Dresden Dolls- Melancholia Virginia
Vaudeville Romance
Act II. Melancholia Virginia
Fandom: Dresden Dolls
Pairing: Amanda Palmer, Brian Viglione
Theme Set: Beta
Rating: PG
Warnings: One sentence with a mention of alcohol, swearing twice, nothing too big here. I'm mostly using the Doll persona of the Dresden Dolls (actual people,actual band), alluding to the group/ music business. In this challenge, I set the Dresden Dolls in the Vaudeville era, likening them to your average vaudeville duo.
Okay you guys, I wasn’t going to do another one of these, but I got inspiration from the first title “Vaudeville Romance.” I figured hey, why not time this around the vaudeville age? The Dresden Dolls have some cabaret influence (especially “Yes Virginia”) so it seemed like a good idea to me. Side note: Actually it was a challenge to do this (no pun intended), because I had to consider the historical timeline for the vaudeville age.
1. Walking
A silent film romance and the piano trills-the scene opens, couple holding hands and walking astride, down a beach.
2. Waltz
An old downtrodden saloon comes to life with a cheery cabaret tune; Amanda drags Brian off a barstool, arms linked prancing around the room as they shift into a waltz, oblivious to the smoking empty eyed devils dully tapping to the beat or else ignoring it.
*This would be DD before 1919, before their “breakup,” before the prohibition act, and before the end of vaudeville.
[We awkwardly fumble and waltz to the hum of an old time radio heard from a distance, churning a vaudeville romance.]
3. Wishes
Wishes for things to be the way they were, anachronisms of the age. *Vaudeville
4. Wonder
Presenting Modern Moonlight just as advertised: starring Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione as the Dresden Dolls...drum roll please, the one-hit wonder signature act of Coin-Operated Boy, and see we take requests too, our rendition of el Tango de Roxanne…
5. Worry
Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine on my own dearest; get a job as a street musician, play cheap cabaret in the bar like a dirt washed memory of our former “glory.”
6. Whimsy
I can’t afford another whimsy romance; a lover will just complicate my plans.
7. Waste/Wasteland
Silent grainy Westerns, dusty leather chaps and dirt worn boots, only heels trudging against the dirt and a lone tumbleweed blown across this metaphorical wasteland to fill the sound of silence.
8. Whiskey and Rum
Liquor became another one of the many vices denied Brian, but right now he needed to drown out all thoughts of her; before he knew it he stumbled toward a speakeasy, to become colorless and drab as the rest of the beaten lot-a mess of whisky, rum, and red-rimmed eyes.
9. War
We made it through the war to end all wars, thought we made it through the worse and dared to breathe a sigh of relief; sad we broke it off soon after waging one our own pathetic battles in the grimy streets of Boston.
*This could be interpreted as the end of vaudeville as well; vaudeville continued through World War I but died off around 1920, waning off into the early 30’s.
10. Weddings
Flipping through aged photo albums, I envied those traditional type weddings held in a small room; no need for fuss; maybe a simple vintage dress and you in a suit and a matching hat; but hell, I never had a long-term plan, I just like what we had at the time.
11. Birthday
“It’s my birthday, my pathetic birthday, “ I rasp, echoes in the vacant mocking me in whispered tones; just another day I have to deal with on my own, another unshared holiday.
12. Blessing
A blessing, to have worked with you, really…(now leave like you said you would).
13. Bias
I never thought about how you felt, or whether you wanted this; I just assumed you wanted to break up as much as I did.
14. Burning
Her hands fumble for the matchbook, scraping the match and flicking it against the rough sandpaper feel, a wish for the match girl, a blue halo engulfing a copper flame beautiful in its short-lived existence; but there came a point where petty wishes became nothing but charred fingers and cigarettes.
15. Breathing
She hates this feeling of still here still breathing; Amanda presses a pillow hard against her face like suffocating, eyes wetting filmy fabric for a good thirty seconds hiding, fingers digging into cotton flesh; finally she releases it and lays there, stifled breaths for a seeming eternity.
16. Breaking
“Fine, then let’s just call it quits now before it gets out of hand,” Amanda says with a strained voice frightening in its finality; if she had been screaming and throwing things the breakup could have later been excused as the heat of the moment, something taken back by the end of the week.
17. Belief
He’d come around, he had to, and one day Dresden Dolls would be back together again, because it was too damn good not to continue; she kept repeating, reassuring herself and everyone else; but her hopes weren’t as rock solid as she’d like everyone to believe.
18. Balloon
Amanda remembered when Brian was still just a balloon seller: a suited man in a painted face working the streets, with all the charm of a Buster Keaton, shifting between handstands, miming, drumming, selling ready made balloons in a wide array of shapes and sizes.
