I guess I’m just going to keep trying to remember.
I’ll remember that it doesn’t matter what a person believes in — just what they do with it.
I’m going to remember that my worth has nothing to do with my accomplishments, or lack thereof.
I’m going to remember that there is no nobler goal than to be kind, plain and friendly.
I’m going to be a reminder that words and actions matter.
I’m going to remember that according to the universe, our lives are meaningless, and because nothing matters, everything we do matters.
There are all these other things I learn on a daily basis that I promise myself I’m going to remember. But these are the ones that I think of daily, and will continue to remember in this new year.
It’s kinda funny that, as the world learns how to describe things in increasing detail, as we create smaller and smaller boxes to put our interests in, humans become gatekeepers for drama.
Wrestling is just a soap opera. Soap operas are just comic books without the superpowers. Comic books are just reality shows in a different reality. Reality shows are just period pieces without the funny wigs. Period pieces are just modern dramas that take place in the past. Modern dramas are just sporting events without any equipment. Sporting events… well, they’re just games invented for children that people inject drama into so they can forget that they’re just games invented for children.
These stories are all the same.
They are the stories of human beings. Their trials and errors, their great loves and darkest fears, their elevated peaks of joy and deepest griefs, their relationships with family and friends and lovers and enemies and strangers…
And yet we have a basic need to say some of these stories are better than others. Shakespeare is clearly art and the WWF is offensively not.
Though today, my friend Maurice showed me a comic book that was Macbeth told through the lens of professional wrestling.
And it reminded me that they’re the same damn thing.
I’ve always looked at stories this way. I try to treat Sesame Street with the same kind of thought I would The Iliad & The Odyssey. And honestly, does the Greek Homer have so many more insights than the great Homer Simpson?
I would argue that they both have a lot to say on the human condition, and they need not be mutually exclusive in understanding it.
Thinking this way has allowed me to experience stories in many more ways than I think some people will allow themselves to. Genre exists as a flavor for the same food. There are still things I don’t like. Or even really get. But when I start to take off the outside parts of any of these tale-telling machines, I find the same human engines inside.
This is all to say that even though the people around you might get their stories in a different way, what they want are the exact same things you want — if only a little deeper under the surface.
We can be satisfied and disappointed and enraged and elated by genre.
But it’s the love of a story that makes us ridiculously human.
Last night, we ordered a chicken bacon artichoke pizza to bake at home.
When we opened it, there was no bacon on it.
I didn’t call them to say anything. I ate the pizza and I was grateful.
Now, I feel like even the most well-meaning person would say: “Well, you should have let them know they made a mistake.”
Why?
I have ordered countless pizzas from this place and they have never made this mistake before. When I got the other pizzas exactly how I ordered them, I never once called them to let them know they got it exactly right, even though their batting average is just about .999.
When you hear about the world going mad right now, that’s no lie. People are getting arrested in record numbers on airplanes. Families and friends are on edge and relationships are splintering and breaking every day. I can’t remember a time in my life when I have heard the phrase “worst service ever” with such regularity.
Which is a loaded thing to say. Think about it: “worst ever” describes an event that happens only once in your life. Once. Ever. And I would guess an actual “worst ever” experience would probably lead to death.
I’m listening to my neighbor outside right now on the phone, talking to a restaurant about how, while she understands it’s a busy season and the industry is severely understaffed, she still didn’t get the service she deserves. She’s wondering how long it will take to get the gift card.
This is just a reminder to take inventory of who you are right now. Think about your tone. Think about the words you say. Think about your level of gratitude.
We think about our big legacies a lot. How the people we know will remember us. But the truth is, you will meet most of the people in your life just one time. Which means you have a lot of tiny legacies, and I would hope that you’d want them to be kind.
The universe has been around for billions of years and you mean nothing to it. So it’s up to you to make something of it.
Don’t worry about the bacon. It is just. freaking. bacon.
