Just today I bought Patti Smith’s ‘Land’ record. In many ways, it’s a love letter to her career and to my hometown and hers. She wrote this note on 1/1/2002.
“Greetings,
We enter a new year facing an emptied sky, for, like the Prince of Aquitaine, our towers have fallen. Yet, in their wake we trace the tails of comets, the bows of ships and the chariots turbaned corps dragging their own chandeliers. We navigate the sea of human history. Of a time before god and a time when men walked with angels. We tread the earth. We sift through the delirium of debris. We comb the conscience and tresses shimmer their worth.
When Brian Jones died, doves spiraled above Hyde Park. When we buried Sadat, a legion of doves flew over Cairo. Whereto shall they fly now? Shall they shed their pure feathers over the rubble of Kabul, of Liberty Street? Or shall they light upon the shoulder of Abdul Hamid and coo peacefully into his young ear.
I leave you with these fleeting thoughts and I leave you this work. Farewell, friends. I offer my LAND with gratitude.”
I edited a blurb about the particular recording, but this is what this New York institution had to say about September 11th, 2001.