I'd Like to Try and Read Your Palm - I Always Fall for the Tragic Ones

How can you not just adore Edith Minturn Sedgwick? That smile, those eyes, those dimples, those legs? She was the most beautiful women in her Warholian era. I personally think Nico is much more beautiful, but Edie is much more special than Nico. Nico is definitely a hero of mine, Edie isn't, but Edie had something that Nico doesn't. Maybe it was Edie's sweetness. Edie, at least in pictures, always seemed sweet and kind, even if she was stoned and passed out in a toilet. Nico seemed otherworldly, Edie was obtainable. Nico was immaculate, Teutonic, tall, sexy. Edie was cute, girlish, and all-American. I think it was the all-American quality of Edie, along with the fact that she was a total free spirit, that I fell for her.

I first laid eyes on her at around seven years old. My mother had this biography of her and I used to love looking at those Life Magazine pictures in it. She seemed so pretty and perfect. I was so naive and didn't know anything about her. I didn't know the drugs she took, I didn't know the movies she made, I didn't know about Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, Betsey Johnson, or anything about that speed-fueled time in New York City. All I knew was that her name was Edie, she wore black tights, and she was beautiful.

My mom just let me gaze at those pictures without destroying my little dreams of what she was like. She wouldn't tell me that she was a drug addict, that she was tragic, or, worst of all, that she was dead since 1971. I had to figure that out all by myself.

I soon forgot about Edie and her black tights and big eyes. I became focused around the Beatles, leaving New York City and the wonders it possessed behind. My mind moved to London, so I can be free to think about Ringo Starr and George Harrison. Then, one day when I was eleven, I found an old album at an old record store. I was the Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and Nico. I was reintroduced four years almost to the day to Andy Warhol and his superstars. I decided to look the Velvets up on the interwebs and I found my Edie once again. I read about her and realized how tragic she truly was, but that tragic, fragile quality made me more intrigued. I soon read more and more about her until my opinion on her, Andy Warhol, Nico, and the Velvets were completely formed:
A) Andy = Awesome
B) Nico = The most beautiful woman that has ever lived
C) The Velvet Underground = Perfection, the most influential rock group of all time.
D) Edie = The saddest, prettiest thing to ever roam the Earth. Yet, I still admired her greatly.

Over the years, Edie became a fashion icon in my world. I started to wear opaque black tights everyday as part of my school uniform. I chopped off all my hair at thirteen, I started to do my make-up like her months after that. I even started to dance like her. I have ten pairs of big Edie earrings now because of her. I wear leotards because of her, I wear leopord print faux furs because of her. She, much like Nico, John Cale, Andy Warhol, and the rest of the Factory crowd has molded my style in the most positive, maybe a tad more outrageous way.

I sometimes wonder if Edie would ever be old. That, much like Kurt Cobain, maybe she just had the personality that couldn't grow up, that was just destined to die young at an epitaph. Maybe Edie would've had gorgeous, perfect childeren, maybe the world would've been a happier, more joyful place had she lived. You never know. Maybe everything would be different if all of the Factory people weren't so tragic, if they all lived?

"I don't know how she did it. Fire

She was shaking all over. It took

her hours to put her make-up on.

But she did it. Even the false eye-lashes.

She ordered gin with triple

limes. the a limousine. Everyone

knew she was the real heroine of

Blonde on Blonde.
oh it isn't fair

oh it isn't fair

how her ermine hair

turned men around

she was white one white

so blonde on blonde

and her long long legs

how I used to beg

to dance with her

but I never had

a chance with her

oh it isn't fair

how her ermine hair

used to swing so nice

used to cut the air

how all the men

used to dance with her

I never got a chance with her

though I really asked her

down deep

where you do

really dream

in the mind

reading love
I'd get

inside

her move

and we'd

turn around

and she'd

turn around

and turn the head
of everyone in town

her shaking shaking

glittering bones

second blonde child

after Brian Jones

oh it isn't fair

how I dreamed of her

and she slept

and she slept

forever

and I'll never dance

with her no never

she broke down

like a baby

like a baby girl

like a lady

with ermine hair

oh it isn't fair

and I'd like to see
her rise again

her white white bones

with baby Brian Jones

baby Brian Jones

like blushing

baby dolls"

--Patti Smith's poem "Edie Sedgwick (1943-1971)" from the book Seventh Heaven