DYIN’ ALONE? NOT TODAY.

The Joke, the Name & the Story Behind Diana Lone

Published by: Diana Lone
Published date: August 14, 2026
Last updated: August 14, 2026
Read time: 8 minutes

Let's get this out of the way.

Diana Lone.

Say it faster.

Dyin’ alone.

There it is.

That's the joke.

It's stupid.

Diana loves it.

But unlike most stupid drag names, this one came with considerably more baggage than anticipated.

Because Diana Lone isn't really a joke about dying.

It's a joke about being afraid you're going to end up alone.

It's about growing up queer in Utah.

It's about family.

It's about grief.

It's about Diana's younger brother.

It's about taking something that once sounded like a threat and turning it into the name announced every time she walks onto a stage.

And somehow, after all of that, it's still funny.

It has to be.

FIRST, DIANA NEEDED A DRAG NAME

In 2019, Diana was still stationed with the U.S. Army in Poland when drag started becoming more than entertainment.

She'd fallen into UNHhhh, RuPaul's Drag Race and The Boulet Brothers' Dragula. She was sketching runway concepts in her Notes app and increasingly imagining herself returning to the kind of performance she'd loved as a kid.

Eventually, watching wasn't enough.

She wanted to do drag.

Which meant she needed a name.

And Diana knew immediately that she wanted a pun.

Of course she did.

Some queens want something regal.

Some want something glamorous.

Some want something dangerous.

Diana wanted something that made people groan approximately half a second after understanding it.

But she also wanted the joke to mean something.

That's how she landed on:

DIANA LONE.

Perfect.

No notes.

Well, actually, quite a few notes.

THE FIRST MEANING: GROWING UP QUEER IN UTAH

The name starts with something Diana absorbed growing up.

There was a particular version of adulthood presented as the correct one.

Marriage.

Family.

Temple.

A wife.

A conventional life.

Diana came out to her parents at 16.

And when the future you've been taught to expect suddenly doesn't seem available to you, another question appears:

Then what happens to me?

Diana later described the message she internalized pretty bluntly: either marry a woman in the Temple or live alone for the rest of your life.

Eventually she grew old enough to look at that supposed binary and realize how absurd it was.

Gay people have partners.

Gay people have husbands and wives.

Gay people make families.

They build friendships that become families.

They find communities.

They create lives nobody bothered to describe to them when they were kids.

The options were never:

Temple marriage

or

eternal loneliness.

That was somebody else's imagination failing.

Not Diana's future.

So she took the threat and made it ridiculous.

If Diana was supposedly destined to die alone?

Fine.

She'd make it her stage name.

THEN THE NAME ACQUIRED ANOTHER MEANING

This is the part where the joke stops being quite so stupid.

In February 2019, Diana's younger brother, James Seth Davies, died by suicide.

He was 14.

Diana was stationed in Poland at the time and wasn't speaking with her parents.

Her sister called at approximately four in the morning Poland time to tell her what had happened.

Diana got on a flight.

Within 24 hours, she was back in Utah.

She spent two weeks mourning with her family before returning to Poland. On the flight back, she found herself confronting what had happened and wondering what she was supposed to do with it.

Her eventual answer was to turn pain into art.

And that changed what Diana Lone meant.

“DYIN’ ALONE” WASN’T FUNNY ANYMORE.

Except Diana decided it still could be.

That's important.

In her 2021 interview with Voyage Utah, Diana explained that the name wasn't simply about herself.

She thought about people like her brother.

People who can become convinced they're completely alone.

People who can't see the people around them who care about them.

Diana wished she could somehow show Seth that he hadn't been alone.

And she wanted other people who felt that way to understand it too.

So the punchline changed.

Diana Lone.

Yes.

But:

not dying alone.

That's a much more interesting joke.

THAT’S WHERE “DYIN’ ALONE? NOT TODAY.” COMES FROM.

The phrase wasn't part of Diana's original name.

It's the natural conclusion to it.

DYIN’ ALONE?

That's the fear.

That's the joke.

That's the old expectation.

That's the name.

NOT TODAY.

That's the answer.

Not some enormous inspirational manifesto.

Not a motivational poster.

Not:

LIVE. LAUGH. LIP-SYNC.

Absolutely not.

Just:

Not today.

It's defiant without pretending everything is easy.

It's funny without pretending nothing hurts.

And it's probably the closest thing Diana Lone has to a mission statement.

Which is unfortunate because Diana generally objects to having a mission.

She already skipped one of those.

DRAG GAVE DIANA SOMEWHERE TO PUT IT

When Diana returned from Poland, she finally started performing.

Her first drag appearance was at City Limits Tavern in Provo in 2019, where Brigitte Kiss and the Divine Sister Misters gave her an early place to learn and perform.

At first, drag was a release.

Something to make.

Somewhere to perform.

Somewhere to put grief.

Somewhere to become someone else for a few minutes.

The earliest version of Diana was simple.

A Target dress.

A party-store wig.

Whitney Houston.

Eventually that became handmade costumes, styled wigs, elaborate props, edited tracks, comedy, hosting and theatrical performances.

The pain didn't disappear.

Something simply grew around it.

By 2024, Diana described an important change in her relationship with drag.

It wasn't primarily medicine anymore.

It had become more like a meal.

Something she did to live.

A craft.

A job.

A continuing part of her life.

That's a crucial distinction.

Diana doesn't need to remain permanently trapped inside the worst thing that happened to her just because it influenced the creation of her art.

The origin matters.

It isn't the whole story.

