An air of inexplicable melancholia and a strange sense of nostalgia wrapped grey NYC figures shielding themselves from wind and rain all last week. Spring is somewhere on its way. Nowhere else other than New York does rain have a characteristic color, grey. More coffee than usual, perhaps inspired by Patti Smith's obsession--no cream, just plain black espresso. From the drowsy, drained of color Soho streets, I thought of wandering off to Caffe Dante. Perhaps I would bump into Smith. This kind of weather somehow complements her in my head, but would that be stalking? Instead, La Colombe served the same purpose, hot and black. I had just finished reading "M Train" by Patti Smith and without letting it grow in on me, opened Andre Gide’s French version of "The Immoralist." I pictured Smith’s images from France and thought it was fitting.

Savoir se libérer n'est rien; l'ardu, c'est savoir être libre.

(To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom/ to know how to be free.)

Chapter One and everything had already made sense to me. All of a sudden, Patti Smith came back to me. I saw her at her corner coffee table at the café that later closed; I saw her on the stoops to her apartment; I saw her empty eyes filled with endless stories. From the Beats generation, through her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, she was now alone silently revolting against the world through the constraints of her latest book. The Beats seemingly liberated themselves from the judgements of expectations of society, but now Smith is alone doing so.

All throughout the 60s and early 70s in NYC, Patti Smith was a regular on the scene--a poet, artist, musician and sometimes lover of scandalous photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Always dressed in black, Smith explored literature and punk music and engaged in reckless behavior. She was the "lost" generation that managed to stay very much afloat. Her album "Horses" acquired much recognition. She continues to make music while publishing books about her young adventures. "M Train," in contrast, focuses on the "now" in her life; it's a conscious reflection on her current state of mind.

Smith outlines the tiniest details in her book--a table, a chair; she wants to remember everything. She fumbles through her film-making sure to capture everything not-so-memorable with her old Polaroid. And yet, all this is “nothing” to her. She starts her book by saying she will write about nothing, and she follows through as promised.

But maybe it is in the nothing that is everything?

Smith’s generation of rebels is a generation we will never be. She continues to carry young cluelessness within even at the age of 60-and-a-wrinkle. But permanency begins to show its weakest side at this point in her life--it’s temporal. Many years ago, she had chosen to live as an outcast in her deliriousness; she liberated herself utterly and completely. Patti left literature, philosophy and surroundings to shape her, but she became incredibly lonely after her husband's death (even though she would never confess).

Smith wrote a book about nothing, nothing amidst everything. She belongs to the most liberated generation. But, how does one become free of nothing?