Patti Smith’s life gives me hope that there is so much more to do with your time than spend it trying not to age. You can try to maintain the male gaze as long as possible. You can feel emptied out when it’s gone. You can value your worth by how desirable a tribe member you are. Or you can say, fuck all that. I’m human first. A real whole thing. So Patti Smith does that. There isn’t enough of her out there to remind you of another road out of what seems like your expiration date. There is nowhere near enough of Patti Smith period. How does she fit in with the Buzzfeed and Flavorwire and Huffington Post of it all? She is never going to be a throbbing headline designed for maximum hits. Isn’t strange how the desperation of online media has begun to shape media? Instead of it being a calm way to interpret the happenings of the day it’s become all about drawing traffic – which you can’t really do right now unless you either have something big or shape the news to BE something big. Kind of a conundrum we’re in.