I’ll Be Your Mirror / An Interview with Patti Smith & Stephan Crasneanscki

To say ‘Femme Fatale’ would be to exhaust an easy-reach analogy when speaking of Nico. The Warhol superstar of Chelsea Girls divined to serve as the velvet voice of the Velvet Underground – albeit for a fleeting spell – went on to proffer some of the darkest sounds of the sixties and seventies with her solo work, powered by the mesmeric sonic of her harmonium, together with the siren that was Nico’s voice. Some fifteen years after her tragic death, Nico’s haunting voice resonates still, as Stephan Crasneanscki of Soundwalk Collective unearths one of her final poems, recited by Patti Smith, conveying the concluding moments of the life of a fallen angel.

REBEKKA AYRES: For over ten years, Soundwalk Collective has stood as a dependable mouthpiece for contemporary music’s most poignant artists and compositions. What shape do you expect Purple Lips to take amongst Soundwalk’s inspirational back catalogue?

STEPHAN CRASNEANSCKI: Well, I guess this is a very special piece because of the accidental way it came to be – firstly, my encounter with Patti Smith on a plane.

I was coming back from a long journey in eastern Europe and Russia, where I was recording gypsy music along the Danube Delta, and Patti was coming from Tangier, where she was bringing some dirt that she had collected in Guillena on the prison of Jene Genet and she was, thirty years later, venturing into the graveyard of Jean Genet in Tangier to drop the dirt that she’d collected in Guillena thirty years before. She was about to bring it back in Paris to Jene Genet but Jene sadly died just before. So she had this earth at home for thirty years. And so I guess I was coming from this very intense journey from the depths of the gypsy ghetto, where I’d had a very intense experience with music and also the journey with the people there, who were truly exceptional. So, both of us were stopping on our way to Paris to take the next flight and when we saw each other at the airport – we just looked at each other – I think both of us were quite full of energy.

Then we happened to be sitting in the seats next to each other, and I told her what I had been doing. She was very interested in gypsy music and I told her about a project that I’d had in mind for many, many years about Nico’s poem and her last days in Ibiza. I told her how Nico died on the side of the road in the middle of summer, falling down from her bike and just spending her last breath to the sound of the crickets – the music that accompanied her last moments on this planet. I told Patti how I had been recording the sound of the crickets for a few years now and I was not sure, really, what I had in mind but I wanted to have a sound piece that would basically use the music of crickets – the intoxicating quality of their sound – with the poem Nico wrote in Ibiza just before her death, and finding some kind of connection between the voice reading the poem and the sound of the cricket that’s so exhausting – they’re killing themselves by singing to the point of exhaustion. I thought there was a strong parallel between the exhaustion of the cricket and the exhaustion of Nico through her career. She literally exhausted herself in every possible way. She was this chaotic, dark soul that decided to exit this life in the most radical way, and there was something about the cricket that also sacrifices itself for the love of singing. So yes, there was something there. There was a parallel.

So I told all of that to Patti on the plane. She loved it and she said to me, “I’m doing it”. And so, the following day, she came up to my loft in SoHo – she is also living only a few blocks away from there – and she walked up the stairs and said, “Okay, let’s do it”. I had that last poem with me that had never been released and Patti just started to record them. She is certainly the most gifted artist I have ever had the chance to work with. She is able to take the poem and channel it. She is basically able to enter into those words and bring life to them. It was the most amazing experience and collaboration after fifteen years of working with many, many artists and she was definitely one of the most powerful people that I have ever had to work with.

RA: Patti, are there any parallels between Nico’s poetry and your own?

PATTI SMITH: No. I look at everything that Nico did as unique. I don’t personally relate to her poetry or the work that she has done but I know that having her as an example of a worker – she was a hard worker, she was a unique performer, she was able to deliver her poetry and her ideas, whether chanting, half-sung – sung in such a unique way, not in a traditional way. That was interesting and instructive for me when I was young because I had no ambition to be a singer – I was simply trying to deliver my poetry – as she did – in a unique way. So I wouldn’t compare myself or my work to her but maybe there are certain similarities in the process. I mean, she wrote poetry and it seems to me, when listening to her, that she developed her singing style as half-singing – like a child singing to themselves and sing-songing her words and that was a method that I took as my own when I first started reading poetry.

