Edie Sedgwick (1943 – 1971)
American actress, socialite, and heiress who starred in many of Andy Warhol's short films in the 1960s.
She was incredibly absorbing and retentive, and it all came fresh to her...You got the impression that the creature, that Edie, was made literally by Zeus three weeks ago, that there was no past to her, save what she picked up from books and people. With her there was no traditional structure, no formal structure. She indeed would compare Raymond Chandler or Jane Austen or ancient Rome to what she experienced last night with the tuna fish, but it was marvelous and fresh.
It's sort of like a mockery in a way of reality because they think everything is smiles and sweetness and flowers when there is something bitter to taste. And to pretend there isn't is foolish. I mean the ones that wonder around and know, at the same time, and yet wear flowers, and they deserve to wear flowers. And they've earned their smile...you can tell by people's eyes.
I never had that much to do with Edie Sedgwick. I've seen where I have had, and read that I have had, but I don't remember Edie that well. I remember she was around, but I know other people who, as far as I know, might have been involved with Edie. Uh, she was a great girl. An exciting girl, very enthusiastic...But I don't recall any type of relationship. If I did have one, I think I'd remember.
I act this way because that's the way I feel like acting. If people like it, fine. If they don't, that's their problem.
Why do people stop developing, or, like they stop the way you can rate their, psychologically, their development? Where they stop, and just from being children to maybe stopping at a very adolescent age, and they stay there until they die. Physically die. I mean, they react adolescently. They don't change. They don't develop. They don't it's that continual read, that process which is is the total threat for the ego.
It's like my having to walk down thousands and thousands of white marble stairs...and nothing but a very very blue sky, very blue, like...Yes, and I'd have to walk down them forever. I never thought about going up...I don't know, don't you think that must mean something? It never occurred to me to turn it around, I mean, why didn't I think that way? This was after I had the car accident.
When I started going around with Andy people thought I had a press agent. I didn't. After a while I got sort of paranoid about all the publicity, and I holed up in my apartment and cut off the telephone for two months. I saw only two people. Then I felt ready to go out again. I want to do more acting. I like it, but it's hard the long hours, getting the lines straight, I didn't have to do that with Andy.
I don't think Edie had ever given up on a regular, on at least the concept of having a regular, easygoing kind of life. Although it might have been a little out of her reach, she would emulate that
It was like she could see, just out of her reach, she could see how it could have been her, what she could offer, the fine quality of thought that she was capable of.
I'm a little nervous about saying anything about the artist, because it kind of sticks him right between the eyes, but he deserves it. He really fucked up a great many people's, young people's lives.
I want to reach people and express myself. You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate. You have to put up with people projecting their own ideas, attitudes, misunderstanding you. But it's worth being a public fool if that's all you can be in order to communicate yourself.
She was a sweet simple girl. I don't know the other sides of Edie. I know the sweet, wide-eyed, enthusiastic Edie.
But I really, since I exist, at all, I believe that it's possible for people...I've lived through impossible situations. So I believe in it. I just believe, and that's the magic...That's the whole thing, you talk about magic that there's to believe in, and it is there. But most people don't really believe in it. And I refuse, like, since I'm still alive and done the things I've done and seen things and understood things as far as I have, and I am alive, I mean physically intact. When I shouldn't be, according to medical reports and so forth. I mean I should be, not here. That's all there is to it. So the magic's working and it's a rare situation.
She would do almost anything that came into her head.
I went to the bathroom and there I saw the most incredible creature I have ever seen, and it was this young woman with alabaster skin, incredibly pale, paler than me actually, which was difficult to do. She had short, Jean Seberg kind of platinum hair, and the shortest, shortest, shortest garment I've ever seen on anybody ever, also white...So I was looking at this creature...and I see her in the mirror with an eyeliner pencil, painting a scar on her forehead in black with cross-stitches...I don't know what it meant, but I was terrified.
She made you feel privileged to be there.
She thought it was funny that people thought they were important.
The whole place turned into a gigantic orgy, every kind of sex freak, from homosexuals to nymphomaniacs, especially the needle and mainlining scene, losing syringes down the pool drains and blocking up the water infiltration system with broken syringes. Oh, it was really some night...Drinking, guzzling tequila, vodka, and scotch, and bourbon, and shooting up every other half-second, and just going into an incredible sexual tailspin. Gobble gobble gobble gobble. Just couldn't get enough of it. It was one of the wildest scenes I've ever been in or ever hope to be in, and I should be ashamed of myself. I'm not, but I should be.
There seemed to be this almost supernatural glow to her that's hard to describe. Literally there was an aura emanating from her, a white or blue aura. It's as if Edie was illuminated from within. Her skin was translucent Marilyn Monroe had that quality.
Something very strange happened. I didn't realize I was going to say it, and I said, out loud, "I wish I was dead." And the reason I said it was the love and the beauty and the ecstasy of the whole experience was really an alien experience in a way, because I didn't even know him. It was a one-night jag. He was married and had children, and I just felt really, like, lost. It just wasn't worth living anymore because I was all alone again.
Even in her most far-out sort of state she had tremendous appeal. That's what was so incredible about her, is that she could be really spaced beyond belief, and she still could put a sentence together that would blow your brains out
That one-upmanship kind of thing.