If you would have told me when I was a kid that I would eventually build my life on hurt, I would have told you that you say really weird things to kids.
But you would have been right.
I was having a recorded conversation with a friend earlier this week (for a cool thing happening this summer that you’ll be the first to know about, once it’s announced), and she was talking about my work, the fiction kind and the kind I do here, when I write to you directly about real things, and she described what I’ve built as a “platform of pain.”
Two immediate thoughts:
I cannot tell you how much I love this phrase and that it was applied to describe me and my work; I will accept no lesser descriptors for my art going forward.
She is right.
What I do here is about hurt: hurt (real and imagined) inflicted upon me, hurt caused by me, hurt done to you, hurt done by you, hurt given to people who deserve it and don’t deserve it and what we do once we have it.
Because we all get it.
Hurt is the cost of living and the fuel to live.
Honestly, some days, doing this, writing about pain, exhausts me to the point of sighing concern. I wake up and go, “Nope. Can’t do it. Not today.”
There are days I decide I will never write again.
And then it feels like I’m not really living.
I ended up where I ended up because I didn’t accept pain on its own terms. I tried to ignore it and smother it and submerge it, with devastating results.
I got better because, in the process of understanding myself, I got to know pain.
I have been writing about this since I could pick up a crayon, but not consciously until I was way older.
I’m in the final stages of Brushfire: Wave 2 (coloring, then lettering), and one of its themes is pain. “But, Dennis!” you gasp. “It’s a story for all ages!”
I’m just here to remind you that pain afflicts the young, viscously, and even more deeply.
I wrote an essay about how writers are just writing one story, over and over again, and that my story is hope.
Without pain, there isn’t anything to hope for.
I guess I just wanted to thank you for subscribing to my platform of pain. For still being here. I know it’s easier to post happy, vapid things; but I read something really good recently that “content” is defined by something that gets a lot of attention but has no value.
We’re all probably going to forget most of each other’s vacation and food photos. (Sorry.)
Hopefully, you won’t forget connecting with me over the pain we have; how we grieve, collapse, change, and get back up.
It’s what I’ve built, and it only goes deeper and higher.
First things first: the biggest thank you to everyone who made today possible and made it feel like a big, warm hug on a cold, wet day. Thanks to all the friends who stopped by, longtime and new, and a special thanks to the special women behind Labyrinth Puzzle Rooms and their tireless efforts to do the most for our community.
It was a joy to talk art, writing, music, and life, and a sublime way to spend a rainy Saturday.
This particular moment stands out, because of what it represents.
I did a short set at 3 pm today, and like I expected, it was rough (I’m still not fully well) and low-attended (but the people who were there were amazing!).
The thing I can’t get over, though, the feeling I rarely had in the old days of playing music that I just couldn’t shake: today was FUN.
I was having fun.
I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever played a show as a sober adult. But even though I was under-practiced and under the weather, I had this sense of control and a distinct lack of panic that I don’t really remember ever having.
It was a blast.
And when a young co-worker walked in late, shocked that I had “crashed” her friend’s escape room birthday party (I had been there all day), I just had to play another song, which ended with the “crowd” seen here singing along until the very end.
It was an awesome day and if you missed it, well, you missed something awesome.
Hey, all! Quick video (with Marvel!) to remind everybody that tomorrow is May 13th and I will be at Labyrinth Puzzle Rooms for the Downtown Lakeville Art Crawl from 12-7 pm!
I’ll be there with my books and art and music and to chat (and if you want to buy stuff, I got stuff to buy).
This month is also Next Step month, and I wanted to share some links if you want to check out the music and video I’ve been talking and will talk more about.
The Next Step’s three full-length albums (Something Old, Something New; Love & Fear; Honesty & Happiness) are available on all major music streaming platforms, like Apple Music and Spotify.
I have a YouTube channel that has both music and video from the last twenty years:
Okay! I hope to see you all tomorrow. I’ll be playing a short set at 3 pm (I’ve been under the weather for the past week and a half, but I think I’ll be okay to sing for a minute).
Now that we had a name and had performed an original song, it was time to record an EP (a short album which is typically 2-5 songs in length).
By this time, personal computers were becoming more common in homes; we got our first PC when I was in high school. I had a microphone, but we needed software.
