A couple weeks back, Sanjeevani shot me an email enquiring what “Voguing to Danzig” means, exactly. Neither of us have been able to locate my no doubt eloquent response to her question, so I’ll have to start again from scratch.
I came up with the name a few years ago when I needed a name for a column I’d proposed to write for the Chicagoland-based (bi-annual, then annual, then eventually every-other-year) (maga)zine Tailspins. The first column, about 9-11, ran in the publication’s final issue in 2002 (or was that 2003?); the second one, making unkind light of the pathetic passing of Alice In Chains singer Layne Staley, never ran in part because the zine never came out again and the editor stopped returning my e-mails (Brent Ritzel, if you’re reading this, feel free to fill in the blanks here, man). When I decided to start this blog, I resurrected the moniker.
Think back to Madonna’s black-and-white, 15-year old video clip for “Vogue” – the dance being done there is “voguing.” Glenn Danzig is a lunkhead musician and singer who’s in part responsible for some of the best (early Misfits = life-affirming punk) and worst music commercially available today (Danzig = comically horrible metal). Now you are asked to imagine stocky, shirtless Glenn performing a “dance” probably intended for slim, female fashion models – holding his arms horizontally in front of his face and shifting them to reveal himself occasionally – or better yet, imagine slim fashion models trying to perform the dance to Danzig songs.
“Voguing to Danzig” essentially represents a ridiculous impossibility – I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this blog itself qualifies as the same.
oooh, what did you say about Layne?
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a shame, but then I thought about the lyrics to one of my favorite Alice in Chains songs, "Nutshell":
We chase misprinted lies
We face the path of time
And yet I fight, and yet I fight
This battle all alone
No one to cry to
No place to call home
My gift of self is raped
My privacy is raked
And yet I find, yet I find
Repeating in my head
If I can't be my own
I'd feel better dead.
Layne was clearly a junkie, and his lyrics weren't all that oblique when it came to such a subject, but you gotta figure: he didn't want a life in this world bad enough. I did his thing, didn't ask nothing of you, and went out his way. It's tragic that people feel that other people owe them something in this life. Wehn you boil it all down, we're alone, we face our fates alone.