by Patti Smith, 2025
The second memoir by Patti Smith that I have read. It was recommended by either the NYT or the monthly email I get from the library. This one was more focused on her relationship with Fred Sonic Smith, the man she married and with whom she had 2 children, Jackson and Jesse.
She opens it with words about her “rebel hump, rebel hump, rebel hump.” She is a writer. Her being an artist is all about writing words, not being a musician, really. She lost her husband after only 14 years of marriage. It sounds like he died of cancer, but she doesn’t state exactly. She only says he did things in his youth; drugs, etc., that took their toll. They lived in an old derelict mansion near a lake in Michigan. It seemed like a rather lonely life. Just the two of them for awhile, and then Jackson, when Fred says he wants a son. And then, when Fred wants a daughter, they have Jesse Paris. Patti didn’t seem to want children, but she had them for Fred. She had to become domestic for the first time in her life and I’m not sure she liked it. She seems to just want to sit and gaze and think deep thoughts and then write them down. I have read about Patti Smith twice now, her childhood and her adulthood. She is so unlike me. She is an A R T I S T. In order to know her better, though, I need to listen to these:
First Album – Horses
Van Morrison’s song, Gloria, with her “Oath” poem
Watch the movie, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, by Pasolini
Album, Wave, produced by Todd Rundgren; Dancing Barefoot song with ‘heroine’ lyric in it
Album with Fred when daughter, Jesse, was born: Dream of Life written for daughter, Jesse; People Have the Power – Fred’s rallying call for the future; Looking for You, a love song to Detroit and Fred.
Gone Again album, released June 1996 (after Fred died, songs she had worked on with Fred)
Song, Radio Baghdad
Trampin’ album, daughter Jesse plays piano (spring 2004)
2007, inducted into R & R Hall of Fame, Steven Sebring film, “Dream of Life”
Here are interesting parts:
Pg. 28: “Poetry, the wondrous language much prized by the young warrior, Fionn, formed a map that led to the kingdom of the infinite imagination.”
Pg. 65: [her mother broke Patti’s piggy bank to get coins for bus far to Chattanooga to attend her father’s funeral] “Months later she remained uncharacteristically melancholy, until Jehovah’s Witnesses cam to our door and offered her hope that she might reunite with her beloved parents in a new post-apocalyptic system.”
“…My mother emotionally embraced her faith but was unable to fully commit and gradually drifted away. She pinned her faith on me to keep a strong relationship with the Witnesses, which I did, including having to sacrifice Saturday morning cartoon shows to go door to door preaching the good news. In the 1950s Jehovah’s Witnesses were greatly misunderstood and persecuted. Buckets of urine and excrement were often thrown on us when hostile people opened their doors on a Saturday afternoon. It was this treatment that most drew me to them, as my penchant for siding with the downtrodden or those discriminated against had been well nourished by both of my parents.”
Pg. 66: “I had successfully vanquished TB, scarlet fever, measles, mumps, and chicken pox but then I was struck with the A (H2N2) virus during the Asian flu pandemic.”
Pg 67: “…On the kitchen shelf was a mason jar filled with tip money for groceries and emergencies. Every penny accounted for. I discerned the sound of cascading coins; my mother slipped out with the money from the jar. Half conscious, I felt something weighty placed on my chest. I was too weak to open my eyes but felt the object with my hand. It was a box set containing a recording of Madama Butterfly, with the libretto in English and Italian. I could not even respond. She said I could listen to it anytime I wanted, but not until I was well. Then she reached for it, but I didn’t want to let it go and she let me hold it awhile longer.” That gave her the desire to get well and she did recover from the flu.
Pg 76: Patti picked Tibet for her country to report on and nothing was ever happening there. She prayed for something to happen in Tibet and on March 11, 1959, the Tibetan rebels attacked Chinese officials and China retaliated. The Dalai Lama had to escape, which he did safely. But Patti felt a lot of guilt, believing it was her prayers that had caused this trouble to befall Tibet. “I hopped on my bike fraught with conflicted emotions and flew down to the end of the hill to a prohibited fenced-in area, infested by snakes, mosquitoes, and quick mud. Unspoiled wetlands, where the call of strange birds led to a place not yet corrupted by the outside world. I laid my bike down, found a rend in the wire fence, slipped in, and tramped through the marsh. I squatted in the high grass; I was certain I was never going to be good. As I rose my rebel hump broke its child husk and sprouted the wiry bristles of a young boar.”
