Pass the Keys
How Patti Smith makes me want to tell the truth
This morning, via a circuitous route of searching for and receiving suggestions for music on YouTube, I find myself watching Patti Smith singing A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall at a tribute to Bob Dylan at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in 2016. Somewhere around a minute and fifty seconds into the song, her voice falters and she does something that stops my heart, in the best way: she stops singing altogether. As the musicians subtly look at each other, trying to figure out what’s going on as they attempt to keep playing, Patti Smith stops singing entirely.
She looks at the audience.
“I’m sorry, I’m so nervous.”
She asks the band to begin the previous section again so she can try again. The audience applauds. And not a polite applause; no, this is a sincere, wholehearted, “We’ve got you” kind of applause. I applaud along with them, despite the fact that I’m alone with my cat in the apartment at 10 am on a Wednesday in mid-July. I’m starting to get weepy.
“I’m sorry, I’m so nervous.”
This phrase is burned into my brain and heart all morning. I hope it stays for always.
Later on, Patti Smith is being interviewed and the subject of this Nobel performance comes up. When asked what that moment that she asked to start the verse again was like, she shares that while it was embarrassing, it allowed her to learn that she had to tell the truth in that moment.
“If you tell the people the truth, they are very forgiving…I could feel everyone with me…they were like, ‘Come on! You can do it!’
I rewatch the Nobel performance again. And again.
“I’m sorry, I’m so nervous.”
God, how honest is that?
How many times have I felt that way?
Have I desperately tried to deny it or hide it away? How much more suffering did the need to run from this feeling cause me?
How much energy have I put into pushing away this incredibly human experience of feeling scared? What keeps me from facing this?
How much more clearly could we truly see and love one another through all the hardest moments of our days by simply telling the truth of how we feel aloud, instead of letting our ego convince us that saying something mean or snarky or rude will do instead?
“I’m sorry, I’m so nervous.”
No excuses, no extra words or denial or emotional acrobatics to complicate and obscure something which at the core is so very simple. Patti is nervous and she says it. In doing so, she makes me feel brave.
There is no substitute for telling the truth. When we stop running from it and face it, it can’t chase us anymore. When we are courageous enough to feel and say the truth as it is, people notice. In doing so, we can make someone else brave.
We don’t have to hide from each other or play charades; we can simply be who we are in the moment, free to navigate the present, even when - especially when - it's hard.
“I’m sorry, I’m so nervous.”
How many times have I felt that?
When I got on the school bus for the first time without my mom.
When I was hanging out with friends in middle school and was worried sick I would say the “wrong” thing and appear uncool.
When I was about to have my first kiss in high school and was terrified that I would be bad at it.
When I graduated from high school, not wanting it to be over, and felt so lost among all of my peers who were loudly excited about this chapter being over.
When I moved into my college dorm room with a total stranger for a roommate.
When I got my first full time job and felt like a fraud.
When I moved to Boston, taught my first graduate class, got my first mammogram, auditioned for Shakespeare for the first time….
The list will keep going as long as I live.
Think about your own life. When have you felt nervous before, but didn’t feel it was ok to admit? Think about someone you love. When did they snap at you, pull away, say something that stung? I would bet that underneath that anger, ego, and antagonism, there is fear and anxiety, unacknowledged, ripe with shame. We’re all so scared and so much of the time, we are scared to say it.
When we follow what we love to do, we will almost always feel nervous. I’ve come to realize (kicking and screaming a lot of the way) that anything worth doing in my life brings with it a particular brand of terror. The more you care, the bigger the crevice it feels you could fall away into if and when the thing you pursue fails or falls apart.
Even if we were to sit still our whole lives, not lumbering towards any external goals, we can’t escape this terror. To love someone, to live life (even if we do it paralyzed by doubt and fear), to simply wake up every day, breath by breath, is to dare every moment. Fear lurks between each heartbeat. We can choose to live small and suffocate ourselves with safety, or we can, like Patti Smith, acknowledge the fear, and do the thing we want to do, even when it means flubbing the thing and feeling humiliated and needing to ask to start over at the Nobel Awards ceremony in front of the entire Swedish royal family.
When we tell the truth about how it feels to surf the waves of our lives, we free ourselves from the confines of an existence where we have to pretend things don’t hurt or feel terrifying. And when we free ourselves, we can start showing others how to free themselves.
When we don’t use the keys we carry, they become heavy. Why not lighten our collective loads?
I am so grateful for Patti Smith, a long time legend and a new-to-me kindred spirit. I love that there are always new inspirations to discover, if we keep our minds and hearts open to them. Speaking of wisdom, if you are seeking more from Patti Smith, I loved hearing her give this talk, “Advice to the Young” on YouTube. It’s short and zesty and hits right in the gut.
Any words of wisdom you would share or kindred spirits you would recommend I check out? Feel free to leave them in the comments. Let’s keep telling our truths, and in the process, freeing each other.
As a reminder, in the spirit of my recent 41st birthday celebrations, I am discounting monthly and annual subscriptions to my Substack newsletter by 41% through the end of July! The discount gets you a paid subscription for $2.95 a month, with the option to cancel at any time, or $29.50 for the whole year. In addition to the once a month public posts, paid subscribers get three additional paid posts every month, including exclusive to Substack poems, behind the scenes peeks at the creative process, and a variety of other creations I craft specifically for this space.