As every year ends, we tend to curl up in our chair, stare out the window, and reflect on who we are, where we’ve been, and what the hell we’re even doing.
That is definitely what I’m doing right now.
As I learn more and more about people who make an actual difference on this planet, heroes like scientists and doctors and trailblazers in technology, I worry more and more about whether writing and art has any real importance at all.
I stand on that fence a lot, to be honest.
But this year I’ve been able to renew my vow to the thing that makes me think that the writers of words and worlds have a place in all this chaos: inspiration.
I read several pieces this year that spoke on the importance of people being inspired to be the people they become. Whether it’s science-fiction that brings the future to life, or tales of selfless heroes that seed courage and morality into the hearts of young readers, stories not only entertain, but shape the world we live in.
And it’s always been one of the rings on the dartboard, but it’s the bull’s-eye now for me.
I want to inspire you to remember that we’re all complex individuals, and we can do bad things, but it doesn’t make us bad people.
I want to inspire you to dream, and to be active in those dreams; to fight, to learn, to reach across the stars and reality to anybody else who dreams, too.
I want to inspire you to run away, and I want to inspire you to stay.
I want to inspire you to find out that your defects can reveal strengths, and that no matter how weird you are, there are other weirdos out there who are just like you.
I want to inspire you to be real, and to tell your own story, because no one else will do it like you.
(And this is just from the books I’ve written so far.)
I have a lot more inspiration in me, that I want to share with you in 2022 and beyond. I hope you’ll come with me, because you are my secret weapon; you are what inspires me.
Announcements soon, but for now, have a holly, jolly holidays. Hang in there. All my love.
I can’t stop thinking about one relevant difference between faith and science.
I try to be as respectful as possible to those who are religious, because I hope for that same respect in return, and I have seen the good that believing in someone or something can create.
That being said, there is something that needs to be remembered:
The difference between faith and science is that faith needs you to believe in it.
Science will exist whether you “believe” in it or not.
This feels more important than ever to remember, but I have a feeling that it’s something that has always been a problem.
Something you cannot prove is not a fact. Something you feel is only a fact to you.
“If you believe in science” is a nonsensical phrase, because if you don’t believe in science, guess what? The internet and your TV and your car and your watch and medicine and space shuttles and airplanes and boats will all still work.
And, sure, they break down, but that is science, too. The second law of thermodynamics. Entropy.
Something that exists only by belief loses its power when people don’t believe.
Something that exists here by the grace of physics and quantum mechanics will exist whether you think it does or not.
So when I talk about respect, I have to include common sense in the mix. Sense to recognize what is universal and what is personal. What is otherworldly and what is here.
Sense to know that we live in a magical world and some of that magic is provable, and that kind of magic is often ignored, overlooked and taken for granted.
This will not be my most popular post or opinion (though when have I ever cared about being popular, I’m kidding, please everybody love me), but I’ve been reading Stephen Hawking’s work lately, including his last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, and I believe, like he does, in one controversial attitude:
People like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are doing what we need to do in order to ensure any future for the human race.
Hold on, hold on, before you throw any red paint on me (this fur isn’t real). This is not me saying anything like Jeff’s business practices at Amazon are not abysmal and horrific. Nope. This has nothing to do with that.
No, Hawking knew that if commercial money found its way into the hands of the scientific community, then we could make progress in space exploration and travel. And we have to learn how to leave Earth.
Why?
Well, I’ll list the most pressing.
Our environment is likely past the point of no return. Even if we threw money at it and told people what had to be done, events like the pandemic have shown us that you can tell humans the right thing to do, and a lot of them will refuse to do it, especially if it is an inconvenience.
In the late 60’s, when the space program was popular, it inspired kids to get into science and the public admired and respected the scientific community. As the program fell out of the light now cast on societal issues (which we definitely fixed back in the 70’s, right?), people started to minimize and ignore those in science, an attitude that has fluctuated in a downward wave, as can be seen in the absurd mistrust certain groups now have for people in science (which includes people in related fields, like healthcare.)
