It was the “I’m sorry” heard around the world.
At least that’s how Patti Smith felt when she stumbled — albeit beautifully and with great humility — in her performance of Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall at the Nobel Prize ceremony last week, where Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Two minutes into the song, whose knotty verses grow more surreal with each stanza, Smith flubbed the lyrics. She tried again. And then again. Finally, she asked to start over.
“I apologise. I’m sorry. I’m so nervous,” she said softly, with a heartbreaking smile. The audience understood, countering her apology with warm applause.
In a poignant new essay for the New Yorker, aptly titled “How Does It Feel” (a reference to Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone), Smith describes the nearly out-of-body experience that seized her in the moment.
“The opening chords of the song were introduced, and I heard myself singing. The first verse was passable, a bit shaky, but I was certain I would settle. But instead I was struck with a plethora of emotions, avalanching with such intensity that I was unable to negotiate them,” she writes. “From the corner of my eye, I could see the huge boom stand of the television camera, and all the dignitaries upon the stage and the people beyond. Unaccustomed to such an overwhelming case of nerves, I was unable to continue. I hadn’t forgotten the words that were now a part of me. I was simply unable to draw them out.”
Although she felt “the humiliating sting of failure” as she returned to her seat, many others saw dignity and compassion in her performance.
“When I arose the next morning, it was snowing. In the breakfast room, I was greeted by many of the Nobel scientists. They showed appreciation for my very public struggle. They told me I did a good job. I wish I would have done better, I said. No, no, they replied, none of us wish that. For us, your performance seemed a metaphor for our own struggles.”
