Chelsea Girl: on the eve of the Edie Sedgwick Biopic.

From: W | Date: September 1, 2006 | Author: Smith, Patti

When I was a young girl I got a job at a factory to help pay for my education. On lunch breaks I would sit by myself and devour discarded fashion magazines. They provided a window to a world that was not immediately accessible to a girl growing up in rural South Jersey. In an issue of Vogue from August 1965, a photograph of another Factory girl caught my eye. A so-called Youthquaker named Edie Sedgwick. Something about her image was liberating. A self-possessed little minx in black tights poised on a leather rhino, ballet-style. The outline of a horse was sketched upon the wall. She projected playful yet concentrated, irreverent energy. So full of life, falling into no category. Who was she? What did she do? She was herself. She did it all. I tore out the picture and tacked it on my wall alongside John Lennon, Maria Callas, and Arthur Rimbaud. A new muse reminding me to stay on track. To stay in balance. I had dreams of getting out of New Jersey, and like the girl in the picture, I was on the edge, ready to fly.

In November of 1965, there was much excitement in the Philadelphia area because Andy Warhol was attending his opening at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The entrance of Warhol and his entourage nearly overshadowed the art. There were lots of pictures in the newspapers of his controversial soup cans and his silver Elvis. But what really ignited my imagination was the girl accompanying him. Black-eyed, ermine-haired Edie Sedgwick in her white, white furs. There was something about her. It wasn't necessarily sexuality but a charismatic energy that seemed as much rooted in intelligence as beauty. She seemed completely connected with the moment. There was something international about her. She made everywhere seem like Paris. She had a sweet, expressive face like Monroe but possessed a slim, modern body. She was edgy yet so fresh that even her false eyelashes came off as real.

Edie Sedgwick was born in Santa Barbara, California. She was a true American blue blood. Her line boasted artists and patriots, including William Ellery, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and Theodore Sedgwick, who was the first to plead and win a case for the freedom of a female slave under the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, stating all men to be born free and equal.

When she hit New York in 1964, everyone adored her. She teamed up with Andy Warhol, and for a time they were inseparable. She was his social mirror. She was his star circling him as he worked, pulling silk screens, assisting, teasing, inspiring. They were connected. He, the secret one with no secrets. She, completely open with too many secrets. They shuffled between art openings and discotheques. I was so deeply curious about this world that I donned a miniskirt and tights, took a bus to New York City, and sat on a street corner hoping to catch a glimpse of them as they exited a black car to dance at Ondine's. It was all image. Black and white and silver all over.
I followed the exciting debris of these times via music and magazines. Speed was the drug then, and Edie lived in an accelerated world that projected her from Warhol's Factory to the Chelsea Hotel scene that revolved around Bob Dylan as he scripted his masterpiece Blonde on Blonde. She left Andy Warhol's sphere for this one, shivering past Andy into the arms of Bob Neuwirth, the Svengali and shadow of Highway 61.

She was the glittering, speeding, tragic heroine of Blonde on Blonde. Real or imagined, that was the way it seemed. The poor little rich girl who had it all lost the most important part of the equation. Herself.

In 1969, I moved into the Chelsea Hotel with Robert Mapplethorpe. The specter of the Chelsea Girls still haunted the historic hotel as much as Dylan Thomas or Oscar Wilde. The atmosphere was still charged with the energy of the Warhol-Dylan circuit.

There were strange stories circulating about Edie. She suffered a swift decline. It was said that she consumed so much amphetamine it consumed her. Her hands shook so much that while applying her long, famous eyelashes, she knocked over a candle and set fire to her room. There were stories of her dark departure. Of Bob Dylan disappearing. Of Andy turning his back. Her shattered mirror had less than seven years' bad luck ahead.

On a cold November afternoon in 1971, Bobby Neuwirth called me at the Chelsea Hotel. "The lady's dead," he said, and he seemed genuinely sad. "You're a poet; write her a line," which I did. I sat in Room 1019, which belonged to the artist Sandy Daley. It was a huge white room with white floors. Two of the original helium silver pillows from the Factory floated freely through the room. I wrote Edie a poem. A girl I never knew. She was only three years older than I, and she was dead. Young. Electric. Talented. Dead. This was my initiation into the world of drugs, as much as any drug experience seeing secondhand the destruction of a human being. She was just a shooting star. Her white light illuminated Manhattan.

She provided us with one of the exciting, energetic images of the sixties. But at what cost? The mischievous-faced poor little rich girl who elevated the word "cute" into art was gone. Whether she pawned her diamond rings, I do not know. She certainly fit the description of the Miss Lonely of "Like a Rolling Stone." But she would never be back to claim her goods. Her furs or her jewels. She was a rural girl's entrance into the cream of our culture. My first image of her is the one I like to remember. In Vogue. No drugs. No fame. Just an ermine-haired girl in black tights with perfect balance.


Edie Sedgwick
1943-1971


oh it isn't fair
oh it isn't fair
how her ermine hair
turned men around
she was white on 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 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
and she slept
forever
and I'll never dance
with her no never
she broke down
like a baby
she suffocated
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 while bones
with baby brian jones
baby brian jones
like blushing
baby dolls

1971 patti smith
COPYRIGHT 2006 Fairchild Publications, Inc.