"Some Pretty, Bright and Bubbly Terrible Scene." ~Neutral Milk Hotel

I've just spent what felt like the coldest winter playing a far less glamorous, but still eerily similar, type of Edie alongside a far more talented, and eerily more captivating, type of Andy. Consider these bits of dialogue from the so-bad-it-was-good "Factory Girl":

Edie: To me, New York was Jackson Pollock sipping vodka and dripping paint onto a raw canvas.

Edie: And what would I have to do in one of your movies?
Andy: Just be yourself.
Edie: Well, which me?

Andy: I wonder if people are going to remember us?
Edie: What, when we're dead?
Andy: Yeah.
Edie: Well I think people will talk about how you changed the world.
Andy: I wonder what they'll say about you... in your obituary. I like that word.
Edie: Nothing nice, I don't think.
Andy: No no, come on. They'd say, "Edith Minturn Sedgwick: beautiful artist and actress...
Edie: ...and all around loon.
Andy: ...Remembered for setting the world on fire. Made friends with eeeeverybody, and anybody...
Edie: ...creating chaos and uproar wherever she went. Divorced as many times as she married, she leaves only good wishes behind. That's nice, isn't it?

I am no Edie. I'm still here. Among our infinite differences, I'm pretty sure the reason we took opposite exit routes from the kind of purgatory only an artist whose ego overwhelms his art can place you in, has to do with family. Edie notoriously spoke of her parents as "horrifying," and despite how obvious her deterioration became, her elevator-inventing grandfather may have thrown cash her way, but buckets of money can't cure Stockholm syndrome. My dad can.

I will never again dismiss a single token of my father's advice, including those most recently given and ignored:

"Do not marry a writer."

"Be charming, but not too charming."

"No man should ever keep you waiting. By the phone, in a restaurant, or anywhere at all."

"Love means loving being able to love them with wrinkles." *

"You usually know the first time you see him whether or not he likes the same Broadway songs as you. Different productions is one thing; it's the songs you'll see when he smiles."

"Only boring people get bored."

"Men are not good or bad. They are either good to you, or bad to you."

"Be wary of wactors [waiter/actors]."

"If you hear the line, 'I'd like to get to know you as a person,' he might as well be asking if you're a Capricorn. Anyone you want to get to know as a person will not ask you that." *

"Try not to make promises." *

"So what?"

My mother had her appendix taken out a few years ago. My father and I left whatever it was we were doing to be there when she woke up in the East 30s, dizzy from painkillers. The doctor had given us only one strict instruction: we were not allowed to make her laugh. As soon as we walked into her sad little corner of the ER, she burst out laughing. We did too. My father said:

"I will listen to absolutely everything a doctor tells me to do. But I will not stop this woman from laughing."

* From a BJF book or story.