THAT’S ALSO WHY DIANA ISN’T A SAD CHARACTER

Look at Diana Lone.

Does this woman appear interested in quietly processing anything?

No.

She's making a coffin.

She's gluing something to her face.

She's editing six unrelated songs together because apparently one wasn't enough.

She's sewing a reveal into something that didn't need a reveal.

She's making herself look beautiful and then covering herself in blood.

She's turning tragedy into camp.

That's different from pretending tragedy didn't happen.

Camp has always been particularly good at that.

Take the thing that's too frightening.

Too painful.

Too embarrassing.

Too forbidden.

Too serious.

Then exaggerate it until you own it.

That's Diana's sweet spot.

Glamour with a body count.

DEATH KEEPS SHOWING UP IN THE DRAG

Once you understand the name, some of Diana's artistic choices make considerably more sense.

The coffin.

The blood.

The gore.

The dark jokes.

The morbidity.

The glamorous woman surrounded by things that have gone terribly wrong.

Even Diana's 2026 KRCL profile, Wrapped in Cellophane: Becoming Diana Lone, was described by the station as beginning with an Elmer's glue stick and ending with a pile of guts.

That is remarkably on-brand.

And when the story was subsequently carried by Regional Roundup, Diana's performance was characterized through both artistry and resilience.

Those two things belong together in Diana's work.

Beauty and ugliness.

Comedy and grief.

Making something and destroying it.

Diana Lone and dyin' alone.

The contradiction is the brand.

THE NAME ALSO GIVES DIANA AN ENTIRE LANGUAGE

This is where having a genuinely good drag name becomes useful.

Diana Lone isn't just something to put on a flyer.

The name creates its own universe.

Dyin’ Alone? Not Today.

Drop-dead gorgeous.

Death becomes her.

Til death do us party.

Book Diana before she dies alone.

And, naturally:

SLC's Most Divorced Drag Queen™.

Is Diana actually Salt Lake City's most divorced drag queen?

This website has conducted absolutely no peer-reviewed research on the matter.

Please respect our methodology.

But the divorce joke works because it's another extension of the same absurd Diana universe.

A woman called Diana Lone should obviously be divorced.

Several times.

Possibly widowed.

Definitely overdressed for the funeral.

It's character-building.

AND THEN THERE’S THE OTHER HALF OF DIANA

The death jokes are memorable.

But Diana's work is fundamentally about making things.

She has been crafty since childhood.

Today, she creates or alters much of her drag herself—from costumes to wigs and props. Her 2024 SLUG Magazine profile reported that more than half of her drag outfits were made or modified by Diana.

That's where another Diana phrase comes from:

SHE PUTS THE DIY IN DIANA.

It's funny because it's almost embarrassingly literal.

Diana is a DIY artist.

She imagines something.

Then she makes it.

Sometimes that's a dress.

Sometimes it's a wig.

Sometimes it's a prop.

Sometimes it's a performance.

And sometimes it's an entirely new version of herself.

That's the more hopeful counterweight to the name.

Diana Lone is about death linguistically.

But Diana's actual creative process is relentlessly about creation.

Make another thing.

Learn another skill.

Try another idea.

Do another show.

Come back next week better.

THE JOKE CHANGED AS DIANA DID

That's maybe the most interesting part.

In 2019, Diana Lone emerged during grief.

In 2021, Diana publicly explained the name through that grief and through her desire for people to understand that feeling alone doesn't necessarily mean being alone.

By 2024, she was also articulating the queer reclamation inside it—the realization that the lonely future she'd once been taught to fear wasn't inevitable at all.

And by 2026, Diana was still performing, still making things and still being documented as part of Salt Lake City's drag culture. KRCL followed her through the process of preparing for a Why Kiki performance, and regional public radio subsequently carried the story beyond Utah.

The name stayed the same.

The woman carrying it didn't.

That's why Dyin' Alone? Not Today. works now.

It isn't pretending Diana never believed the first part.

It's what came afterward.

IT’S A TERRIBLE NAME FOR A MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER.

Fortunately, Diana is a drag queen.

And drag gets to hold contradictory things at the same time.

Something can be sad and hilarious.

A costume can be beautiful and grotesque.

A performance can be stupid and deeply personal.

A drag name can be a pun and a memorial and a reclamation and a running joke about divorce.

Nothing has to choose only one thing.

Neither does Diana.

SO WHAT DOES DIANA LONE ACTUALLY MEAN?

Literally?

Dyin' alone.

Personally?

Something closer to the opposite.

It means the future Diana once feared wasn't the only future available.

It means feeling alone doesn't mean nobody loves you.

It means grief can become something other than grief.

It means pain can become art without the art having to remain painful forever.

And it means if life hands Diana something devastating, there's at least a reasonable chance she'll eventually put rhinestones on it.

That's not denial.

That's drag.

DYIN’ ALONE?

Maybe someday.

Everybody's got to go somehow.

But Diana has a show tonight.

She has something half-sewn at home.

There's probably a wig that still needs styling.

A track needs editing.

Someone needs a host.

Somebody somewhere is making the terrible decision to get married instead of throwing the divorce party Diana knows they deserve.

There's work to do.

So:

DYIN’ ALONE?

NOT TODAY.

Diana Lone is a Salt Lake City drag queen, Utah drag performer, host and DIY artist known for handmade drag, theatrical camp, dark comedy and original performances.

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Follow Diana directly on Instagram: @thedianalone

SLC's Most Divorced Drag Queen™

She puts the DIY in DIANA.