Enter my friend, Kenny: his dad worked at the local radio station, so he burned me two CDs (look it up) with software that would radically change my life: Cool Edit Pro, to edit and produce audio, and FruityLoops, a drum programmer.
I used those two programs to produce every Next Step record.
Speaking of production: most of what you hear in a Next Step song was made by me, with notable exceptions. On Tangled Cords (if I remember correctly), Andy did play the bass on half of the four-song EP, specifically on Awake and Why. I played, programmed, and sang the rest.
How did Tangled Cords become the name? Why, it’s from a good page in Next Step lore. We had been playing in my attic one night and somebody pointed out that all our cords were tangled together, and maybe we should straighten them out.
“It’s okay,” I replied. “We’re in love.”
I set the release date for July 13th, 2003, which, not coincidentally, was the day of my high school graduation party; I had a captive audience and I knew it (and many of them would even leave me money).
We burned a bunch of copies (again, look it up) for distribution, created the iconic cover (seen above) using the CD software; we were also rascals, staging a risqué photoshoot and shooting a promotional poster au naturel. It was the photo where we imagined what the back of the poster looked like that became mildly scandalous (or, at the very least, memorable, as Next Step scholars such as Bil Hoff just can’t seem to scrub the image out of their minds).
Then we put on a barnburner of a show that day, with Andy on bass and Kenny on drums.
The best review came from my Grandma Vogen (may she rest in peace), who found me after the set to confirm with me that music was not the plan for my future after graduation. (Girl was mean but she was right, though.)
We did play several more shows over the summer, mostly on the Central Park stage, which many of you know holds a special place in my heart (and is the heart of my graphic novel series, Brushfire). Some of our cover songs included Swing Swing by The All-American Rejects, Hate To Say I Told You So by The Hives, Get Free by The Vines, and I created a mash-up of Justin Timberlake’s Like I Love You, set to the bassline of The White Stripe’s Seven Nation Army.
In the fall, I recorded another three-song EP, called No Fear Of Failure, which I released on November 30th, 2003.
Did I name it that because I was actually so bold, so unafraid of failing? Heck no!
That title is absolute fucking bravado. I was more scared of failure at the ages of 18-22 than any time in my life before or since. My entire existence coasted on my ability to “fake it”, and sometimes excellently; I woke up constantly afraid of being found out for the phony I am. (I still sometimes feel that way, tbh.)
The album itself is weird, probably the weirdest thing I ever made. I got experimental, I had fun, and I did not like how it turned out.
While I was recording it, though, I got a message that would light me up.
Through a music site where he heard our music, an engineer named Andre reached out to me and asked if I would like to book time at his studio to record. The studio? Pachyderm.
If you’ve never heard of this magical place hidden within Cannon Falls, you’ve certainly heard of some of the artists who have recorded there. Nirvana made their record In Utero in that studio. PJ Harvey, Trampled by Turtles, Live, The Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Hippo Campus, Babes in Toyland, Motion City Soundtrack, They Might Be Giants, Alkaline Trio, Mudvayne, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades… are just a few of the acts who have made music there.
And The Next Step?
Sure, why not? We signed a contract and recorded over two days (December 1st and 2nd, 2003) in the legendary space (and stayed overnight one time in the incredible and incredibly haunted mansion on the beautiful but isolated property).
I didn’t really have new material, so we re-recorded Tangled Cords, with two versions of Awake and a new song, Gold. Gold was inspired by the idea that I could write a song using just one note, one chord. I actually still love that tune.
There was no way I could foot the bill alone (and I was about to move out), so one of my best friends (and future roommate) Brian split the cost and brought some music of his own to record.
How to describe this time? I was barely a musician, I was barely a person, and I was getting a taste of what this life could be. It was bittersweet, and it was two days I’ll never forget.
Going through this old material, I found something I should probably mention: I tried putting on something called the Faribault Music Awards on December 31st, 2003, which was, easily, one of the most embarrassing missteps of my early career.
I really loved MTV’s VMAs, and award shows in general, so I thought it would be neat to think of some categories, have people listen and vote at the event, get all the local bands together and play a show.
When I say nobody showed up, I mean that near-literally; I think two or three people came by to say hi, but I don’t think we played a song, and the Elks felt so bad about it they didn’t even take my deposit. The legend of the first and final FMA’s (and FML).