19. Balcony
She steps out into the balcony to face the freezing wind in nothing but a short satin robe, a call, a sudden impulse to see if he’s out there fumbling with bowtie at the doorstep--he’d look up and lift his top hat in the air with one hand, holding out a few pathetic flowers with a goofy grin on his face before he’d think to push on the buzzer. [but really there’s no one there…]
20. Bane [my sweetest downfall…]
The banes of existence: a whiff of jasmine that won’t come off the sheets, like a haunting vague memory; lyrics scrawled in a black leather bound notebook, mismatched sheet music tossed at the bottom of cabinet, letters and other miscellaneous memorabilia; but worse still were the things that once were just his, things that became associated with her like the hat she liked to steal and tilt jauntily over her head; these things make it so hard to forget.
21. Quiet
Pressing his cheek hard into the metal of the ventilator, trying to catch its quiet hum, a phone cord ripped out in defiance, and a hushed stilling melody tapped out in keys and whispered lyrics, the occasional muffled beat tapped against the drums; a melancholy soundtrack pressing at the atmosphere in the background.
22. Quirks
Heart breaking voice-cracking melody, a strained voice at every mention of the other; these quirks just keep getting the best of me.
23. Question
Once the shock of it was over, “Amanda Fucking Palmer,” she asked herself, “just what are you going to do with your life?”
24. Quarrel
That was it, their last quarrel backstage over insignificant nothings, the product of suffocation from being together all the time, and now those small-time squabbles were put to a halt.
25. Quitting
“I’m quitting the band,” he said, knowing full well that if he split there wouldn’t even be a band; he practiced before the mirror in a series of mimics, but the script wouldn’t be as perfectly arranged as life on stage, or even a melodramatic scene in a play.
26. Jump
Fingers slip from key to key like holding hands skipping in the streets and jumping over cracks in a chalk circus sidewalk, the pulse and rhythm of a double dutch rope.
27. Jester [a bully and a clown…]
A sweet deadpan face, pucker fish lips and thick raised eyebrows, stooped over and wilted daisy hidden behind his back, and Amanda would make an “o” with her mouth in mock surprise; a romance acted out on the stage, but even in real life Brian would do any little thing to get a laugh out of her.
28. Jousting
Love rhymes with a head on collision way off course, but my defenses were down; maybe if we could go back and you could just give me a warning this time.
29. Jewel
Amanda couldn’t sew a stitch but when Brian’s frayed coat needed mending she dipped her hands into a treasure of buttons from a painted tin canister, carefully sorting between each, grouping and regrouping the gleaming jewels before finally choosing a large black one. [now…to actually sew it on]
30. Just
He had other things he wanted to do that just didn’t happen with her constantly influencing what he did, either directly, or through his own subconscious attempt to compromise.
31. Smirk
A black devilish smirk crawls upon devious lips, an evil night together, and baby, I’m your villain.
32. Sorrow [Things Never Work Out Like a Picture Film Happy Ending]
Revue noir warbling on a Victrola left on in a distant room, a painful barbershop croon outside the window, in a empty wood plank floored room a grimacing off center voice growls to the panging piano that cries clashing contradictory notes.
33. Stupidity
Things I should have said then: it wasn’t you fucking up my music, it wasn’t me doing all the work, I’ve got my own kinks, we have a beautiful sound together that I’ve been taking for granted [oh the stupidity of me…]
34. Serenade
A street performance serenade of bottled glass and organs, a toy tinkered piano and on other days, a folk song violin, dedicated to me as its sole audience.
35. Sarcasm [of politicians, jilted lovers, and self-deprecating persons]
“This my dear, is a place called Paradise.”
36. Sordid
Paradise: a refuge and a haven to all the sordid creatures of the underworld, a place of vice and the lowest forms of entertainment, a dank parlor found in the back streets of Boston; but with its living statues, fire breathers, stilt walkers, and other street performers, perhaps it was a Paradise, for the artists otherwise known as the “Dirty Business Brigade.”
37. Soliloquy
Her songs were like one long soliloquy given over as an outlet to the characters she embodied, a seething heartfelt act of someone else’s circumstance.
38. Share
They had a shared passion for real music unhindered by labels or sub-categorizations, something unique in and of itself.
39. Neutral
It was impossible to adopt a neutral stance to a band like the Dresden Dolls-the critics either called their work a mutilated version of Euro trash cabaret, your standard couple of vaudeville clowns supported only by the wave of vaudeville times, or else a groundbreaking innovative clash of piano and percussion, not to be described but experienced firsthand.