Pg 80 and 81: Patti falls in love with art, including Picasso. The Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that everything is going to be destroyed. Patti asks, even art? The elders dismiss her. “I was told that there was no place for art in Christ’s Kingdom, and I was counseled to consider what I truly believed in. But I knew what I believed in. I believed in the Creator, the many tongues of nature, the moral lessons of fairy tales, the language of trees, and the clay of the Earth. I believed in the woolgatherers, soul-catchers, and monks who could leave their physical body and travel. I labored to form an equation that would include all things. God the infinite realm, Jesus the human bridge and the artist the material mouthpiece.”
“…I spent many sleepless nights before making the decision to cease my Bible studies and not return to the Kingdom Hall…”
Pg 85: “This is what the writer craves, in a cafe in the earliest hours, in an empty drawing room of a hotel, or scrawling in a notebook in the pew of a silent cathedral. A sudden shaft of brightness containing the vibration of a particular moment. Johnny Stahl tying my bootlace, Butchy Magic’s fingers extracting the stinger. The unsullied memory of unpremeditated gestures of kindness. These are the bread of angels. The pen drops, I touch phantom wounds. The boys from Philly never returned. By the time I was fifteen the face of another pervaded my furtive fantasies. The angels served a new portion; I discovered Arthur Rimbaud.”
Pg. 88-89: “…I stood before them, aware of their sacrifices, guidance, and the illnesses they pulled me through. I’m pregnant, I said. I’ve taken on the responsibility and found a good family for the child. Afterwards, if I am unable to find a factory job I will leave. I stood in the weighty atmosphere of the perplexed silence of my parent’s disbelief. My brother crushed his cigarette. So that’s what I have to say, I said, then instinctively turned to Todd who had always looked up to me. I’m pregnant, I repeated, so what do you think of me now? But before anyone could say a word Todd spoke up. He revealed to our collective shock that he too had wrestled with a great personal dilemma. He had secretly dressed in women’s clothing for years, and that all the missing pieces of our pathetic wardrobes were hidden in his closet beneath his baseball gear and comic books. He turned and looked at us all squarely, Linda in compassionate silence, our weeping mother, our philosophic but broken father, then fixed his gaze on me. I’m half woman, half man; I’m a transvestite, he said. So, what do you think of me now?”
Pg 111: “…The fellows spent the entire evening hauling and setting up our equipment. At midnight we recorded our version of Gloria, crossing the Van Morrison classic with the poem Oath that I had written in 1968. It seemed that every fledgling rock band had covered Gloria, but perhaps not a female singer. Tackling it was an initiation of sorts, as well as an answer to those attempting to corner me, or demand self-identification. Richard confidently laid out the opening chords as I half Sung the words to Oath, Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine, signaling accountability for my choices in life and art.
“Gloria was faithful to our live arrangement. I knew very little about recording and wanted to preserve the veracity of a live performance. I was a novice, sometimes unreasonable, desperate to protect our work, suspicious of any changes, excessive overdubbing or suggestions of strings. …”
Pg 115: …”There was concern about how I was presenting myself and the art department airbrushed Robert Mapplethorpe’s cover photograph, smoothing out my hair and touching up facial idiosyncrasies. I refused any such makeover and confronted Clive; Robert’s original image was quickly restored.”
…”We hadn’t made our record [Horses] to garnish fame and fortune. We made it for the art rats known and unknown, the marginalized, the shunned, the disowned.”
Pg 120-121: “…I didn’t particularly like parties, but I was lured by their legendary hot dogs [Detroit’s Lafayette Coney Island] and arrived with Paul and the band. The people were very welcoming. We stayed awhile, had their deservedly lauded hot dogs, said goodbye to all, and headed toward the door. That’s when I first saw him. He stood by a white radiator in a blue overcoat. I noticed the threads where a button was missing. That fleeting moment was to redirect the whole of my life. Lenny introduced us simply: Fred Smith Patti Smith, Patti Smith Fred Smith. He had lank brown hair and eyes like water. He placed the button in my hand, and I wordlessly declared it treasure. I felt a gravitational force; my being truly shaken, kindling my desire for the One, the better savage. Fate had touched us; I knew in that moment he was the one I would marry.”
