From a place apart
Morpheus, God of dreams, awakes

The artist Robert Mapplethorpe died from complications of AIDS in 1989. According to his great friend, Patti Smith, “His mortal suffering was so profound that I wept through much of his illness. After his death, I wanted to give him something other than tears, so I wrote The Coral Sea.” Her epic poem was published in book form in 1996.

Smith attempted public readings of the piece, but found that she was unable to sustain a reading of the entire thing. It wasn’t until she teamed up with Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine) for a pair of concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London in 2005 and 2006 that the true nature of her amazing achievement revealed itself.

The Coral Sea, a two-disc set released on the artists’ own PASK label, is a record of those two monumental performances. The concerts featured Smith reading her work, accompanied by Shields on guitars and effects. It is unlike anything that I have ever heard.

Art, not nature moved him
Nature, he had boasted, was meant to be redesigned
Opened and folded like a fan

The poem tells the story of Mapplethorpe, referred to variously as the sleeper, the traveller, or simply, ‘M’, as he makes his heroic journey to the next world. In this case the voyage will take him to the Solomon Islands so that he might see the Southern Cross, which his beloved uncle had described to him, before he dies. He journeys aboard a ship through uncharted waters, experiencing the stages of death, from pain and defiance, to revelation and acceptance. (more…)