Her poems are very personal and I wouldn’t attempt to analyse them. I mean, I can’t analyse Nico’s poetry or compare it to mine, because, truthfully, I’m not that familiar with it. What I know mostly of Nico is her records and I would say her hint at Lenny Bruce, for instance. You know, it influenced us all, to have such a bold delivery of bold songs by a female in that period – the early sixties. In the end, I guess we’re all influenced by one another.

You have to understand that the reason I wanted to do this project wasn’t because I have a huge identification with Nico as an artist. I knew her as a young girl. My central role in Nico’s life was to rescue her harmonium, which she pawned a few different times towards the end of her life, and I got her harmonium out of the pawn, and she was very grateful. But, you know, I only know Nico from a distance. What captivated me about his particular project was the idea of Nico hearing, at the end of her life, perhaps nothing but the sound of crickets. It somehow seemed fitting because she had such a meditative way of delivering her work. She almost seemed like she was listening as she was singing – as if listening to another voice – a voice inside of her, or a voice from some sphere. And I can imagine her as she was leaving her body, leaving on the tail of the crickets’ lament. That captivated me – the idea of merging her language with what was perhaps the last sound she might have heard, besides her own breathing. I found that something I’d like to be a part of.

In reading her poems, I discovered more of her. I would think the main things that I discovered when reading her poems is the idea of an inner voice – she seemed to hear parallel to our voices and her own voice, and her love of her son. These are things that I can’t say for sure, they’re just the two consistent ideas I got from reading her poems.

All I tried to do was deliver them in a way that wouldn’t be intrusive on her intent, and capture, perhaps, some of the almost child-like innocence of her delivery. Also, the low tones that she seemed to favor, and the breathing of the bellows of her harmonium, her own breathing, her own breath and the last breaths of her life, which seemed to resonate. The organ sound seemed to resonate and made me think of the heart of her harmonium and her own breath.

SC: Not long ago you were talking about how the piece made you think of a Duchamp piece, Étant Donnés, imagining her lying down on the grass. What immediately came to you was that it reminded you of this work of Duchamp, which also happened to be the final major piece he created before he died.

PS: I mean, the Duchamp image that I saw in my head when her death was described to me was immediate but it didn’t have a lot of impact in the way that I was delivering my part in the oral piece, it was just the immediate image that I saw. Because I didn’t know the details of Nico’s death – only that she died bicycling – I went to see her grave. It was in a beautiful place, in a forest. We had to walk a long path to find it – almost like a secret place, not the normal cemetery setting, which I thought was perfect for her – and imagining her at her death, sprawled somewhere in the greenery or upon a cliff or amongst the stones. However it was also away from where anyone could see – hidden. It put me in mind of the Duchamp piece because it is hidden. He kept it a secret. In order to see it, you have to look in a small hole and you see something that you feel you shouldn’t be seeing, you know, the intimate end of a woman.

So that was the visual image that came to mind, without any prompting. But I didn’t think of that when I was reading or reciting her poems or improvising with the sound. I just thought of her. I thought of her breathing. I thought of her singing, sitting in front of a microphone in her black dress, you know, with her head down or looking far away, or listening to something far away. But I just thought of her. Her breathing patterns, her resonances, her deep voice – the almost bass-like tones that came from her – and they were my only thoughts, so when other things came to my mind, I suppose they were evoked by the lyrics. It could be a ship – a lot of images of small crafts on the sea – maybe storm-tossed, maybe lost, maybe hitting rocks. Horses – horses in the sun, horses in the clouds, in the ether. And her son – I don’t know what her son looks like at this time. I mean, I had no visual picture of her son, just the feeling of her love for him. They are the things that resonate in the delivery, because I really didn’t want to bring my own imagery, my own associations or my own attachments into the vocalising that I was doing. I really wanted to concentrate on her.

