A Moment with Ferlinghetti
Maybe it’s the weather today, which has a kind of air that feels like San Francisco, but for whatever reason, I flashbacked to the time I met Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
It was my first time in San Francisco, and I’d already been to City Lights, hoping to lay eyes on him, this poet who’d inspired me in my teens. I used to make artworks out of his poems. I’d photocopy my favorites, paste them to a newspaper front page and paint around them. She was very earnest, teen Emily.
Anyway — early twenties Emily was in San Francisco, trying to follow the way of the Beats, drinking cappuccinos in North Beach and hanging out at City Lights. And I don’t remember if I knew Ferlinghetti was going to be at this restaurant nearby or he just happened to turn up — but I sat furiously writing in a booth a few tables away until I could work up the courage to go and ask him for an autograph.
In those days, I was writing on brown paper bags that I’d made into signatures that I then stitched into the book cover I’d made out of an old olive oil can. I’d fill up the book, cut out the pages and then start all over again.
I figured I’d ask Ferlinghetti to sign my notebook as it was all I had with me and I knew I’d savor it in its context. It would always be in this moment — the time I met Ferlinghetti while I was writing in San Francisco.
I worked up the courage, offered up the front page of my homemade notebook and asked him to sign it. He took hold of it and he said, “Is this where you write all your great thoughts?” or something to that effect. And then he proceeded to flip through it.
The horror I felt, that he might somehow read some unprepared unguarded bit of writing that was not meant for him….I was mortified. Then he signed the front page and it was all over.
And, yes, I treasured that page but always with a sense of shame that I couldn’t really identify. I tried to just feel pleased but it was complicated in ways I couldn’t put my finger on. Now, in my 40s, I recognize that I was being patronized. Now I know that I felt shame because the great poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti took one look at me and my home-made notebook and knew I had no great thoughts, just aspirations. Silly girl.
And now, as an artist in my 40s, I also recognize it as a fairly gendered experience. It likely wasn’t just my youth, my quirky clothes or my weirdo notebook that made him think my “great” ideas weren’t worth much. It’s likely that it was the simple fact of my being a young woman — or just a woman. The Beats weren’t feminist. Not in any way. I’d already read Joyce Johnson’s Minor Characters about hanging around the beats when she was Jack Kerouac’s girlfriend. I knew that girls weren’t welcome in this particular clubhouse. But it took me ages to put together that this would mean I would never be seen by this sort of artist as a fellow artist. I would never be taken seriously by most male artists, I understand now.
I try to image what would have happened if I’d been a young man in this situation with Ferlinghetti. Maybe he would have been just as patronizing. It’s hard to know from here. I think, though, if I could go back in time and talk to my earnest twenty something self after this event, I’d like to tell her a few things about what I see now.
Dear Twenty Something Emily,
Yes, he was a great writer and of course you admire him. But that doesn’t give him the right to just open up your journal and rifle through it. It’s not his book. You offered him a page to sign and he treated your book with no respect. He did not ask your permission. He did not get your consent. It was not a kind way to engage with a young writer. Let’s imagine a younger writer came to you with their notebook and asked you to sign it. Would you laugh about their great ideas and flip through their precious notebook without their permission? Never. Not in a million years. He had power and he used it to make you feel shame. He could have used it to buoy you up but he did not do that.
I wish he had. A little boost from the great Ferlinghetti might have given you some extra confidence that you sorely needed at the time but he chose not to do that. He was kind of a dick to you but you’re not ready to recognize this sort of behavior yet. You’ll understand later. It sucks and I’m sorry. I wish you’d meet someone with some power who could boost you instead of patronize you but this is not that moment. Here’s where you start to learn how to boost yourself. It’ll serve you well. Keep doing it.
Love,
Yourself from decades down the line.
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