Patti Smith, the legendary punk poet and rock musician, delivered an intimate, rambling, and deeply moving commencement address at the Pratt Institute in 2010. She had a personal connection to Brooklyn and Pratt — in 1967, she had arrived there as a young woman, met Robert Mapplethorpe, and walked the same streets the graduates walked. Her central metaphor was Pinocchio — not the Disney version, but the deeper story of a being who goes out into the world with grand plans, gets distracted, makes terrible mistakes, but ultimately becomes himself because of an inner flame that refuses to die. Smith then extended the metaphor across a lifetime: 'We are Pinocchio over and over again — we achieve our goal, we become a level of ourselves, and then we want to go further.' It was both a comfort and a challenge: you will never be done becoming who you are.