Patti Smith and Barnacle Clyde

 I don't know much about this woman but the amount i've learned about her through coincidence in the past couple months is crazy. you know when you learn a new word, or see someone once and then its everywhere. well thats Patti Smith for me, most commonly attached with the name Robert Maplethorpe. 

A friend of mine, and someone apart of my "top 5 favorite creators i know personally", named Alex, sent me Smiths post of her event in DC. 

Let's talk about Alex. I don't appreciate my friends enough. Alex is a cool girl, she's sweet she's funny. She's one of the first couple people I admired creatively who also were around my age in NYC. Theres a few people like that who have inhabited my life and I owe a lot of my creative confidence too. I mostly talk about how my best friend, Em, inspired that in me, but Alex too. I actually have never told her or anyone this but she really did. I remember admiring the way she captured simple objects in such a colorful beautiful way, ever since i first followed her on Instagram when i was probably 14.

I've always been a bit of a creative person. Both my parents being musicians helped with that, my love for creation and romanticism has been something that's stuck with me forever. But i do owe most of my creative confidence to these few friends i admired and then grew friendships with.

Alex was, is, and always will be a ball of sunshine. The first things I think of when I think of her are marshmallows, sprinkles, sweet tarts, and valentines day. I swear I have never met a more positive light in my life. I think I've only seen her cry once, and even then she was still positive. Not only that, but she is INCREDIBLY talented. She's a photographer and a good one. She perfectly captures the color, and all her photos provoke a feeling - which I think is very hard to find with modern-day photographers. I feel like you've just gotta know Alex, and even if you just see Alex, you love Alex.

Anyways... she sent me this post and I was like fuck yeah, Patti Smith keeps coming up in my life anyways, I like some of her songs, might as well confront it head-on. So i sent it to my friend Tess, not knowing she was an avid fan, and we went. That's another person I love and appreciate: Tess. She's the wisest woman i know. She's beautiful, she's talented, she's intelligent, creative, inspired, driven, and fricken determined. She has the most perfect freckles also, something I've always wanted to steal from her, just a couple of them. She's hilarious too. When I think of Tess, I think of apple picking or a really good first-edition classic book. I also think of brown sugar. 

I was so excited to see Patti Smith, I skipped all my classes out of excitement. We got there, and I won't spoil the details. But her new book is a published BeReal, let's just say. It's a photo for every single day of the year. A lot of which aren't even hers. Purposefully unprepared, Smith answered a few questions, sang a few songs, explained a few photos, and told a few stories. 

She's cool. It wasn't a heart-rate-increasing moment but it was special. 

(My friend posted this on Instagram, but I'm taking inspo from her when I say...) I'm a dabbler. Just like Patti Smith, I dabble. And recently, as I think I mentioned in my last post, I had a super heartbreaking moment in which I was confused with the trajectory that my life seems to be going in when I set my goal of becoming a successful musician. I quickly got over that, once the anxiety of my song release was over. But tonight was something special for me. 

Patti Smith is a wonderful woman. She successfully pursued careers in everything she's interested in: Music, Writing, photography, and poetry. Those are all the same interests I have. All the while, she's just like me in the way that she takes meaning in little things. Yeah, when I first looked at her new book, I thought, okay cool, random photos. But when I got to hear her elaborate on the significance of little items in each of her photos, or memories she has attached to people, places, or even little bits of information, I felt a lot better about the person I am. 

I think it's really easy to try to fit yourself into one box and then become scared because it feels limiting. That's what I try to do with myself sometimes accidentally. It's overwhelming, but it's clearly possible to be interested in the world around you and create based on your personal connections and varying interests. I feel bad about romanticizing things sometimes, I become irrational. I feel dramatic or judged for holding so much attachment to little things in my life. I don't have to be, though. I want to be a writer, I love thinking, I love making other people think. I love taking photos and capturing memories, and I love music. I love being creative and interested and curious. Patti Smith does each and every one of those and does it well. She is the definition of someone who consciously lives. Especially given the time she lived in, surrounded by friends being affected by the AIDS epidemic, to see someone still have so much appreciation for the world around her is beautiful and inspiring, and motivating.

So thank you for that. 

