What it is like to bomb so beautifully at the Nobel Prize awards ceremony: Patti Smith accepted Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize last week and honored him by singing his 1963 classic "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall." The performance was marked by Smith’s case of “the nerves” (runtime 08:30), as she forgot the words in a verse before apologizing for her slip-up. Smith followed up by writing a beautiful, heartfelt piece in The New Yorker explaining “How does it feel.” Smith writes, “In September, I was approached to sing at the Nobel Prize ceremony, honoring the laureate for literature … I chose to sing ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,’ a song I have loved since I was a teen-ager, and a favorite of my late husband.” After meticulous preparation for the event, Smith says she woke up “with some anxiety” on the day of the performance: “I was aware that people were looking forward to the performance. Everything was before me.”

It was time. “As I sat there,” Smith writes, “I imagined laureates of the past walking toward the King to accept their medals. Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus. Then Bob Dylan was announced as the Nobel Laureate in Literature, and I felt my heart pounding … 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. 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… It was not lost on me that the narrative of the song begins with the words “I stumbled alongside of twelve misty mountains,” and ends with the line “And I’ll know my song well before I start singing.” As I took my seat, I felt the humiliating sting of failure, but also the strange realization that I had somehow entered and truly lived the world of the lyrics.” Smith was struck with the kindness of the Nobel laureates she saw the next day, “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.”