"Chicago, Illinois, Planet Earth"

Last week I saw Split Britches' Miss America, and an audio recording of Patti Smith singing "You Light Up My Life" opened up the show. Fittingly enough, given that YouTube is an openly cited inspiration for some of Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver's show, Google soon led me to the above artifact. Words fail me; "stunning," "riveting," and "watershed" don't begin to capture it. And it's worth watching all the way to the end, when Patti sits out a phrase or two while the camera tilts away decorously. The funny thing is, I probably caught this the first time around but missed its multilayered resonances.