In Honour of the 50th Anniversary of Horses

Patti Smith’s album, that is.

Here’s an excerpt from Many Braves Fools, and the way the album contributed to me actually showing up for my first ever lesson

🐴🐴🐴…

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The wee girls circled round and round, their legs pounding the sides of their ponies, and I was feeling breathless. 

As excited as I was to take my first proper riding lesson, I realized I would actually have to be on a horse to take it, and God, they were big, weren’t they? I watched those kids flying around the ring and felt increasingly fluttery and anxious. As little as I knew about horses, I knew this anxiety was a bad thing. I was already feeling under the weather: I had a headache as well as a scratchy throat, which was exacerbated by the unexpected heat of the autumnal day that had turned the Number 63 bus into a trundling sun trap… I could always come back another time. 

No, I couldn’t come back another time. I’d spent the entire week, in the run-up to this day, talking about it to the girls at work. The day I’d finally Googled “equestrian centers in Dublin,” I saw: horse statues on a house on the coast road that I’d never seen before; a horse trailer; an actual horse; and on the way home from work, my iPod opened the evening’s commute with “Land” from Patti Smith’s Horses. 

Okay, okay. I got it. 

So, I’d made it to the horse place. I walked up a long, long road to a long, long hill. I didn’t know where anything was, I didn’t know who to make myself known to—I needed a helmet, I knew that much. I wandered around the arenas and paddocks; I was an hour early, thanks to the bus. I was intimidated by the thoughtless ease with which a clutch of girls in hard hats inhabited the entrance to what was surely the main barn. I couldn’t go near them; I felt like I didn’t have the right. 

I drifted over to the door of the inside ring. There were eight girls riding ponies and one women standing in the middle, yelling. Dirt flew from beneath hooves as the last girl stopped going fast (Were they “cantering”? I wondered) and the woman in the middle told them all to line up at “K,” one of the random letters nailed to the walls. Parents hung out in front of the half- doors, chatting amongst themselves and happily complimenting their daughters as they sped past. These kids were now leaping over obstacles. Jesus God…

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See here to buy your copy! Also: wherever good books are sold, she’s turned up, weirdly enough, on the Simon & Schuster website, and there’s links to booksellers there.

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