Acts of Violet(95)
QUINN DWYER: Seriously?
CAMERON FRANK: What makes you say that? This was not only damaging to Violet’s reputation, but also something your sister fought hard to suppress and remove from the internet.
SASHA DWYER: That’s what makes me believe she was behind it. Violet was an expert at publicity—getting it as much as avoiding it. If she wanted that takedown to go away, she would’ve done what she did every other time something nasty was written about her: she would’ve ignored it. Violet survived the bad PR of accidentally killing a person. She would not allow herself to be brought down by one little website. The fact that she went to so much trouble trying to get it taken down—she went to court over it when she didn’t even sue other magicians for stealing her material!—tells me she wanted more eyeballs on it. Not to mention, she got to live out her own personal Streisand effect. I could see it being a perverse way of paying homage to Barbra.
CAMERON FRANK [STUDIO]: Ironically, several years prior, Volk’s favorite performer, Barbra Streisand, went through something similar when she sued a photographer for displaying a photo of her Malibu home online, claiming it violated her privacy. The suit was dismissed, but the publicity surrounding it resulted in more unwanted attention for the photo than it would’ve gotten otherwise. The resulting social phenomenon has been known ever since as “the Streisand effect.”
CAMERON FRANK: But why would Violet want so much attention on something so negative?
SASHA DWYER: I don’t know. Maybe it was the closest she could get to actually apologizing for any of it. Or maybe she wasn’t sorry but just wanted us to see her as she really was, before we never saw her again.
QUINN DWYER: [murmurs] Like a deathbed confession.
CAMERON FRANK: Sasha, do you think you ever saw Violet as she really was?
SASHA DWYER: I think the better question to ask is whether Violet ever saw herself, if she knew who she really was. She was always looking to escape from something or into something. When we were kids, she couldn’t wait to get out of Willow Glen and then she couldn’t wait to get out of New York and go on tour, and then she couldn’t wait to stop touring, and so on. Wherever she was, it was like she wanted to be somewhere else. And someone else. She decided early on she didn’t want to be Varushka, so she became Violet. When we were kids, she also wanted us to be Goonies, searching for buried treasure. In high school, when I started dating a boy she liked—one I happen to be married to today—she became a goth, dyeing all her clothes black, blasting Siouxsie and the Banshees nonstop, wearing all the eyeliner. Then there was her Rocky Horror phase—she already had Magenta’s look down, all she really needed was a maid costume. Oh, here’s a fun fact: she briefly considered using Magenta as her stage name, but my husband convinced her the double V of Violet Volk was more powerful—he was a marketing whiz even back then.
CAMERON FRANK [STUDIO]: As she continues to reminisce out loud, Quinn and I look on with cautious surprise. It’s nice to see Sasha this relaxed and open.
SASHA DWYER: Anyway, I think Violet was always playing with identity. I don’t remember if she said it in one of her books or someone on this podcast said it, but she didn’t believe in finding herself so much as creating herself.
CAMERON FRANK: But you must’ve seen beyond the person she wanted to portray.
SASHA DWYER: Sometimes.
CAMERON FRANK: Quinn, what do you want people to know about your aunt?
QUINN DWYER: How much she loved nature. It’s strange she hid that part of herself from the public. I don’t have a lot of memories with my aunt, but my favorite was camping at Joshua Tree with her.
SASHA DWYER: Camping? When did you go camping with Violet?
QUINN DWYER: When I stayed with her in LA. I’ll tell you about it sometime. It was something special. But she could even make a walk in Cordova Park special. Aunt Violet said she couldn’t live without the energy of a city for too long, and she didn’t have the patience for gardening or any of that stuff, but she felt the most at home being in nature.
CAMERON FRANK: Sasha, what about you? What do you want people to know about your sister?
SASHA DWYER: How painfully human she was. There’s this contingent of people who want to see her as a heroine or some kind of … I don’t know, ultraterrestrial, or something. I understand the appeal in seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary—Violet had a gift for giving people that vision. It was the beauty of her artistry. But when you mistake a trick for the real thing, you’re not being taken with an artist, you’re being taken in by a con artist.
CAMERON FRANK: That’s a little harsh.
SASHA DWYER: Harsh truths are our love language.
Yes, Violet was talented, and yes, she had phenomenal charisma. But she could also be self-serving, conniving, even downright spiteful. Violet had flaws. It’s fine if people appreciate her work, but it’s time to demystify her.
CAMERON FRANK: It sounds like your sister had a special ability to get under your skin. Are you still angry with her all these years later?
SASHA DWYER: Of course. We were estranged for years before her disappearance, but I always thought we’d hash things out eventually. I actually thought it would happen on the night of her last performance. But it didn’t. I got nothing. No reconciliation, no resolution, just silence. It hurts. There’s a reason our family hasn’t moved in the last ten years. There’s a reason we’ve kept the same phone numbers. Yeah, I’m still angry, but there’s a part of me that’ll always be waiting for her to come home.