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Behind the Artist’s struggles, “Carrying On”, and searching for an explanation

          “Carry on My Wayward Son” was released by Kansas, a progressive/hard rock “album-oriented band,” on their 1976 album Leftoverture. It was written by their guitarist Kerry A. Livgren, who saw the song as a form of constant “searching” throughout one’s life and a reflection of how he felt when he thought the band would have to disband if they did not release a hit song. This is a theme that is found all throughout Just Kids, because it not only highlights the determination behind creating art, but the grueling journey behind it as well. Livgren did not intend for the song to carry any religious symbolism, but he does not reject the idea that it can be read that way. The song was created two days before the initial release of the album but became the song that skyrocketed Kansas to No. 11 on the Top 100 charts. It reminds us that regardless of social class, race, or background, everyone shares different experiences in similar locations while on a search to find their life’s purpose. In this way, the song is not only applicable to the searching that Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe had while on their journey to becoming renown artists, but also a testament to the struggles that plagued them on the path to their goals.

          In the year “Carry on My Wayward Son” was released, Patti Smith was touring and performing her albums Horses, an album that made her instantly famous. The “winds of fortune” that both Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were in search of finally reached their pinnacles with Patti’s success in the field of Rock n’ Roll and Robert’s success with his photography. However, the process of searching was not a smooth journey for neither Patti nor Robert. The song’s lyrics speak of how tumultuous life can be and how each individual’s life is like “a ship on the ocean.” That was exactly how Patti felt when she and Robert found themselves with no money in their pockets, lice infesting their pillows, and “piss and exterminator fluid” pervading their room in Hotel Allerton (85). They were torn between pursuing their aspirations and having a decent meal. The two were at their lowest surrounded by “so much collective misery and lost hopes” (86). They felt lost with no direction to move towards. It is through the advice of the “morphine angel,” that Patti and Robert leave the Hotel Allerton with their portfolios, which she aptly referred to as “all we had in the world” (86). The “morphine angel” is a symbol of fate and destiny because he can stand in as a guardian but can also stand in as the result of Patti and Robert’s future if they chose to not push forward as artists. This meant that the act of carrying on was not only a mental and emotional aspect, but also a physical one as well. What the two of them carried on the inside became reflected in their works. Thus, the two budding artists journeyed from location to location within the inner workings of New York City with only each other and their art, representing the individuals that contributed to each artistic layer.

          The song also relays how often Patti and Robert felt confused and tormented when it came to the process surrounding how they made their art. Patti found herself questioning “the point of creating art” and called her writings and drawings “meaningless” (65). At her lowest point, she contemplates and questions what or who she is creating for as if the answer will come to her if she inquired hard enough. However, like many other artists, Patti is ambitious and hopelessly optimistic, and she motivates herself into producing work by using Picasso’s Guernica as an example (86). On the other hand, Robert found himself using substances to fuel his works and that was his own way of searching for his own nirvana. Sometimes it would produce paintings and photographs that would elicit praise from everyone and most especially himself, like the photo he took of Patti that would become the cover photo of her album. Still, there were moments where Robert felt like he used a medium too much or too little. Both Patti and Robert were manic when it came to choosing the right medium for their artwork. In doing so, they displayed the brutal and rewarding components associated with being a modern artist.

          Also, “Carry on My Wayward Son” begins with an acapella chorus overlaid with angelic connotations that subtly elevates the meaning of the song. The constant repetition of the words “carry on” sets the tone of moving forward despite the obstacles that continue to clutter life’s road. Just like how Patti and Robert had their highs and lows, the song’s guitar riffs and chords mimic the same “stormy sea of moving emotion.” The song’s chords undulate, starting from the lows that are representative of Patti and Robert’s time in the Hotel Allerton and the strain their relationship faced and ending on a high representative of their tremendous network of friends and patrons and the recognition that came with it. Then the cycle repeats again, because like the song, life is not a stagnant linear path, but a path that diverges and transforms at every turn. Patti and Robert knew this very well. The song is one of the many living representations of what Patti, Robert, and the many individuals that came into and left their lives stood for: the search for true individuality and freedom.