Towards the end, when I was finishing, I felt a sense of oneness with her – even if for a moment. It wasn’t even an intensely spiritual thing, it wasn’t an overly-mystical thing – I didn’t know her well enough to intrude upon her in that way. It was really from worker to worker. I was only trying to channel, if could be, her as the girl before the microphone, doing her work. That was my mission: to just, somehow, represent a small part of her, even though we have different voice tones and no obvious similarities. But we had a common practice so that’s what I tried to grasp – to connect with. That’s my contribution.

SC: When you were reading some of the poems, you did two takes: one and then another one that we edited. Sometimes it was really nice to leave the two takes, because it was like a first reading and then one where you’re channelling something into a second reading – like an inner voice coming in.

PS: Well, I don’t like to analyse too heavily what I’m doing. Really, a lot of it was sonic, you know? Sometimes the first delivery of a poem might seem too didactic with what I was trying to do. A certain way was to find the poem almost before it was written, as it’s being formulated. So it’s still trembly, still vulnerable – a whisper – the words are coming in. When one is writing or writing a poem, sometimes it’s very direct and sometimes you feel it coming, almost like nausea – you feel it mounting – and then, finally, it finds itself. I didn’t want it to appear like I was trying to make any finite delivery of her poetry – only Nico could do that.

So in some ways I wanted to slightly disembody the poems, as well as leave them intact and have a sense – as in the creation of anything – there’s always a couple of voices. There’s your creative impulse that is creating a piece of work and there’s your critical self who is editing. A mystical self, perhaps, that’s coming unsolicited. There are several aspects of oneself involved in the creation of even the smallest poem. And you don’t break it down. These things just happen, sometimes, simultaneously. Sometimes they stagger. It’s part of the creative process. And I think, believing that death is infinite, the idea is to introduce her words with the sounds that might have surrounded her death – her own breathing, the sound of the crickets – with her words, but not in a finite manner – not delivering them as if you’re doing a performance or a poetry reading, but the words that were part of her infinite vocabulary. So sometimes they are in proper sequence and sometimes they’re out of sequence because they’re not just finished poems, they’re poems that are part of her English vocabulary. So words like sun and horses and sea, “oh” and certain words that would be repeated by her come in and out of play because they’re part of her poetic vocabulary.

SC: And sometimes you sing them – there were a few lines where you approached them like a song.

PS: I mean, naturally I sing. She was a singer, but singing as breath. So I wasn’t really thinking of it as singing. I really didn’t want to invade the piece with a very logical sense of song, but singing as sound. I wasn’t really ever attempting to sing a song or transpose a poem into a little song but there is inherent melody within the organ and within the piece, or there’s one note that triggers other notes, or certain sounds that I remember from having spoken to her or listening to her sing, both on stage or just sitting next to her and listening to her sing to herself, where she dipped down into to get those sounds. So I didn’t try to replicate, but simply tried to go down within myself, like…[chants]…where she might go to find a note – not even a specific note, just a sound – a tube of sound that sometimes comes out melodically. I tried to stay away from being over-melodic but there was melody inherent to the piece and it inspired a certain amount of melodic sounding but, you know, it’s just normal, I suppose. You put a singer in front of a microphone long enough and, sooner or later, music will come out.

RA: There’s a certain sense of simplicity in Nico’s writing that suggested that there was so much more beneath the surface. What do you think she was trying to say through this collection of poems?

SC: I mean, as Patti was saying, I’m not sure there’s a great point in trying to analyse a poem too much because it’s something of a personal journey, and the idea was not to personalise it but more to put them into context again, approaching the idea of the last days and the last moments and the last breaths.

RA: There are obviously several dark events that form the backdrop of Purple Lips. What is the overall tone of the piece?

