February 23rd, 2010
London Dandy
It’s always a bit strange to find oneself walking around London and wondering how things got to be this way. Anachronism is something that one rarely discusses these days, and never in polite company, although I’ve rarely had to brush with polite company, because I am rather choosy about the circles I move in. In fact, more often than not my friends and I prefer to move in zigzags, but that’s off the point somewhat. We did begin our soon-to-be arrested adolescent years immersed utterly in everything that was punk, and it seemed to suit us just fine. None of us can quite recall where exactly we made the leap over into this, but we can certainly know for certain that the leap was total and utter and no uncertainties were there to be had.
In Lawrence it might be one thing to be punk, where the aesthetics of it are totally formed by a collage of styles, and with no local history to determine whether we are right, or it we are wrong, radically and totally wrong. Our senior year spring break included a week’s stay in a wonderful hotel in London and this was to be our defining moment. Somewhere between there and here we lost some sense, or gained some. One of us decided that the pink and black checkers simply wasn’t authentic enough, but that we could probably get away with the post-punk look of the Dandy Warhols, and that would be all right. Even brave.
And it would be even braver if what happened next was intentional. I don’t know why I didn’t really hear him correctly, or completely, but it sounded like good fun, and I rather admired the look. I had a wig made and powdered, and spent an inordinate time on my underwear and other accessories, until it was perfect. My sense is that I perhaps missed the Warhol and only heard Dandy, which has been coming back a bit, but not to the same extent as my take on Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde. My cane was smashing but the rest was just an enormous embarrassment.
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