40. Sojourn
Let’s take a trip to the garden at the back of a rundown house owned by a plumbing company, and when the door’s unlocked we’ll sneak in and act like we live there, Mr. and Mrs. Doll, forgotten porcelain in a Victorian doll house.
41. Solitary
In the haven of crumbled statues, the back lawn overtaken by brambling weeds, Brian amused himself by playing a game of solitaire on a bakelite picnic table, cigar running low and bowler hat set on an adjacent deck chair, as if to save a spot for her when she did come.
42. Nuance
Amanda likens the hiding spot to The Secret Garden, and read scenes aloud from the book while Brian somewhat distractedly strummed an old banjo, lulled by the nuances in her voice as she switched from character to character.
43. Nowhere
A pile of rust red bricks dispatched a few miles off a factory, a swing set on a stranger’s porch, a handcar left on a grassy plain, old territory left subject to the reign of Dresden, each comparing their separate claims over cheap wine poured in equally cheap glass [now here is nowhere]
44. Near
The perfect image, a photograph washed in sepia tint: Amanda perched against Brian, her foot pressing against his leg, sitting on the brick steps in front of the old house.
[Brian sits there complacently with his typical deadpan expression, while Amanda’s mind trails off into the far distance.]
45. Natural
Their dynamic seemed so natural, each complimenting the other; Brian couldn’t help but sum it up in the perfect words: “We’re a couple of freaks.”
46. Horizon
Lost horizons, a chaotic splash of red splattered against a pale gray sky-her art was an intense mess of ink and watercolor.
47. Valiant [I’m good for nothing, will you love me just the same?]
If anything, Brian was the mistaken hero of a gag reel, accidental triumphs won mostly through a combination of stupidity and luck.
48.Virtuous
But Amanda wasn’t the virtuous lady portrayed on the silver screen (so she didn’t ask for more, either of herself or of Brian); and she certainly didn’t convey herself that way in her lyrics.
49. Victory (The Rise and Times of the Dresden Dolls)
Every progression of the Dresden Dolls (a booking, a new record) was like a small victory to them, and they couldn’t help but make dreams and plans: a circus tent of their own where they could hold a performance, backed by their very own Dirty Business Brigade.
50. Defeat (The Fall?)
The Dresden Dolls seemed to reach a dead end, a hiatus as it were, but they had yet to admit a permanent defeat.
Act II. Melancholia Virginia
Fandom: Dresden Dolls
Pairing: Amanda Palmer, Brian Viglione
Theme Set: Beta
Rating: PG
Warnings: One sentence with a mention of alcohol, swearing twice, nothing too big here. I'm mostly using the Doll persona of the Dresden Dolls (actual people,actual band), alluding to the group/ music business. In this challenge, I set the Dresden Dolls in the Vaudeville era, likening them to your average vaudeville duo.
Okay you guys, I wasn’t going to do another one of these, but I got inspiration from the first title “Vaudeville Romance.” I figured hey, why not time this around the vaudeville age? The Dresden Dolls have some cabaret influence (especially “Yes Virginia”) so it seemed like a good idea to me. Side note: Actually it was a challenge to do this (no pun intended), because I had to consider the historical timeline for the vaudeville age.
1. Walking
A silent film romance and the piano trills-the scene opens, couple holding hands and walking astride, down a beach.
2. Waltz
An old downtrodden saloon comes to life with a cheery cabaret tune; Amanda drags Brian off a barstool, arms linked prancing around the room as they shift into a waltz, oblivious to the smoking empty eyed devils dully tapping to the beat or else ignoring it.
*This would be DD before 1919, before their “breakup,” before the prohibition act, and before the end of vaudeville.
[We awkwardly fumble and waltz to the hum of an old time radio heard from a distance, churning a vaudeville romance.]
3. Wishes
Wishes for things to be the way they were, anachronisms of the age. *Vaudeville
4. Wonder
Presenting Modern Moonlight just as advertised: starring Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione as the Dresden Dolls...drum roll please, the one-hit wonder signature act of Coin-Operated Boy, and see we take requests too, our rendition of el Tango de Roxanne…
5. Worry
Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine on my own dearest; get a job as a street musician, play cheap cabaret in the bar like a dirt washed memory of our former “glory.”
6. Whimsy
I can’t afford another whimsy romance; a lover will just complicate my plans.
7. Waste/Wasteland
Silent grainy Westerns, dusty leather chaps and dirt worn boots, only heels trudging against the dirt and a lone tumbleweed blown across this metaphorical wasteland to fill the sound of silence.