SC: Like any sound piece we work on, there are many different moments and turning points that happen. First it’s the idea, and then, you know, the encounter with Patti Smith. After that, for example, it was going to Napoli to work on a parallel project with the Conservatory of Music. I ended up seeing one of the biggest organs in the world in the Conservatory of Music: fifteen meter-tall pipes, constructed in the seventies by a French man named Jean Guillo, who was, himself, a really well known organ player. He built this very exceptional piece in Napoli. So we had to record this really beautiful tone, like trombone bass on these enormous pipes. I thought this organ had a very interesting sound to associate with the poem and with the narrative of Nico’s last breath. I guess the organ also brings a very celestial tone, and I thought there was something about Nico laying down, looking at the sky – there was something about her soul levitating, moving up and leaving her body. So I thought this tone was really perfect. And then, when I was in Ibiza, I was granted access to one of Nico’s last harmoniums – it was in Ibiza – so I started creating some tone with the harmonium. Playing just in a breathing kind of sense, you know, moving up and down, up and down – I guess like the sound of the cricket, that also takes that wave form – up and down, up and down.

And so, the sound of the harmonium mirroring the sound of the crickets, and the sound of the organ that was recorded in Napoli embraces all and gives a very celestial tone. Then there was Patti’s voice, not really singing but doing some tonal sounds – creating some sound behind and also mirroring the sound of the crickets. So all of it, really, is a piece that echoes breathing in and out, like a harmonium. I think the piece is hypnotic. There’s a very transcendental quality to it. It’s also a very dark and intense piece, but bright at the same time – all of those things that Nico was really into – and there is also something really beautiful about the piece.

RA: You visited the place where Nico died in Ibiza. How did it make you feel in that context, having read the poems from this period of her life?

SC: Well, the context of me spending time in Ibiza, going on the road where she was biking in the middle of July – because she died at 1.30pm on the 17th of July – we’re talking about a heat. In French they call it ‘une torpeur’, which is almost a state of trance, when the heat and the brightness of the sun is so extreme that you can barely open your eyes. In Camus’ L’Etranger, he’s describing this feeling, you know, when you’re on the beach and it’s so brutally hot that you can barely see and even the dripping of sweat in your eyes is blurring everything. I think this was the idea I had. There was a sense of blurriness and a sense of brutal heat that goes hand in hand with the sound of the cricket. The cricket is also very full-on in terms of sound – they’re at their peak. The sound and the sun create a state of intoxication, where everything basically melts into each other and you’re barely conscious of what you’re doing, you’re literally walking in a sense of torpor.

RA: Does spirituality play a part in the piece?

SC: I’m not sure because the word spirituality has been so misused and has become so new-age and so I really don’t like this word so much. I would say that in a case of Patti Smith and her really strong connection to graveyards, to trace the people she was really attached to – going to their houses or going to their prison, like Jene Genet. Me, I think, taking pictures of the woods or, in the case of Nico, spending a lot of time there, I think there’s a common interest, I would say, into the traces and soul this sense of being able to somehow channel someone’s spirit or someone’s work – being able to connect and surrender yourself to this experience. So, I guess in the case of Nico, I wouldn’t call it a spiritual journey, but I would call it – in terms of art – something of a very beautiful encounter, with Patti Smith’s verse for sure, and with Nico’s poem, which is very beautiful and enchanted. And also with the land – despite its reputation as being a party place, the land of Ibiza is really charged with the amazing souls that have been going there – artists that I deeply respect who have been working and spending a lot of time there. So I think that this island is dragging them here. There’s something about it that is inspiring them and I think it comes from Walter Benjamin, to Pink Floyd, to Nico. So, I guess it’s always been a place for hiding out, to pull back, and the nature is very inspiring. I guess, like in any project, I always take on the project because they allow me to go somewhere I haven’t been yet, and that’s because it allows me to work with people who I’ve never had the chance to work with or have a strong desire to be with, and also it brings a sense of new territory – a territory of the mind and the territory of the land, and both of those things are the reason that I do a new project.