Pg 130, opening act for Bob Seger, not enough light on the stage and the stage is too high. “…Just tell him how you feel, Fred advised, he’s from Detroit, he’ll do the right thing. Though I could sometimes come across as caustic, I carefully chose my words and needs for some extra space and light. Seger had little to say, seemed bemused and walked away.
“Before we took the stage, my brother was highly agitated….Todd looked worried and told me to be careful…The seventh song Ain’t It Strange was our most dynamic and as always, I spun Dervish-like stopping myself by firmly planting my foot on the floor monitor. Only Seger’s crew had repositioned my monitor partially off the edge of the stage, so when I hit the monitor with my foot it tumbled, and I went over head and shoulders first. My brother quickly leapt to the ground after me. I will never forget the look in his eyes as he cradled my bleeding head. In the hospital emergency ward, they cleaned the gash in my head without any anesthetic and proceeded to give me forty stitches…
“I suffered a skull fracture, a severe concussion, and four spinal fractures. My management demanded that I sue the Seger organization, but the idea of being compensated by financial gain morally repelled me. It was a stance held by my parents and how I operated. However, it was wrongfully reported that I was so stoned that I danced off the stage. I was unable to defend myself as I was completely incapacitated. Rendered helpless to do his job, Todd was devastated by my fall.”
Pg. 132: “Toddy and I watched TV together on a small black-and-white that Sam Wagstaff provided. We discovered Star Trek during a marathon of reruns. Captain Kirk directing his crew fueled my impatience to reclaim my role as leader. Movie of the Week showed one obscure film continuously. The Gospel According to St. Matthew aired from Palm Sunday through Easter. I watched it alone many times, mesmerized by the aesthetic beauty of Pasolini’s documentary style, faithful to the Gospel. Pasolini presented the Messiah clearly as a revolutionary whose teachings were based on love, reawakening me to the original intentions of Christ.”
Pg 137-138: “Jimmy [Iovine] spared me of the fact that he was under tremendous pressure to prove himself to Clive Davis. He was close with Bruce Springsteen and remembered a song that he had abandoned, unhappy with the lyrics. At his request Bruce gave him a work tape for me to hear. Jimmy was insistent that I listen to it, but I desperately wanted the album [Easter] to be our own material, and we had already recorded an emotional cover of Free Me from the film Privilege. I placed the cassette on my mantel, stubbornly passing over Jimmy’s persistent pleas to listen to it.
“Because long-distance calls were so expensive, Fred and I would have one phone call a week, the same day and appointed hour. Fred was late in calling. I paced, made coffee, and tried to distract myself as the hours passed. As my restlessness mounted, I spied the cassette on the mantel and to appease Jimmy I listened to it. Instantly I recognized its potential. It was in my key, inherently sensual with a relentless immediacy. It’s a darn hit, I said to myself. Fred finally called around midnight. By then, not able to resist the musical artistry of Bruce, I had written the lyrics Have I doubt when I’m alone, love is a ring, the telephone as a love song for Fred.
“Because the Night was the last song we recorded. Under Jimmy’s direction we approached it anthemically. There was no question in my mind that we had been given a gift and in turn served it well…”
“Easter was released on March 3, 1978, to favorable reviews. The cover photograph was taken by Lynn Goldsmith. We had enjoyed an interactive flow as we shot many pictures in her studio resonating spring and the colors of a child’s Easter. But in the end, I gravitated toward a more energetic image. Wearing a woven silk camisole, my bared arms were raised as I adjusted my bobby pins, an unconscious action impossible before physical therapy. We were both stunned by the intense critical reaction to my scant amount of armpit hair and certain record stores declined to display it. It was taken as an act of defiance, but I had never shaved, and I chose the image as it possessed the vitality of my present state.”
Pg 139: “We boarded a train from Germany and arrived in Paris on Easter morning. For the occasion I wore my black silk dress and heavy work boots. My physical abandonment as a performer had been temporarily wrenched by fate; I had lost some of my dexterity and could no longer do a backbend with my guitar, yet never felt sturdier. Internally though, I wrestled with an unexpected dilemma. Even as I embraced stepping back in the world, surrounded by my loyal band and crew, I felt myself detaching. The energy I had returning to the stage was unbelievable, yet at times I would feel displaced, suffering a degree of humility that challenged my former effortless irreverence. In performing Gloria, the eyes of Pasolini and his view of Jesus as a revolutionary haunted me. My opening lines from a poem written at twenty were not expansive enough for current aspirations. It wasn’t that I wished to recant my former words, I was simply that I had evolved past them. I also understood that the work I had transcended was meaningful to others. This was a new balancing act, between needs and expectations and my burgeoning new code.”
