Maria Loves Music-Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull is ever, well, faithful

The library continues to be honored by the treasures of the artistic community with tonight’s performance by Marianne Faithfull.  She continues a list of artistic icons who have come to Emil’s little house in the redwoods to benefit the library and thereby foster the voices that otherwise may be drowned out in the white noise of sameness which sometimes seems to be the hallmark of  21st century conformity. The iconoclasts, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, and Philip Glass have all done benefit concerts for the library. To call them iconoclasts is to expand the etymological roots of that word: they smash idols and recreate them in their own image. 

This is what Marianne Faithfull does to every song she sings: she makes it her own. Much like Billy Holiday, when you hear her voice you know exactly who is singing.  Each note on her new CD, “Easy Come, Easy Go,” carries with it the pain and joy of a life lived on the razor’s edge. It says: I’ve looked over that precipice and I’ve closed my eyes and jumped, between the leap and the landing I offer you these words. Her latest book, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, reminds me of Anaïs Nin’s diary, which is both an historical artifact as well as an unflinching examination of the human predicament, particularly one’s own. Tonight we get to bask in the beauty of an artist who does exactly what Henry recommends, “make life itself art.”

Maria Garcia Teutsch
President, Henry Miller Memorial Library
Editor-in-chief, Ping-Pong Magazine
9 October 2009