I guess its time I explain my name.
First off, I knew I needed a stage name. I knew that I just didn't have a last name that was built for show-biz. Every (just about) famous actor, musician, artist...changes or alters their name in some fashion to have an easier, more fluid ring to it. I wanted something simple, something direct...something unforgettable, and something with meaning.
Back when I was a young buc, I made my original myspace, and my url became "purple vixxen".
I loved the color purple, and felt that it represented me well: purple was the color of depth, mystery, royalty...but it wasn't your standard color. Plus, I had in many ways begun to identify myself with the artist, Prince, who we all know is the man in purple.
Purple vixxen was ok. But it needed to be better, more smooth sounding.
So, I came up with violet vixxen. But, then, I still felt like a 'noun'. I wanted a name like "Carmen Electra", who was one of my idols. I read that her name was created by Prince, and was a conjunction of his two favorite plays:
Carmen (the opera) and
Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill.
So, I hacked off the end of 'vixxen' (spelled with two x's, just for url purposes, i needed something that noone else had). And I added an a. Now, it was a real name. Vixxa Violet.
The name took on layers and layers of meaning, and still does.
One of the main factors is that: the two names represent the two completely different sides of my personality.
On the one hand, I was this bold, sexy, powerful, strong...vixen! (or, wanted to be, ideally...like a Spice Girl, or an X-Men superhero). It represented the me that was bold, took risks, performed on stage, and said what she thought.
Violet, however...was my very, very deep, artistic, introverted, sensitive side. The one that wrote poetry and listened to The Cure and fell head-over-heels in unrequited love. The outcast. The loner.
The only other name I seriously considered before that was Vilma Grace. Vilma was my granny's name, who is now deceased. To me, she represented light and peace. After she died, I was never given any of her belongings or anything to remember her by...except for a little pin of a white dove.
Grace was my middle name.
Ironically, if you take the "L" and "M" out of Vilma...you get Vixxa. The two x's are crosses...crosses that I've had to bear in order to forge ahead what I hope will be the success of the lineage of women who were beaten, put down, and enslaved by their husbands.
I desperately wanted to get away from my last name.
Just about every person in my family with my last name has ended up seriously mental, addicted to drugs, death by cancer...it is a lineage of evil, death and destruction. (Vilma was married in to the family, so I don't really count the in-laws as inherently evil).
So, yeah. I could go on, but...that's all I shall say for now.
PS. Hold up two "V"s with your fingers, and look at what you have. This is what I'm after.