8. Whiskey and Rum
Liquor became another one of the many vices denied Brian, but right now he needed to drown out all thoughts of her; before he knew it he stumbled toward a speakeasy, to become colorless and drab as the rest of the beaten lot-a mess of whisky, rum, and red-rimmed eyes.
9. War
We made it through the war to end all wars, thought we made it through the worse and dared to breathe a sigh of relief; sad we broke it off soon after waging one our own pathetic battles in the grimy streets of Boston.
*This could be interpreted as the end of vaudeville as well; vaudeville continued through World War I but died off around 1920, waning off into the early 30’s.
10. Weddings
Flipping through aged photo albums, I envied those traditional type weddings held in a small room; no need for fuss; maybe a simple vintage dress and you in a suit and a matching hat; but hell, I never had a long-term plan, I just like what we had at the time.
11. Birthday
“It’s my birthday, my pathetic birthday, “ I rasp, echoes in the vacant mocking me in whispered tones; just another day I have to deal with on my own, another unshared holiday.
12. Blessing
A blessing, to have worked with you, really…(now leave like you said you would).
13. Bias
I never thought about how you felt, or whether you wanted this; I just assumed you wanted to break up as much as I did.
14. Burning
Her hands fumble for the matchbook, scraping the match and flicking it against the rough sandpaper feel, a wish for the match girl, a blue halo engulfing a copper flame beautiful in its short-lived existence; but there came a point where petty wishes became nothing but charred fingers and cigarettes.
15. Breathing
She hates this feeling of still here still breathing; Amanda presses a pillow hard against her face like suffocating, eyes wetting filmy fabric for a good thirty seconds hiding, fingers digging into cotton flesh; finally she releases it and lays there, stifled breaths for a seeming eternity.
16. Breaking
“Fine, then let’s just call it quits now before it gets out of hand,” Amanda says with a strained voice frightening in its finality; if she had been screaming and throwing things the breakup could have later been excused as the heat of the moment, something taken back by the end of the week.
17. Belief
He’d come around, he had to, and one day Dresden Dolls would be back together again, because it was too damn good not to continue; she kept repeating, reassuring herself and everyone else; but her hopes weren’t as rock solid as she’d like everyone to believe.
18. Balloon
Amanda remembered when Brian was still just a balloon seller: a suited man in a painted face working the streets, with all the charm of a Buster Keaton, shifting between handstands, miming, drumming, selling ready made balloons in a wide array of shapes and sizes.
19. Balcony
She steps out into the balcony to face the freezing wind in nothing but a short satin robe, a call, a sudden impulse to see if he’s out there fumbling with bowtie at the doorstep--he’d look up and lift his top hat in the air with one hand, holding out a few pathetic flowers with a goofy grin on his face before he’d think to push on the buzzer. [but really there’s no one there…]
20. Bane [my sweetest downfall…]
The banes of existence: a whiff of jasmine that won’t come off the sheets, like a haunting vague memory; lyrics scrawled in a black leather bound notebook, mismatched sheet music tossed at the bottom of cabinet, letters and other miscellaneous memorabilia; but worse still were the things that once were just his, things that became associated with her like the hat she liked to steal and tilt jauntily over her head; these things make it so hard to forget.
21. Quiet
Pressing his cheek hard into the metal of the ventilator, trying to catch its quiet hum, a phone cord ripped out in defiance, and a hushed stilling melody tapped out in keys and whispered lyrics, the occasional muffled beat tapped against the drums; a melancholy soundtrack pressing at the atmosphere in the background.
22. Quirks
Heart breaking voice-cracking melody, a strained voice at every mention of the other; these quirks just keep getting the best of me.
23. Question
Once the shock of it was over, “Amanda Fucking Palmer,” she asked herself, “just what are you going to do with your life?”
24. Quarrel
That was it, their last quarrel backstage over insignificant nothings, the product of suffocation from being together all the time, and now those small-time squabbles were put to a halt.
25. Quitting
“I’m quitting the band,” he said, knowing full well that if he split there wouldn’t even be a band; he practiced before the mirror in a series of mimics, but the script wouldn’t be as perfectly arranged as life on stage, or even a melodramatic scene in a play.
26. Jump
Fingers slip from key to key like holding hands skipping in the streets and jumping over cracks in a chalk circus sidewalk, the pulse and rhythm of a double dutch rope.
27. Jester [a bully and a clown…]
A sweet deadpan face, pucker fish lips and thick raised eyebrows, stooped over and wilted daisy hidden behind his back, and Amanda would make an “o” with her mouth in mock surprise; a romance acted out on the stage, but even in real life Brian would do any little thing to get a laugh out of her.