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Next matter of business: Barnacle Clyde

Long story short, my friends and I bought a baby doll from CVS. Their name is Barnacle Clyde, and we took them to our local bar for the first and last time. Here are photos:

Go! (a song release diary)

Go! - Lucia Zambetti

Waking up, with nothing but my shoes and a knife

Breaking up, nothing bad you just weren’t very nice

I wanna see the movement of your stars up in the sky

And they’re just bright, nothing like the ones that shoot on by

But I still make the wish, I don’t want a kiss, I just want you to go

You’re just skinny jeans, I’m the teenage dream, and I’m beggin’ you to go

It seems like you forgot my name you call me anything but Lu

Like ‘what do you want’, ‘what are you here for’ or ‘what, now, did you do’

You’re so mean, you stumble round, just actin’ like my dad

And that’s just sad, its such a shame I still love you oh so bad

But I still make the wish, that you’ll be my bitch and leave when I say go

I’m the cream of the crop, you’re nothing but a slob and I’m begging you to go

Cause I crumble every time I hear your voice, 

And I won’t leave if I’m given the choice

Mmmhmmmm

Da da dum, da da dum,

La da da dum, da da dum, da da dum

Beggin’ you to go, beggin’ you to go

Beggin’ you to go, beggin’ you to go, beggin’ you to go

Beggin’ you to go, beggin’ you to go, beggin’ you to go 

Beggin’ you to go (Beggin’ you to go)

First off, I woke up, incredibly hungover, to some of the sweetest messages I've ever received in my life. Other creatives alike can attest to this: there's no other feeling better than validation centered around your artwork. Not only, "I love your song!" but when people go deeper and send you specific song lyrics that they relate to, or say they "needed" my song: That's exactly why I do what I do. To feel like i'm contributing something to someones interests, passions, feelings, expression or anything of that sort means so much to me that I can't even put the feelings into words.

I always get incredibly anxious before a song release. It's natural, I mean, I'm not just putting my face or my outfit on instagram for people to judge, i'm putting my passion, my artwork out into this vast world of judgement. It's fricken scary. I get super duper duper duper irritable, and sad, and scared. This one was specifically bad: I'm in a new place where I don't know too many people and creative expression isn't really on the table when trying to make new friends. I was feeling super down - I was even considering not continuing my goal to become a successful musician. 

Nonetheless, my new friends, even mutual friends and acquaintances filled me with so much support that I was on a high last night. We were sitting in a stinky boy dorm room, blastin my song, dancing around to it, hugging eachother, and I swear I was on a cloud higher than 9. We then made our little-college-way to the stickiest, emptiest, cringiest nightclub when all of a sudden, it was midnight. My new friends jumping around, smiling at me, showing me my new song on their phone only called for more hugs and more excitement. I felt indestructible. 

It sounds like there's going to be a twist, but there wasn't. This really was just such a core-memory that I'll remember for the rest of my life. The unconditional support and kindness coming from people I've known for 2 months max made me filled with a sense of pride. I'm so grateful. 

This song specifically was a weird one for me to write. I never sit down and write about specific people, but I wrote this song when I was just so tired of all the romanticizing and glorifying I've done in relationships with minimal received respect. I constantly find myself in that limbo of becoming comfortable with a guy's lack of effort after we've been seeing each other for a while. That at some point i'm just like, why don't you just leave, knowing damn well I'm too annoyed to even confront how I'm being treated. It's something i'm still working on for myself - the ability to step back and appreciate all the good things I romanticize while also make my standards clear. It's a shitty feeling to not have respect for yourself in that state, but I blow it off because everything seems temporary to me until proven not. 

Enough about that... 

Now for this song specifically, I wrote when I was struggling to find a personal sound. There's so much music in the world, and making music is becoming so accessible that it's so easy to just fall into a genre or style that brings the most publicity. I don't like that. Quite honestly, I struggle to listen to my own first couple songs because of how much they've been compared to other artists and how much that stripped me of a personal musical identity. I've become comfortable with comparison, as it's inevitable, but it does sometimes feel like a punch in the gut when appreciation coincides with comparison - it's very separating. Although I will say, I embraced it, taking inspiration from George Harrison, Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Shocking Blue with their usage of sitar. I definitely took some inspiration from Elliot Smith's harmonies, as I can't stop listening to him... But overall, I feel like there's more of me in this song than in my others. 

The next stop for this is a music video that's already been completely organized. I'm sooooo fricken excited. Me and my best friend are planning on getting it done by the end of the year and its going to be dope. I also, finally, am putting together a band to play some gigs. I finally, kinda, got over my stage fright, and met some really talented musicians who want to work together.

Overall, I love what I do. I put myself through it with my anxiety but the outcome outweighs that. I love sharing what I do with you, with my friends, with my family, with other creatives. And i'm so excited to see where this road takes me.

Go! by Lucia Zambetti

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