At the end of 2003, I moved out of Faribault and up to Burnsville. This effectively ended the EP era of The Next Step, and I don’t think any of the original members would ever play in the band again.
I had done a lot in a year. But it was time to do something more.
I have loved a lot of music over the years, but at that point in my life, high school in the late 90’s/early 00’s, I was obsessed with two flavors: emo/indie rock, and boy bands.
And I was never going to be cool enough to front a rock band.
I grew up in a paradox of a musical household; my parents were deaf, but there was music everywhere. They taught me that music isn’t something you hear, but feel. And music made me feel all the feelings, including guilt and an inexhaustible yearning.
I must have been 16 when I got my first guitar, a red electric Epiphone from Eastman Music in downtown Faribault. I felt I was late to the party, but I now realize most people don’t learn how to play anything at all, so I got there when I got there.
I never took any formal lessons; instead, I did what I always do, and picked up any book and magazine that seemed relevant to the music education I wanted. I am an expert in no instrument, but over the years I’ve learned and can adequately play guitar, bass, keyboard, drums, harmonica, ukulele, tambourine, triangle and several other shapes.
Most importantly, though: I learned how to write songs. And learning to play many things adequately was like getting a universal license to drive the vehicles that brought my songs to life.
Sometime in ’01 or ’02, I got the idea for a boy band, and later brought it to the attention of my friends Nate and Kenny. Like every idea I get, I was obsessed immediately and started planning a live show before I had even written a song.
But before even that, we needed a name.
This notebook photo is the actual list of names I came up when I was 17. To say it’s fascinating to me is right on, if only because some of these names are breathtakingly bad, and yet I wonder about the worlds where these other bands came to be.
The names with the stars next to them were the frontrunners: Column, Entras (which, thanks to my note there, we know is short for “Entrepreneur”?), Burn Artists, Broken Pedal, Next Step, Plain of Existence, and Anti-talent. (Eagled-eyed fans might notice that one of the names is Weirdos, which became the name of my superhero team years later and I was unaware was on this list until I found it this morning.)
How Velcro wasn’t the name I picked is a travesty and I just know that, somewhere in the multiverse, Velcro is a Grammy-winning boy band who is currently in a legal battle with George de Mestral’s family.
Next Step was picked (and a The was added to the name, which I know I did to reflect my love of rock bands, like The Strokes and The White Stripes), and I got to work writing music.
I was a theater kid (a massive shock to you, I’m sure), and whenever there was a piano around, I would sit down and play this thing I wrote. I’d do it all the time. It didn’t have words or structure, but it was a segment I was proud of and sounded cool.
That segment eventually became my first song, Awake. Awake itself was about my fragility and suspicion and heartbreak and it accurately sums up who I was then (and who I am constantly trying to fight being).
I decided to debut it at a school choir concert. The proof of my boy band concept is here; this wasn’t just me playing a song. This was a PERFORMANCE. There was an opening scene, with me sitting under a spotlight, at a piano; I vividly remember smashing the keys in frustration, and hearing laughter, and being upset by that.
I had a reputation of being the funny guy, but I wanted this to be taken seriously.
The fact that this scene morphed into a fully-choreographed dance with my friends Kenny and Andy did not improve my dramatic credibility.
But I remember it being fairly well-received, and I was already doing something most of my peers were not (and took the Glee cast several seasons to do): original work.
My next step — pun absolutely intended — was to take Awake and a handful of other songs I was working on to the next level.
I’ve been under the weather since Tuesday (and have been officially voiceless since Thursday, which people around me don’t seem to have a problem with, weirdly), but I wanted to make sure I shared a schedule for next weekend’s Downtown Lakeville Art Crawl!
I’ll be at Labyrinth Puzzle Rooms that day, doing giveaways and selling the words I write and sharing my snacks, and I’ll be doing a short set of Next Step songs at 3 pm! I know I just said my voice is gone (and I originally had bigger plans for the set[s]), but I’m doing my best to get some rest and have myself show-ready by Saturday.
I haven’t missed an obligation this week due to being sick, which is great for all the people I have obligations to, but it has definitely thrown me out of whack. I’ll be spending some time unwhacking myself? Is that a thing?