28. Jousting
Love rhymes with a head on collision way off course, but my defenses were down; maybe if we could go back and you could just give me a warning this time.
29. Jewel
Amanda couldn’t sew a stitch but when Brian’s frayed coat needed mending she dipped her hands into a treasure of buttons from a painted tin canister, carefully sorting between each, grouping and regrouping the gleaming jewels before finally choosing a large black one. [now…to actually sew it on]
30. Just
He had other things he wanted to do that just didn’t happen with her constantly influencing what he did, either directly, or through his own subconscious attempt to compromise.
31. Smirk
A black devilish smirk crawls upon devious lips, an evil night together, and baby, I’m your villain.
32. Sorrow [Things Never Work Out Like a Picture Film Happy Ending]
Revue noir warbling on a Victrola left on in a distant room, a painful barbershop croon outside the window, in a empty wood plank floored room a grimacing off center voice growls to the panging piano that cries clashing contradictory notes.
33. Stupidity
Things I should have said then: it wasn’t you fucking up my music, it wasn’t me doing all the work, I’ve got my own kinks, we have a beautiful sound together that I’ve been taking for granted [oh the stupidity of me…]
34. Serenade
A street performance serenade of bottled glass and organs, a toy tinkered piano and on other days, a folk song violin, dedicated to me as its sole audience.
35. Sarcasm [of politicians, jilted lovers, and self-deprecating persons]
“This my dear, is a place called Paradise.”
36. Sordid
Paradise: a refuge and a haven to all the sordid creatures of the underworld, a place of vice and the lowest forms of entertainment, a dank parlor found in the back streets of Boston; but with its living statues, fire breathers, stilt walkers, and other street performers, perhaps it was a Paradise, for the artists otherwise known as the “Dirty Business Brigade.”
37. Soliloquy
Her songs were like one long soliloquy given over as an outlet to the characters she embodied, a seething heartfelt act of someone else’s circumstance.
38. Share
They had a shared passion for real music unhindered by labels or sub-categorizations, something unique in and of itself.
39. Neutral
It was impossible to adopt a neutral stance to a band like the Dresden Dolls-the critics either called their work a mutilated version of Euro trash cabaret, your standard couple of vaudeville clowns supported only by the wave of vaudeville times, or else a groundbreaking innovative clash of piano and percussion, not to be described but experienced firsthand.
40. Sojourn
Let’s take a trip to the garden at the back of a rundown house owned by a plumbing company, and when the door’s unlocked we’ll sneak in and act like we live there, Mr. and Mrs. Doll, forgotten porcelain in a Victorian doll house.
41. Solitary
In the haven of crumbled statues, the back lawn overtaken by brambling weeds, Brian amused himself by playing a game of solitaire on a bakelite picnic table, cigar running low and bowler hat set on an adjacent deck chair, as if to save a spot for her when she did come.
42. Nuance
Amanda likens the hiding spot to The Secret Garden, and read scenes aloud from the book while Brian somewhat distractedly strummed an old banjo, lulled by the nuances in her voice as she switched from character to character.
43. Nowhere
A pile of rust red bricks dispatched a few miles off a factory, a swing set on a stranger’s porch, a handcar left on a grassy plain, old territory left subject to the reign of Dresden, each comparing their separate claims over cheap wine poured in equally cheap glass [now here is nowhere]
44. Near
The perfect image, a photograph washed in sepia tint: Amanda perched against Brian, her foot pressing against his leg, sitting on the brick steps in front of the old house.
[Brian sits there complacently with his typical deadpan expression, while Amanda’s mind trails off into the far distance.]
45. Natural
Their dynamic seemed so natural, each complimenting the other; Brian couldn’t help but sum it up in the perfect words: “We’re a couple of freaks.”
46. Horizon
Lost horizons, a chaotic splash of red splattered against a pale gray sky-her art was an intense mess of ink and watercolor.
47. Valiant [I’m good for nothing, will you love me just the same?]
If anything, Brian was the mistaken hero of a gag reel, accidental triumphs won mostly through a combination of stupidity and luck.
48.Virtuous
But Amanda wasn’t the virtuous lady portrayed on the silver screen (so she didn’t ask for more, either of herself or of Brian); and she certainly didn’t convey herself that way in her lyrics.
49. Victory (The Rise and Times of the Dresden Dolls)
Every progression of the Dresden Dolls (a booking, a new record) was like a small victory to them, and they couldn’t help but make dreams and plans: a circus tent of their own where they could hold a performance, backed by their very own Dirty Business Brigade.
50. Defeat (The Fall?)
The Dresden Dolls seemed to reach a dead end, a hiatus as it were, but they had yet to admit a permanent defeat.