Harper Simon – HuffPost 7.26.13

Mike Ragogna: Harper, what advice do you have for new artists?

Harper Simon: Oh, gee. Well, I don’t want to get too dreary… It depends, are you asking me to give advice to someone who wants to be an artist or just somebody who has decided to make money out of the marketplace?

MR: [laughs] Advice for people who want to be artists.

HS: I thought Patti Smith’s book was sort of fantastic about her trajectory of how she became an artist. Did you read that?

MR: Yeah.

HS: Just Kids. That would be something that a young person should read because it was so interesting. I felt like she really let people into her process and also her influences, you know? All the French symbolist poets she admired and the different kinds of painters and poets and the whole world of creativity and books and her working in a bookshop… That was sort of a fascinating glimpse of her trajectory to become an artist I thought. Yeah, I don’t know, maybe my advice would be, “Go read Just Kids by Patti Smith.”