Categories
GUEST EDITOR

From The Desk Of Amanda Palmer: “Infinite Variety: The Life And Legend Of The Marchesa Casati”

Amanda Palmer has been a busy lady. It’s been four years since her last record, Who Killed Amanda Palmer, and in the interim she’s been dabbling in all sorts of projects: business (you can read about her huge Kickstarter success), music (channeling her musical roots for her new album, Theatre Is Evil) and fun (adapting Neutral Milk Hotel for a high-school production). Palmer will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on her.

Palmer: Ah, the life of the Marchesa Luisa Casati, Italian countess. She was a rich, weirdo eccentric of the old school, a pre-war aristocrat who got off on being as shocking as possible. A Gaga without a singing voice who had an arsenal of strange pets; she was famous for walking her pet cheetahs on diamond-studded leashes while wearing nothing but a fur coat draped over her naked body. She had residential palaces in four cities at a time, and she built galleries in her homes to house her art collections (and boa constrictors). She threw historic art parties that were the talk of the town for years, hiring designers to build electrified costumes that cost a small fortune, hiring horses and jewelers to create surreal parades to impress the Art World Hoi Polloi—basically living out my young fantasies. The life of the Art Party. The fucked-up hostess with the most-est, running around in her kimono as drums clanged and wine sloshed. As it turns out, the Marchesa wasn’t very happy … ever. She ditched her only daughter early on at a boarding school, never to check in again, and it appears she didn’t have any close friends. As the war approached, she ignored the flailing accountants who assured her that she would run out of dough if she didn’t fucking watch it. She squandered her fortune down to the very last sequin and bottle of vintage port, then retired to a shitty one-room flat in London, where she went slightly nuts. Trying to relive her glory days, she painted her eyes with black shoe polish since she couldn’t afford eyeliner.

She was famous for having said, “I want to be a living work of art.” She sucked royally, and this book, while not a fantastic piece of writing, is a must-read for eccentrics and commited party-throwers.

Video after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxYLWK9Ln6A