M Train is a poetic memoir that follows an iconic artist through the everyday rituals and far-flung journeys that shape her creative life. Structured as seventeen "stations," it moves between a small Greenwich Village café, distant cities and landscapes, and the inner terrain of memory and imagination.
The narrative shifts fluidly between past and present, dream and reality. From Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico to an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin, from a weather-beaten bungalow in Far Rockaway to the graves of writers like Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima, each stop becomes a meditation on art, time, and meaning.
Threaded through these scenes are intimate reflections on the craft of writing and the nature of artistic creation. The memoir returns often to her life with her husband, guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, and to the lasting impact of his early death, exploring how grief and remembrance can coexist with renewal.
Illustrated with stark black-and-white Polaroids taken by the author, M Train offers a quiet, contemplative portrait of a working artist finding solace in routine, inspiration in unexpected places, and a kind of fragile consolation in the act of recording it all.