This Saturday, I’ll also be teaching anybody who wants to learn how to make comics, and if you have any questions about self-publishing, I’m all ears and have lots of experience to share if you need any help.
It should be a rad day and I hope to see you there! Stop by and say hello!
“You’re so colorful the way you use the words you know I thought I’d start this song with a compliment”
Happy May!
May is both my favorite month of the year and has become, recently, the most difficult (Mother’s Day and my mom’s birthday happen this month, and she isn’t here to celebrate them, which gives me all kinds of feelings that aren’t fun to have).
This month’s topic is near and dear to a few reader’s (and listener’s!) hearts: we’ll be talking about the history and legacy of The Next Step.
If you’re new here (welcome!) and don’t know who or what The Next Step is: it’s my band.
I started it in high school. For about five years, it was the thing I wanted to do most. I released two EPs and three full-length albums in that time, and played countless shows (countless only because I can’t remember them all).
Most of the Next Step posts will be a chronological recounting. I’ll start at the beginning and end up somewhere close to today. With the nature of this project, there’ll be lots of photos and video and audio to share, some of it never-seen-or-heard-before.
And don’t forget: I’ll be playing some of these songs at Labyrinth Puzzle Rooms in Lakeville on May 14th! Expect a schedule for that soon.
“You’re so colorful the way you use the words you know I thought I’d end this song with a compliment”
Aww. I just wanted to thank everyone who reached out today and said nice things.
You are so appreciated.
Since before I can remember, my mom would get me a birthday cake every year (DQ being my favorite) and, understanding who I am and the assignment fully, she would put whatever pop culture icon I was into at the time on the top of it.
Ninja Turtles, Batman, Dalmatians, Power Rangers, Pikachu, Dennis the Menace himself (and, apparently, I was into the Chicago Bulls and VW Beetles at a point, though it’s more likely I was masking to fit into my surroundings). She would also create homemade games based on those same characters for my friends and I to play (she was an absolutely charming artist who could recreate so many styles).
This year, I decided to do something I think she would have loved: I put my own characters on my cake.
I’ve been hard at work on Brushfire (you guys, I have literally drawn these squirrels hundreds and hundreds of times and you can’t even tell) and put the icing to the sheet to add Bay and Elle to this ice cream treat.
I’m not quitting any of my day jobs to become a cake decorator, but it did make me feel close to my mama for the few minutes I spent making it.
Thank you again, so much, for taking a moment out of your day to think of me. I got a lot of lovely thoughts and you made today special. (And if you’re wondering, we hit up the Lego Store in the morning, saw Return of the Jedi on the big screen this afternoon, and had Mediterranean Cafe for dinner!)
Normal people wake up in their normal beds on the morning of their birthday and they post the cutest pic they can find of themselves on the internet to announce that they are a year older, a whole three-hundred-and-sixty-five-days wiser.
I stayed up until midnight to post this photo of me I’ve never shared before to publicly remind myself that I’m not even supposed to be on this planet right now, and I am some kind of tragic miracle.
Tragedy, and I mean this in the most serious way, is a terribly funny thing.
When we witness a traumatic event, we get terrified by the sense that it’s contagious.
We hear or see something bad happen and immediately think, “I’m next.”
We think this even when it’s improbable or impossible in truth.
And when we think of a tragedy spreading, we think of the event as a fire, growing and destroying lives, like trees, down lines and around circles and through entire neighborhoods of forest.
But this picture, for me, is a reminder that tragedy is contagious in a different way.
Tragedy can be the drop that creates a wave of positive change.
Tragedy can be the reason we remember to hug someone. Tragedy can spark conversations we should have had years ago. Tragedy can bring people together in unconventional ways. Tragedy can strengthen bonds and repair breaks. Tragedy can shake us until we fall out of ourselves; tragedy can wake us up and make us reevaluate our entire existence.
Tragedy tells us to live. Tragedy can be the reason we are still alive.
Tragedy is why you’re all still stuck with me now.
This photo captures me in a moment during my infamous week-long stay in the hospital to get sober (you read about it in the papers, no? This is a thing the papers wrote about, right?). I was there because everything was trying to kill me, including (and especially) myself.
