I don’t even know where to begin. Her influence on me was massive and I came to her young. I discovered her in high school through the famous oral biography by Jean Stein and George Plimpton, which I inhaled, over and over again. I must have run across it in my after-school job as a page at the library. I discovered a lot of books through re-shelving them. I was deeply intrigued by what I read, and drank up all the pictures. It somehow scared me, too. There was a darkness in her story, at least as presented in that oral history. One of the things that made a huge impression on me was an anecdote given by one of her friends who remembered going to see Blue Angel with her (pre-Warhol – I think this was in Boston), and when the man (Emil Jannings) goes mad at the end of the film, Edie apparently shrank down into her chair, staring up at the screen, horrified, shook. There was madness in her family, a lot of early deaths, a lot of suicides, she was death-haunted. Her family background was wild. (Andy Warhol’s movie Poor Little Rich Girl was basically the vibe. She really was.)
Poor Little Rich Girl (1965)
I had a ripped denim jacket in high school and I wrote all over it with purple magic marker, a peace sign, and “Ciao! Manhattan” across the back. I was a nerd but a very NICHE nerd. I actually have a picture of myself in it, at a street fair in Chicago (we were walking advertisements for our friend Christina’s hats.)
My dream of going to New York City was more along the lines of All That Jazz (the opening scene, at least) and not exactly a downtown-at-the-Factory dream … but there was still something so mesmerizing about her, about all of those people. This picture I remember just staring at, falling into it:
This was around the same time I was learning as much as I could about the Group Theatre, another close group of eccentric people, and far more my speed … but the dream was the same. Edie’s never really left me. I finally got to see all the movies she appeared in, particularly the aforementioned Ciao! Manhattan, based on her own (extremely short) life. There’s an insouciant overlay to the action – a sort of “look at the kookiness and freedom on display” but then … there’s shock therapy, and this desolation seeping into everything, a desolation of waste. What madness. With all her beauty and wealth, you get the sense she didn’t stand a chance. The ’60s destroyed a lot of people. Or, they destroyed themselves. For whatever reason. There have always been addicts.
By the time I tripped over the book, Ciao! Manhattan was available on VHS. So I rented it. The rest of Warhol’s stuff wasn’t as accessible, I’d have to see those later. But I inhaled Ciao! Manhattan and it really freaked me out, but it was so cool to see her in action. You can see the charisma. The charisma isn’t alive, though. It doesn’t spark with impulses. It’s static, somehow. A lot of the models in the ’60s were “flat” like this, and now, of course, deadpan is the model’s stock in trade. Regardless, she is riveting with her huge tragic eyes.
When I got to college and befriended Mitchell, turns out he had had a similar trajectory. He read the book. He saw the movie. He knew all about Warhol. So we decided to be Edie and Andy for Halloween. This party was legendary – the whole town showed up it felt like (to be clear: we did not invite the whole town. But word got out). At its height, the party was like a Mad magazine cartoon. The cops arrived. People in full costume fled into the night. It was a mess. But we were so proud of our costumes. We fell asleep in bed, still in costume. I still had the silver goop in my hair, the white pancake makeup, and Mitchell still had the white makeup on his face and we woke up staring at each other like “what on earth …”
You never forget the people who come into your life at a certain moment when you are receptive to whatever it is they bring. If I had discovered her – and that whole crowd – in my 30s, it still would have been interesting, but I would have had a bit more distance. I would have looked at it in a more abstract way. Also, by that point, I had been through a lot of shit. I wouldn’t have been as afraid of Edie and the dark pool she submerged herself in. Edie came into my life a year after I discovered The Bell Jar and a year before I read The Handmaid’s Tale. She arrived just in time.
“I’m in love with everyone I’ve ever met in one way or another. I’m just a crazy, unhinged disaster of a human being.” — Edie Sedgwick
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