#yes virginia...

(Ginger's Song of the Day: September 20th, 2021)

The Dresden Dolls - Sing (Yes, Virginia...)

(Ginger’s Song of the Day: March 14th, 2019)

One of the most relatable songs Amanda Palmer ever wrote.

“I used to be the smart one Sharp as a tack Funny how that skipping years ahead Has held me back.”

“I'm not exceptionally shy But I've never had a man That I could look straight in the eye And tell my secret plans

I can take a vow And I can wear a ring And I can make you promises but They won't mean a thing

Can't you do it for me? I'll pay you well Fuck, I'll pay you anything If you could end this

(Ginger’s Song of the Day: January 4th, 2019)

This is one of my favorite songs ever written. Amanda Palmer says that she thinks there’s a little Delilah in all of us, that we all tend to go back to whatever it is that is the most destructive to us…but it runs deeper than that for me. This is a song about a woman being in a fucked up abusive relationship and it ends with the narrator offering her help to leave. When I was a teenager in an abusive house, all I ever heard were songs about abuse where someone died at the end. This was a rare point of…not quite optimism, but something bordering on the feeling. I still cry listening to this song.

“There’s no end to the love you can give When you change your point of view to underfoot Very good You may be flat but you’re breathing.”

(Ginger’s Song of the Day: July 25th, 2020)

Every day we live in Trump’s America, it feels like we slip further and further into this song. Listening to a White House Press Briefing gives me the same out-of-body feeling of nonreality that this song does.

Recent Listens - The Dresden Dolls

10) “Dirty Business” - The Dresden Dolls

I may have mentioned once or twice that I was a Theatre major in college. This has generally come up obliquely, in discussion of my work, or whilst speaking of old friends who just so happened to also be fellow Theatre majors. Today, we talk shop.

I’ve been in some form of the performative arts nearly as long as I’ve been alive. My first taste of “acting” that I can even somewhat remember was as the Narrator for some sort of kindergarten staged performance of the “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” song (a, frankly, nonsensical ABCs song we learned that - for reasons I cannot fathom - revolves around a coconut tree?). And not to toot my own horn too much, but five-year-old me was adorable, and I crushed that shit. What followed after that was a parade of Christmas pageants, choir concerts, performance pieces, and high school musicals. Growing up in a small town and being born with a modicum of talent (and, if we’re being entirely honest, a set of male genitalia), I was generally given fairly prominent roles with very little effort on my own part. I saw no reason why this should not continue indefinitely.

This fantasy castle I had built for myself came crashing down about my ears in the early weeks of my first semester in college, most specifically when I checked the casting notice for the first show of that semester, and noticed that my name had failed to materialize on the list. I had been cast in two of the student-directed ten-minutes that were part of the Directing I class, but it was still a reminder that I was not the hot shit I thought I was, and that if I wanted to be in a mainstage show, I’d need to put in the effort.

I would get my chance to break the proverbial leg the following spring, when I was cast in the spring musical. Perhaps more important for the arc of my life story, though, is a conversation I had in the hallway outside the audition room leading up to said musical. In the interim between the acting and singing portions of the audition process, I ended up in a conversation with a senior Theatre major (not coincidentally, one of the students who had directed me in the ten-minutes that fall) and he asked me if I had decided on a major. [Oh, fun side-note: I did not intend to major in Theatre when I came to this school. I was going to major in something respectable like English or History, and get a “stable job” as a teacher. Hah.] I told him that I was undecided, but was leaning towards English. He then proceeded to tell me the most egregious lie that I think anyone has ever had the chutzpah to say to my face, which is that it was it was very doable at our school to dual-major in English and Theatre. And I mean, it is doable; it’s what I ended up doing. What he conveniently failed to mention in this conversation is that it comes with a cost above and beyond the school’s tuition - the sizable majority of whatever remnants of sanity you had managed to hold onto to this point. So, I became a dual-major, suffered through three glorious years with just about the most fantastic group of people you’d ever want meet, and I’ve been working in the business ever since (I did switch from acting to tech during my time at college - click on the hyperlink on “twice” in the first sentence for that story).

“This is all great, but what does any of this have to do with The Dresden Dolls?,” I hear you ask. Right. That. My sophomore year, our department put on a production of Max Frisch’s Biedermann and the Firebugs (which I just learned today is a translation from its original German title, and that most English-language productions of the play simply call it The Arsonists). If you’re unfamiliar with the show, it’s a dark comedic parable about the dangers of appeasement politics (specifically, those that lead to the rise of Nazism in the ‘30s and the proliferation of Communism post-WWII) in which an upstanding citizen lets two arsonists con him into using his attic, who then proceed to burn his house down. It’s a weird show, and we leaned into the weirdness. The set was all painted in flame colors, with the Doomsday Clock looming in the background. The Greek chorus (oh, yeah, the script calls for a Greek chorus) were dressed as firefighters [scripted], but also as other impotent or ineffective agencies [specifically, the US Border Patrol and the UN Peacekeepers]. But what really pulled the whole thing together for me was our director’s decision to pull the inspiration for the visual look of the arsonists - as well as the entire soundtrack for the show - from The Dresden Dolls (mind you, this was in 2008 - say what you will about who Amanda Palmer is as a public persona, we did not know these things at the time). The whole of the process of working on this show was an unfettered delight, and I will always treasure it.

[Good heavens. I apologize for the novella I’ve written on this one. My goal is for the rest of these to not be so long.]