 15 and not yet 13, recently traumatized by the election, were electrified and inspired by the performance. It was a balm for the parents, too.

Source: “Behind the right’s loathing of the NEA: Two ‘despicable’ exhibits almost 30 years ago” by Travis M. Andrews, The Washington Post, 3/20/2017

Notes on Camp: Day Eight

It is true, with the improv club on our penultimate day, we could spend the entire day rehearsing and preparing for our performance.

To think. We weren’t even sure if we could do this. Would anyone sign up? Would they agree to masks? And how would that go? I’ll tell you, it went fine. Only the photos will remind me that we were even wearing them. And no one got sick, not at this camp.

Family and friends of the campers arrived in time for a 2:30 PM performance. The Jesters & Fools (9-11 group) presented an original play about oracles before our teams presented their short plays and Shakespeare scenes, before the entire camp came together for our final song and dance number. It was a one-hour show! Created in eight days!

The short plays, by the way, were presented in a manner inspired by the Neo-Futurists. We called it “Ten Short Plays in Twenty Minutes” with the caveat that there were neither ten plays nor were we performing them in twenty minutes, though when all was done I believe we did execute all eleven plays in twenty minutes or less.

On the drive in this morning, I was already thinking about next year, when hopefully I will have a better opportunity to organize the improvisation workshops. The first week is for a close study of the mechanics or techniques, the second concentrating on a singular character for use in a (short) long form improv.

Now, if you will excuse me. I am going on vacation.

Notes on Camp: Day Seven

Another Improv Club is in the books, and I am very surprised and relieved with how it all worked out.

The Crows and Mechanicals each had their own genre (mystery and soap opera, respectively) and after a brief introduction of each character, they were provided an episode title and called upon to perform two person scenes that took place in whatever space I provided (The abandoned MacGruder Place! The dunes on the beach at the Cape!) concluding with a “slacker” scene in which each character cycled in and out of three person scenes in turn.

And we consumed a massive amount of pop, chips and cookies. Because nightclub.

On any other year, I would head down to our rehearsal space to pick up additional costumes or props for our rehearsed "splash" scenes as necessary, depending on what scenes we were creating. Kelly insisted (and I bless her for it) that we spend the rest of the day creating everything we didn’t already have out of paper, cardboard, watches of fabric, duct tape, hot glue, paint and their imaginations.

Self-directed work is the best work. It really, really is. Bless you, Maria Montessori.

The end of the day, after cleaning up, I got to kick back and watch Tim and Asia coach all the campers in the choreography for the closing song for our performance … which is tomorrow!

Notes on Camp: Day Six

“I'm taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work.” 

- Governor Tarkin, "Star Wars" (1977)

The improv club was created as a way for the campers to show off their skills in a manner in which they did not need to feel the pressure of an audience of anyone other than their peers (i.e., their parents). If a comment is accidentally blue – trust me, I actively discourage this – no harm, no foul.

This year, however, we haven’t taken the same amount of time to develop these skills. It all comes down to their innate ability to riff, the characters they have been thinking about since last week (we haven’t actually played with any of them to date), a set of camper-generated prompts in the form of episode titles, and the heavy hand of the narrator: me.

So, anyway. We had a lot to do today, and a lot planned. Short scenes and Shakespeare in the morning, final improv rehearsal in the afternoon. What we did not expect was that the fire alarms would be tested for over an hour and a half. The sound was loud and disturbed – and it was ninety degrees outside. We found the band room to be slightly less horribly loud, and played games and, yes, practiced some improv, until lunch.

These things happen. How you cope with them is what matters.

Notes on Camp: Day Five

And we’re back. In days past, this would be a restart, greeting new campers for the second week, beginning a second-week lesson plan which tracks the first week, but not entirely the same because many campers took both weeks.

So, instead of restarting, we are resetting – taking this opportunity to revise expectations based on the personalities of the players involved. As our Crows and Mechanicals are full of clowns, he have assigned two cuttings from Shakespeare’s comedies to compliment the “Battle Royale” which now surrounds a third scene, one from Henry IV, part 1.

This took up a great part of the day, which was fine. We have that time to spare. We were still able to spend time running our short plays, stage combat, and concluding the day with musical practice.

Are we doing too much? I do not know. Are they up for the challenge? Yes, they are!

Notes on Camp: Day Four

Camper walks in wearing a T-shirt reading “Be Kind.” Gray shirt, simple black font. I want my own version of this shirt.

The memory feature of Facebook has been rolling out camp memories every single day. It’s all a bit overwhelming.

We began the day by moving one of the Jester & Fools up to the Upstart Crows. This happens, one of the older kids from one of the younger groups is not challenged by what they are working on, or sometimes we notice that all of their friends are in the older group, and we adjust accordingly.

I asked the team to write for five minutes, reflecting upon what they had discovered, or discovered about themselves in the past three days. Then they shared their names and pronouns (so our newest member could hear them) followed by a one or two word summation of what they have discovered.

It was gratifying to learn all the wonderful things they had picked up, and that they are happy to be here. We need to reflect sometimes, to remember where we were, and how far we have come. Their telling me reminds me of this, too.

Today we ran through all eleven short plays. I was so impressed, not only at what a fantastic playwright I am, but how well my work can be interpreted by middle and high school students. I really need to create a book.

Notes on Camp: Day Three

“That summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life.”
- Jonathan Richman

Summer is different. The smell of the gas pump, which is an entirely ordinary aroma, takes on a nostalgic pong when it is received standing in sight of the highway, your car filled with family and luggage.

Going to camp is different. I’m wearing shorts to work. I pick up a latte for the forty minute drive across the city. The windows are open, and I am singing at the top of my voice. It feels so much more relaxed.

The days are crammed with activity. Campers have now selected short plays on which to concentrate, we will begin rehearsal of those in earnest tomorrow. Kelly is not only staging the Battle Royale, but including verses from Shakspeare to tie them together.

The improv sessions are loud, hilarious and dizzying. My only question is whether or not the preparation will come together into a performance. But, we’re having fun, right?