Basically, the human race as a whole can not get their collective shit together as a mind.
We are under massive nuclear threat at any time, as those weapons exist, are still here, and available for anybody to use.
Another asteroid will hit Earth. That isn’t an alarmist guess. It is an inevitable fact based on physics probability.
Over-population is real and within a blink of the universe’s lifetime, we will be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our fellows under a 450-degree sun.
If this all sounds scary, it should. Boo. And if you’re saying we should use that money to fix our problems here, I join Stephen Hawking in saying: why not both? He proposes using a quarter of a percent of the world’s GDP on space, as it’s a global goal. The rest can be used for the present.
If we want a future, we have to boldly go — and we can boldly fix this place, too, if we rediscover some common ground and return science to its rightful place of respect and prominence.
Don’t worry: there is not a single spoiler for the new Spider-Man movie here, besides that it’s one of my favorite films of all time and you should bring everyone you know.
I just want to talk about one of the inherent qualities of Peter Parker — Spider-Man himself — that bears repeating, time after time after time, which is why we have so many issues and episodes and movies about him. It’s a theme that never gets old.
It’s not the great power, great responsibility thing, which is an enormous lesson in itself.
No, Peter’s nature can be defined by one code:
You don’t do good things because they are easy or because you expect good things back. You do good things even if they make your life harder because that is the right thing to do.
It is possibly the most relevant lesson we can learn.
I look around at this place we live and I see so many people finding every excuse they can to not do good things, or even the right one. They find exceptions in what they claim to believe and live by because — guess what? — doing the right thing sometimes makes life harder, and people who have distorted views of what freedom is and means don’t understand that for some people’s lives to get significantly better, theirs will have to get slightly more inconvenient.
We praise those who sacrifice but how much do we give?
Peter’s strength and flaw is the same, depending on who you ask — he always does what’s best for others, and it’s often to his detriment. We’ve seen him be selfish, and it’s his downfall every time.
I have always, always said that everyone should read comics, and this is the reason why: you learn how to be a better human with each page. (I stand by the belief that we would have never elected any Lex Luthors if the rest of the world could have identified the clear signs of a supervillain.)
So next time you’re caught between the choice of “easy” and “right,” I hope you weigh the consequences and think of Peter. I don’t always get it right (and have been as selfish as him at his worst), but nowadays I try to give it a shot every single time.
A lot of my favorite people — my artist friends — have shared their #artvsartist year, and I am nothing if not a wannabe waiting outside the house party, watching my breath freeze in the cold, so here is mine. These posts are also often about gratitude, and I have no shortage of that.
I decided to do an original piece with all original characters; you might recognize some or none of them, but if you recognize them all then you have definitely been a fan (or friend) for a long time.
This framework accurately represents what my brain is like: the Brady Bunch meets Fight Club. And you know the first rule: Marcia cannot catch a football.
Now for the gratitude part.
I have said it at least a million and one times, but there is not another feeling out there like the one you get when someone “gets” your work. There just isn’t.
And there’s a difference between an overall appreciation of art or the work we do (which is the bulk of what we receive), and when a person really understands something to the particular wavelength it resonates on.
I have been unbearably lucky to have met people who truly get what I do, and as an artist, I can’t actually express how much that means. I just want to tell you thank you — thank you for taking your time on me, thank you for being patient with me, thank you for keeping me alive.
These characters are a big part of the Vogenverse (I’m just gonna keep calling it that until it sticks or dies), and I have plans for all of them in 2022 and beyond. Who are you excited to see? Who am I missing? What kind of merch actually gives you warm fuzzies when you find it? Let me know in the comments.
And I hope you’re either basking in the glow of the holiday season, or hanging in there like I know you can. I am literally doing both, so I see you.
I worked a lot this weekend. (If you popped into the restaurant at any time, virtually open to close, on Saturday or Sunday, I was there to delight/annoy you.)