Pg 141-142: “Because the Night was a global success. It climbed to number thirteen on the Billboard charts, but my resistance to accept certain promotional appearances most likely held it back. My refusal to lip-synch the song on Dick Clark’s national television show cost us the success he had promised if I agreed. I could not bring myself to comply, to lip-synch seemed the height of hypocrisy. The single quickly slid off the charts; it appeared I had been somewhat naive in believing one got successful solely by their own merit.”
Pg 143: “With Jimmy [Iovine] in great demand, our friend Todd Rundgren agreed to produce Wave.”
Pg 145: “Robert shot the cover photograph in Sam Wagstaff’s sparsely furnished apartment where we had taken the Horses cover. I wanted to wear white, but my liberty dress was in such fragile condition that Toddy found me another in a thrift store in Austin, Texas. One white dove, a reference to a line in Frederick, rested in my hand, another circled and landed upon the finger that points the way. They seemed to represent what I had sought and what I now was seeking.
“The completed album [Wave] was held up while I sparred with Arista over the lyrics in Dancing Barefoot. There was a deep concern about my use of the word heroine, and I was asked to change it for the sake of radio play. I assured everyone that it was not a drug reference, but the feminine version of hero and her sole intoxication was that of a love that eclipsed fame and fortune. I held my ground, the lyric remained and Dancing Barefoot received little airplay in America.”
Pg. 148: “I was shuttling back and forth to Detroit, each parting more wrenching. I went from job to job, city to city, absurd interview after interview and an endless tour of radio stations. I deeply cared for my city, my band and crew. But after a time, if not prudent, one reaches the point of being unrecognizable to oneself. I threw open the carpet of my life. I examined where I had tramped and what I had trampled. I reflected on where I had tripped up, was unkind demanding and dismissive to others. What I had wrongly coveted and what I had tossed aside. Where I was standing and where I was destined to go. It was time to hold myself accountable trusting there was no harsher judge nor jury.”
Pg. 187-188: “Dream of Life was delayed due to the births of three girls, Jimmy Iovine and our engineer Thom Panunzio also welcomed daughters. Inspired by the birth of Jesse we wrote the title song for her. The last song, Looking for You, was a bright love song to Fred and the city of Detroit. Clive was very taken with the album and telegrammed to congratulate us. But even Clive Davis could not anticipate nor shield us from the personal attacks and cruel reception it was soon to face. Nonetheless Clive had faith in People Have the Power, a rallying call for the future. Arista released it as a single and Robert took my photograph for the cover. Fred admired the shot but observed that Robert’s pictures of me somehow seemed to resemble him. Robert smiled knowingly; I stood apart as they were talking and laughing, the love of my life and the artist of my life. The single did not garner much airplay, another terrible disappointment, especially for Fred. People Have the Power was Fred’s concept; it had been his great hope that it would serve as a voice for the people and universally benefit those supporting righteous causes. The following months were difficult, as we processed the album’s failure and facing the progression of Robert’s illness.”
Pg 192: “Fred was tough yet delicate. The boxer, the revolutionary, the shortstop, the pilot. He was a troubled man, but I was never to penetrate the true nature of those troubles. He was like a man returned from the war, who never spoke of his experiences but wore it like a heavy coat in all weathers. But Fred had not been to war. The war was within himself. Fred had a difficult childhood, battled with drugs as a teenager and in his early twenties. When we met, he was only twenty-six, having put that aspect of his life aside, but his health had already deteriorated and like his beloved Coltrane and others before him, the damage was done. The trials and challenges that Fred and I suffered were our own. His decline was the tragedy of my life, and it profits no one to outline the private battles of a very private man.”