 

Hotel Allerton 

Hotel Allerton makes a short appearance in Just Kids, however, the hotel plays an important part in setting Patti and Robert on their paths to success. In chapter two of Just Kids we are shown the many different sides to Patti and Robert’s relationship. They have their highs and lows but for the most part they always face those points in their lives together. They move around a lot throughout Just Kids and each move makes them grow and find new reasons to love each other.

The most important change of location however, was when they moved to Hotel Allerton. After Patti and Robert decide to leave an apartment due to a murder that takes place, they end up at Hotel Allerton. They chose Hotel Allerton because at the time it was what they were able to afford.  Patti described the hotel as, “a terrible place, dark and neglected, with dusty windows that overlooked the noisy street… The place reeked of piss and exterminator fluid, the wallpaper peeling like dead skin in summer. There was no running water in the corroded sink, only the occasional rusted droplets plopping through the night” (Smith 86). These conditions seemed to further amplify Robert’s illness as he never got better or showed any signs of progression while he was at Hotel Allerton. While the conditions were terrible and not reasonable living conditions for anyone, they allowed Patti to realize that that was not the life she wanted for Robert or for herself and it motivated her to want to leave Hotel Allerton all the faster.

While Just Kids is not a novel, there is symbolism in some of the locations in the memoir. Hotel Allerton is symbolic of a destination where dreams go to die. That statement is backed up by the first person she encounters at Hotel Allerton. She meets a morphine addict who she later refers to as the “morphine angel” (88). The morphine angel was a former ballerina and he told Patti his story along with the stories of the others who lived at Hotel Allerton. Hotel Allerton is a place full or addicts who also had hopes and dreams which were overshadowed by drugs and alcohol. There were times when Robert and Patti could have fallen to the same fate as the residents of Hotel Allerton as Robert was in extreme pain and Patti looked to the morphine angel for drugs to ease Robert’s pain. The morphine angel however did not give in to her requests. Instead, the morphine angel suggested that they leave Hotel Allerton. It seemed that he saw the vision and potential of both Patti and Robert and did not want their dreams to be another story he would tell to future tenants. The morphine angel knew that the only remedy for Patti and Robert was to leave Hotel Allerton for something better. The morphine angel was not the only resident who wanted to see their success, the other  residents of Hotel Allerton who were also addicts and had accepted that their dreams were no more than just dreams did not want Patti and Robert to fail, the residents were not bitter or angry when Patti and Robert left for Hotel Chelsea. As a matter of fact, they all waved Patti and Robert goodbye as their cab drove away. While Patti and Robert were at Hotel Allerton both Robert and their dreams were on the brink of death, but the morphine angel saved them from becoming another story of lost potential.

A theme that is recurring in Just Kids is the idea of fate/destiny. When Patti reflects on her life throughout this memoir she often refers to fate playing a role in the way certain things transpired in her life. Patti and Robert’s lives could have taken very different routes had fate not led them to Hotel Allerton. It might be hard to argue that fate made it so someone was murdered which led Patti and Robert to Hotel Allerton, however, Patti might not see it as something so out of the ordinary. If fate had not taken the course it did then Patti and Robert might have become too comfortable where they were living before and slowly given up on their dreams. While they were both starving artists who wanted more for themselves often they would get discouraged or angry by the circumstances they were faced with everyday. Fate led them to Hotel Allerton where they were again, pushed in the right direction.  

Although Patti said that their time at Hotel Allerton was “the lowest point in our life together,” (86)it was at that point where she made bold moves to pursue both her and Robert’s dreams. Fate led Patti to Hotel Allerton where she was able to meet the morphine angel and from him set course for the new direction her life was going to take her. To some, Hotel Allerton may have just been a bump in the road for Patti and Robert, but to Patti it may have always been her destiny to arrive there and learn of other people’s pasts and from that know what she wanted her future to not be.