I'm reading Patti Smith's JUST KIDS and I love it. Do you know about it? It's about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorp when they were very young in New York. Before she played guitar or sang. Before he owned a camera. It's about their mutual discovery of Art and individual art.

A friend (an artist herself) loaned the book to me. She had a hard time reading it. Yes, there is hunger, homelessness, drugs, disease...and success beyond dreams. And we have a sense of where it has to be going; the know the ending for Robert. I can understand it being too hard, and yet while my friend could barely finish it, I'm not wanting to read the last 50 pages because then it will be over.

Isn't it wonderful, how differently people can respond to a painting, a sculpture, a poem, a book? I take to be a measure of the artist's heart.