What a delightful and insightful book this is! It was given to me as a present and not one that I had come across before. Smith documents a circuitous route through her life, with 366 images (Polaroids and phone shots) and drawings each on an individual page and a small narrative explaining the meaning or context of each one. It feels a bit like a scrapbook of some of the important aspects of or influences on her life, organised over a year with meanings connected by the date rather than a linear chronological order.
Patti Smith is clearly a collector of visual memories, connections and ideas that inspire her through life’s journey and the book’s title certainly describes its content well, with its nod to Robert Chambers’ “The Book of Days”. I just love its more meandering route with dates and locations bringing visual memories and thoughts, such as the photo of photographer Diane Arbus from the book Revelations, taken on the photographers birthday; or the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima taken by Smith and printed on the 6th August page, the anniversary of the tragic dropping of the bomb.
The book also has more smaller and personal images, such as a photo of a pair of reading glasses with the narrative of “I am grateful for seemingly small things, as my glasses, without which I could not read.”; something I very much empathise with. I just love the penultimate entry on 30th December, her birthday, with the narrative “Every birthday my mother would call me at 6:01 in the morning and leave this message: Wake up Patricia, you are born.”; what a life-affirming message for any parent to leave!