Pg. 195-196: “When Fred went into the hospital, Linda and Toddy flew to Michigan to be with the kids. I fell asleep resting my head on the edge of his hospital bed. He had never been admitted to a hospital and believed if he ever was, he would never leave. I awoke when an orderly came in to check on him. There was a page-a-day calendar tacked to the wall, and he stopped to tear off yesterday’s page. I looked up at the date and shuddered, November 4th, Robert’s birthday. Fred died that afternoon, in the hospital where our children were born. Birth, love, and death, never touching, ever connected.”
Pg. 197: “My brother suffered a massive stroke while wrapping Christmas presents for his daughter. Beside him was an open sports page and an ashtray filled with butts, but Rachael had had the last word; her hair, clothing, and makeup were perfect.”
Pg. 201: “Jimmy Iovine provided a respite, flying us to Malibu for a family gathering and time by the sea. At Jimmy’s barbecue Bruce Springsteen expressed his condolences and was attentive to Jack and Jesse. He asked Jackson if he had ever ridden on a motorcycle. Fred had promised to take Jackson on a ride on his thirteenth birthday which was fast approaching. The next morning Bruce came to our motel door with two helmets and asked if he could take Jack for a ride. I entrusted him with my son, and they sped off into the hills on Bruce’s motorcycle. They returned in a few hours shining in the unforgettable energy of a youthful escapade.”
Pg 202-203: “Dedicated to Fred, our projected Going West would become Gone Again.”
…”We forged Gone Again, a work that I could hardly listen to as I had been unconscious of the aftermath of grief transported in my voice.”
Pg. 204 – meeting the Dalai Lama in September 1995 at the International Peace Foundation in Berlin, telling him the story of her school report on Tibet and praying for something to happen: “Later I would be summoned to the mezzanine. When I stepped into the elevator, His Holiness and secretary were inside, and we rode together in silence. When he arrived at his floor, his Holiness laid his hand on mine and looked intently in my eyes and said, “It was not your fault.” Five words that spun all the way back to hearten a woebegone twelve-year-old girl experiencing at last the blessing of forgiveness.”
Pg. 211-212, her dad is dying. “Racing toward the millennia. The realization that the Twentieth Century, with its two terrible wars, fields of dead, its cultural revolutions, Cubism, jazz, Abstract Expressionism, rock and roll and loss upon loss coming to a close. In the summer of 1999, the band had a long concert tour ending in Tel Aviv.” She visits Jerusalem. Gets a telegram from her sister asking her to come home, their dad is in the hospital. She calls him at the hospital. “Our concert fell on his eighty-third birthday, but I called him at the hospital to tell him I would cancel it. He forbade me to do that, instead instructing me to read passages from the Old and New Testaments and the Quran, appealing for unity. He promised he would wait for me.” She does so and it’s a beautiful night. But she has a nightmare that night: “I was taken by the hand of an angel and was swept above the city. We stood on a high hill looking down at Jerusalem, entirely in rubble. I felt the influence of the dizzying heat. The desert will cover all, he said. It will prevail even as humankind will not.”
Pg. 215-218: Her mother calls Patti. “We spoke of the feel of early autumn. She was worried that the Stone Pony club in Asbury Park, where she loved to sit among adoring fans during our shows, was rumored to close. I assured her a great effort was being waged to save it. I mentioned that my voice seemed to be deepening, and I would have to drop the keys to certain songs. You’ll be sounding like me soon, she laughed, like a nightclub singer. Yes, I said, is must be in my genes. She turned serious then said, Well, kid, I have a story to tell you about genetics when I see you. I urged her to tell me on the phone, but she refused. Oh no, she said I’ll tell you in person this weekend.
“I was consumed with curiosity but would have to wait. A few days later, my mother fell, hit her head and lost consciousness. I boarded the next bus to South Jersey and joined Linda at the hospital. A blood clot had been found; the operation successful, but for a while she remained distant and confused. After her recovery when I tried to approach the subject of genetics, she stared at me blankly. She had no idea what I was talking about…”
Her mother ends up dying.
“…The death of our parents rearranges our universe, for a while things swing out of balance, and one experiences a dizzying orphaned sensation. My mother’s passing filled me with the sense of something left unsaid. Yet she had inscribed my copy of Sara Crewe with the phrase We need no words. But had we words enough? Had I really loved her enough? Did I give her all the time she deserved? I have often wished for one more hour, to sit with her at the kitchen table drinking coffee fully attending to her fanciful often-told stories.”