This little girl missed me. A lot.
She always greets me at the door, but tonight was different. She missed me so much that she couldn’t stop wagging her tail.
The reason this is notable (and hilarious) is because my dog doesn’t really have a tail, so she was just awkwardly wiggling her butt side to side to show me how much she adored me.
And I thought it was so human.
How many of us appreciate someone so much that we never feel like we can adequately show them?
I feel like that all the time. When words or a high five just doesn’t let the people around you know how much they mean to you and how much better they make your life.
It leaves you feeling like a dog, with no tail, wiggling your butt side to side in the hopes that they just understand.
And I hope you understand, and I hope you live a life with people who keep your bottom shaking.
Fifteen years ago, in September, I released my second album, “Love & Fear.”
I remember the beginning of 2020. (It was a very long time ago. I would understand if you couldn’t think back so far.) I knew that the 15th anniversaries of all three of my Next Step albums were going to happen in succession: “Something Old, Something New…” in 2020, “Love & Fear” in 2021, and “Honesty & Happiness” in 2022. I wanted to do cool things. I wanted to play live again. I wanted to release more music. I wanted to do all of the cool things.
And then what happened happened.
And I dropped those plans for the artistic things I knew I had to do. I took another route, and it’s been a beautiful one. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bum me out sometimes.
Making music was a major part of my young life. I was never as good at it as the supremely talented people around me, but that didn’t stop me from putting out more recorded music than most of them. (That is not a sick burn. That is an objective fact.) The early 2000’s was the Wild West of home recording; you didn’t get to bring home an impossibly powerful computer with GarageBand and a pre-packaged AI producer. You had to figure stuff out with everybody else. On a PC that was arguably less capable than the phone in your pocket. We were just starting to learn how the internet could work. We had MySpace.
I have so many stories of that time that would probably get me put in a retirement home if I shared them.
But I have drive. And I rode that until the wheels fell off. Once I recorded the songs, I rounded up friends, some who could play, some who decidedly could not, and we did countless shows, from people’s backyards to Seventh Street Entry to the Turf Club and beyond.
Music takes a lot from you. A lot of effort and energy. There’s a ton of competition. And a fair share of heartbreak. Writing has always been my first and one true love; music allows me to write in a different way. But at the end of the day, all I need are the words; in my late twenties, I got more serious about writing, and less involved in making music. I started to have a better idea of where I wanted my effort and energy to go. But I always miss music.
This is all just a long way of saying: I’m looking at the snow fall down outside my window and I’m thinking about the songs we used to sing. It reminded me that I forgot to wish “Love & Fear” a happy 15th birthday. So, here’s a new version of “Just Once, Just Tonight,” recorded just tonight, just for you. Leave your favorite Next Step memories in the comments, or any requests for other songs from the album. All my love, Steppers. (I just came up with that name for Next Step fans. It’s good, right?)
Just Once, Just Tonight Music and lyrics by Dennis Vogen
You’re so colorful the way you use the words you know I thought I’d start this song with a compliment Your eyes intoxicate, I’m drunk by every move you make You’ve given me so much, and more, and more, I can’t forget You’re so beautiful It scares me, I think you should know You think you’re insecure? Just take a look at me Your mind it plays like Pong and bounces worries ‘round and ‘round An obscure reference but that’s so why you love me
Don’t hide this time Don’t cry, I’ll try To let you be right Just once, just tonight
You know it’s meant to be At least that’s what I meant to say I tried to hold you close and just pushed you away I try to make you laugh You barely smile, imagine that You think it’s only you But, no, I’m dying, too
Don’t hide this time Don’t cry, I’ll try To let you be right Just once, just tonight
You’re so good, you know I’m no good, you know
Don’t hide this time Don’t cry, I’ll try To let you be right Just once, just tonight
All Next Step albums available wherever you listen to music.
The Den 