I have been, by definition, crazy. I have been hurt and hurtful; I have told the sharpest lies and the deepest truths. I have been sweet and gross, thoughtful and thoughtless, and it took me a long time to realize I don’t deserve a second chance.
No one does. We deserve third and fourth and fifty-fifth ones, as long as we know that we want to get better, and we work on it.
It’s impossible to thank all the reasons I survived. There’s the people and the words and the feelings and the music and the animals and the comic book pages and the pop culture and the plastic parts of my existence that I’ve found real meaning in.
I was thirty-something yesterday and I’m thirty-something-plus-one today. I’m not even supposed to be on this planet right now.
But I’m a tragic miracle and I am happy to report from the other side that so are you.
As we end another month of retrospect and introspect, I want to talk about the triumphs from the year I released Them and Us. I made a list:
1. It only took me one book to realize I can do anything.
By that, I mean, as soon as I started writing my second book, I was ready to experiment and break more rules and play with the idea of what a book is at all.
Now, I shift perspectives, I go meta, I change the format, I follow the story where it takes me, even if it feels, at the time, like the wrong way to go. My top priority is always to clearly communicate with you; I want to make complex ideas simple.
With Us, though, I really learned to find the poetry.
Us is a weird book. The plot, the characters; everything and everyone is weird. But it was in those pages that I really started paying attention to rhythm and how words looked on the page.
It was in Us that I learned the power of a poetic phrase, especially when used at an unexpected time.
There was a review for Flip in the Faribault Daily News that glowed, “Moments of brilliance make a short read like Flip worthwhile . . . Sometimes, Vogen breaks out beautiful, almost poetic language at just the right moment.” But Flip isn’t where I started doing that; I was writing Us first, even though I released it half a year after.
2. I did what I said I was going to do.
There is nothing more annoying than someone telling you what they’re GOING to do or what they WANT to do. We hear it constantly: grand plans, the kind we know won’t ever see the light of day.
I’ve been guilty of this (and wrote for you an incomplete list of my unfinished crimes in February).
This could have been similarly ill-fated. On its release, I announced that Them was the first of a two-book series, with the sequel to be out in exactly a year. I was inspired by comic books and episodic storytelling, and thought a cliffhanger would be a fun challenge years before Avengers: Infinity War did it. I also fell in love with the novella, and publishing short books became my thing.
Writing Us wasn’t easy, and I gave up several times, unsuccessfully. But I knew it was something I had to do, and if it was between releasing something weird, poetic, and half-baked, or releasing nothing at all, there was only ever one way out for me.
The completion of the series turned something on and around in my head. I learned that I do have patience and an obstinate passion for getting work that’s meaningful to me done. And my confidence fueled future projects (see: the two+ years I worked on and promoted the Weirdos series, culminating in five issues and a full-color graphic novel; the three-year release schedule I set for myself with Brushfire).
3. I wrote about a bunch of stuff that really resonates with me to this day.
You ever look at your old posts, your digital memories, and feel your skeleton trying to jump out of your skin?
Same, girl.
For some reason, though, all the books I’ve decided to publish have at least parts that make me really happy to have made them.
Some examples from this series:
– Trauma from youth as a driving force: As someone who is severely fucked up from things that happened when I was young and had no control over them, this is a theme that continues to be relevant to me, and these characters and this story embodies that.
– Wanting something so badly that you agree to bad deals, and forget what you signed up for: Yo, Millennials, this is us.
– Kim’s wedding speech: It makes me emotional every time. Her point being: life sucks. Be with someone who makes the sucky parts worth getting through.
– I wrote an actual chapter called Shart, about a shart. If this is my cultural and literary legacy, I DIE HAPPY
– There are some great moments of dialogue, a lot of it (trying to be) funny; one of my favorite lines, however, is not. It’s Guy standing by his best friend, telling the villains who are trying to take her: “If you want this beautiful, strong, loving, and loved woman, then you get all of us.”
– The wokeness of it all (I wrote more about this aspect in its own essay). It’s great. And it reminds me of this simple quote:
“In North America, I’m domestic. White people are exotic.” – Amelia Mavis Christnot
And that is the end of Us month. I loved revisiting this series and piecing together the time I made it; it was an interesting era for me.
Next month’s topic is one that has rabid groupies of a certain age foaming: we’ll be talking The Next Step, all May-long.
The Den 