Pg. 220 the USA is about to bomb Iraq. She writes the song Radio Baghdad, after talking with her friend Susan Sontag who advised her to study “history to understand how modern conflicts are fueled.”
Pg. 221 – “In the spring of 2004, Trampin’, my first album on Columbia, was released….My daughter Jesse played the piano with unadorned grace, her debut in a studio and our first time recording together. I chose Trampin’ as the title for the album as it appeals to the simplicity of spiritual faith and the path of the weary vagabond.”
Pg. 225-226: “In my sixtieth year, I was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame where I venerated my band mates, my brother, Fred, and especially my mother due to her devotion to our music and the people. Steven Sebring completed the film he had laboriously pieced together, a decade of my life. The children grew in the radiant blur of our travels. London, Tokyo, Jerusalem. The graves of William Blake, Keats, Shelley, and Arthur Rimbaud. Anti-war protests in Washington, D.C. Singing the blues with Sam Shepard. Laughing with Flea on the beach, and the vanishing landscape of Michigan. Ten years of filming our sprawling patchwork. Dream of Life was presented at the Berlin Film Festival, aired on PBS, and was nominated for an Emmy.”
Pg. 227: “…My rebel hump had not abandoned me but had seemingly flowed through my pen scratching across the last pages.
“We wage the fever of disappointment, the realization that yesterday’s crumbling tower was not a fantasy, that like the Prince of Aquitaine one is hurled and drawn like a human tarot card. How can we leap back up? Get back on our feet, grab a cart, and start gathering the debris, both physical and emotional. Crush it into small stones, then pulverize them and as the dust settles, dance upon it. How do we do that? By returning to our child self, weathering our obstacles in good faith. For children operate in the perpetual present, they go on, rebuild their castles, lay down their casts and crutches, and walk again.”
Pg. 232: She submits saliva for a DNA test. “My paternal ancestors were driven from Russia to the Ukraine, from Kiev to Shpola, then embarked from Liverpool to Newfoundland, finally taking root in Philadelphia. I was most likely conceived in Philadelphia not long after the close of World War II. We had inadvertently unraveled my mother’s furtive past. My blood father was from a line of wanderers, uprooted and replanted to spring elsewhere, one hundred percent Ashkenazi.
“In a time of self-imposed sabbatical, I researched side by side with the most trustworthy and altruistic assistant. In the passing years, I had been blessed to reunite with the child that I had placed in adoption when I was twenty. A resolutely private person, she was embraced and welcomed into our fold….”
Pg. 233: “Propped up by several pillows I cross-referenced every clue we had gathered about my blood father. As the night dragged on the city beyond became strangely silent, emptied of revelers. I grew tired but the desire to see his face kept me going. And then around 4 a.m., just as I was about to give up, I chanced upon a PDF of a file copy of The Torretta Flyer from Redondo Beach, California. In the section called The Last Mission were three deceased soldiers. I knew he was my father when I saw his face, a young gunner, with dark wavy hair, hands in pockets before white-washed barracks in Bari, Italy. His name was Sidney. I saw my young self in his stance, his insolent gaze, and stared at his image until dawn, unknown yet present as the new moon caught in the corridors between the edges of the earth and sun.”
Pg. 261: “…Like the architects of Babel attempting to reach the realm of God, to penetrate and bathe in it, eat of it. Not satisfied with the beauty of the natural world, the artist seeks the unnatural kingdom, the kingdom of the mind, plucking from higher realms and revealing the components of Cubism, or the notes of an unfathomable fugue. In this way, one could say that Eve, seeking knowledge, was potentially the first artist. And what did she create? The good of Abel, the evil of Cain. There is magnificence, and there is magnificent failure. Perhaps that is what drew Mishima to Icarus, the hubris to challenge the Sun. The artist seeks paradise in life, he seeks what must not be sought.”
last few sentences, pg 267: “…I see myself on that same balcony of the Hotel Suisse [in Nice, France, I think], just a writer on holiday, dressed in white, gazing intently upon a triangular speck in the center of the bay. The vague itch returns. What shall I write of and what shall I vow? I promise to be good. I will write of a young girl who finds a small hand mirror lying in the grass. She signals to that speck, so far away and yet so very close. She joyfully leaps, suspends mid-air, then touches down with arms outstretched. Welcome, rebel humble, she cries, I am you.”