N-Word is the censored title of a famous song/poem by Patti Smith. The song was released on her 1978 album Easter. I love that song. I was thus completely perplexed and then deeply angered when I tried to download Easter on Apple Music and ‘Rock N Roll N-Word’ would not download. No explanation, no nothing. (There may be a solution but I’m not tech-savvy enough to find it.) Why is this happening? And specifically to members of minority groups? Patti Smith was and still is a woman (and working class). And black actor Jamie Foxx recently saw the cancelling of his 2016 film All Star Weekend. And then of course there’s me. I’m a fag, or more specifically a faggot, which is what I prefer to be called, as I want to own the abuse -- and turn it back on my abusers. When my 2016 novel Sad Old Faggot appeared, I was told by several online websites that they couldn’t advertise my book because the title was offensive. Rumour has it that Jamie Foxx’s cardinal sin was casting a white man as a Latino person. This is — and I am not exaggerating — if it continues — the end of art. It’s no use arguing about whether or not its ‘censorship.’ Any artist who wants to get their work out these days is censoring themselves. That have to. It’s terrifying. Art has become ideology — which it is not. And this is very dangerous indeed. We have nothing in our lives which is not ideology these days, i.e which is not science or 'fact' or philosophy. Religion is hotly contested — decidedly over for some, and a passionate crusade for many others . But people need the irrational, they need the dark, as Hilary Mantel says (and I’m paraphrasing): we artists are kind of 'in charge' of your psyche, that is of helping you to organize it, and get it into shape. When you come to see a play or read a novel it is not a lecture or a political speech — the ideas in it are not meant to be ripped out of it and held against you, or the artist, or anyone else. Artists are in touch with something deep, and unexplainable, and irrational, and scary, and that’s why most of us are nuts and some of us are not very nice people. We are kind of like the 'Christs' of art, that is, we take all the pain on ourselves and put it in front of you so that you have the opportunity to be redeemed. As Artaud says, we are 'signalling through the flames’ desperately attempting to understand what it means to be mortal, while you go your merry way buying iPhones and software and new houses, all the while loudly proclaiming your ‘ideas’ on Instagram. And if we do it right, we are not just wanking — our art is not just an indulgence, it is a deep confession —— about the agony,, ecstasy and comedy of being human. But when we expect art to be ideology, we destroy one of our few connections with the irrational — unless of course we all decide to adopt some sort of religion or other (but a lot of baggage comes along with that). The nice thing about art is you can dip in and out of it. As Oscar Wilde said, there is no such thing as evil art, only bad art. I am and have always been in love with Patti Smith. I wrote approximately three plays about her; after all, I was a boy/girl and she was a girl/boy — and I was irresistibly attracted to her dedication to being an outlaw, and her strangeness, her quirkiness, her childishness, her innocent -- yet blatantly shocking -- sexuality. In the song ‘Rock N Roll N-Word,’ Smith uses the N-Word as a metaphor for outsider. She aspires to the holiness that comes from owning one’s oppression and insisting on standing outside the norm. You may never get to hear ‘Rock N Roll N-Word’, So will tell you that in it, Smith proceeds to list all of the people who were ’N-words’ -- though they were not black — Jackson Pollock and Jesus Christ for instance (because Christ was, as I understand it, brown, not black). What she is saying, and what is clear enough to anyone with half a brain, is that it is good to be the N-Word, because that means you are outside society and society is corrupt and the powers that be are detestable. Of course yes, it's tough being 'outside' and admittedly Smith is romanticizing anti-racism, and appropriating it. But she is a working class woman who must as an artist have a right to use any metaphor she wishes without fear of being 'cancelled' on Apple Music.This digital decimation of art and the artist is a danger to our children. What are we protecting them from? If I’m not allowed to call myself a ‘faggot’ then I am not allowed to communicate the full extent of my oppression, in all it’s violence, its horror, and its humiliation. Calling my self a 'gay man,' or much worse yet ,a ‘man who has sex with men’ does not in any way communicate the cultural after-effects of being relegated to the outside. But most of all what Patti Smith does for young people — which is something they really need today — is communicate how beautiful and ennobling it is not to fit in. But not fitting in doesn't mean saying ‘I support the Ukraine’ or wearing a COVID mask while driving your car, or listening to a land acknowledgement -- as these are now nearly mandatory social approved rituals. It means doing and saying things that everyone else is not doing or saying—and not because you want to, but because you must. It’s all about bravery really. I have always aspired to be as brave as Patti Smith — we should all be so lucky -- so gifted, and so divinely crazy.
