What's in a name?

This is the third iteration of my post today, so forgive me if it isn’t my finest work.

This morning I started by writing about the fact that I haven’t written in a while (because my life for the past couple weeks has been barely interesting to me, never mind to all of y’all). Then I figured you likely didn’t notice the hiatus so dedicating a whole blog post to it seemed self-serving. 

As if I have to explain myself to you!

Then I went on to ramble about blogging and how it seems to always come up in conversations – people talking to me about my blog, people talking about their blogs, getting advice about google analytics and people asking about starting a blog, etc.  This is actually a fairly decent topic to post about…which maybe I will once I’m back into the swing of things on here.  It was coming out rather dry and boring so I thought I’d spare you, for now, and rewrite that later.

This happens sometimes.  I get writer’s block, or what is probably more accurately called writer’s partial block, which means I write a lot but it’s not very good.  Often I’ll start writing a post, and scrap it because it feels forced or pointless.  Sometimes out of that something else will pop, and I’ll get a decent entry from it.

I’m hoping that is what happened today.

Somehow I landed on the topic of names and aliases in the second iteration that was scrapped this morning (while vehemently procrastinating from cleaning/packing up my life to move or paying my bills), so I’ll run with that.

I have a close friend who is an artist (singer/songwriter) who is very, very talented.  She is in the process of revamping herself musically, her image and her name.  She is looking to create an artist name to represent her “brand” versus going by her own version of Jane Doe.  What is cool about this concept is that it will give her more artistic freedom.  While she isn’t going to abandon her “God given” name it allows her day-to-day identity to maintain itself in the business world and be the cute, sunny and sweet person she is naturally. 

What her “stage name” will allow is for her to act out.  She can expand upon small features of her personality and make them large (sultriness was my suggestion) while putting her day-to-day self to the side of the persona (she’s ridiculously smart and accomplished in other ways).  I’d argue that it’s not a real departure from who she is and it’s still authentic, but maybe more of a caricature (think the aura of J-Lo versus Lady GaGa in terms of approachability versus just plain out there).

I’m not sure if you were like me as a kid, but used to like to play make believe and have a different name, be a different person (ie, Barbie, Punkie Brewster, Princess Jasmine, you know the typical).  Remember taking your middle name and your street name and that would be your actress name (or adult film star, I can’t remember)?

Playing make believe and dress up was always fun and exhilarating: the opportunity to be a departure of yourself.  Parts of me would always seep into my role-playing…I’m sure I’d get bossy and upset when things didn’t go my way in the game.  I don’t think that we can lose ourselves completely even when we try and diverge from our identity.

Now of course my idea of what “role-playing” means has changed since I was 8 years old (and now evokes an image of someone dressed up in a maids uniform and someone else handcuffed to a bed), but the allure of being someone you’re not is an interesting thing. 

Obviously, I really like who I am or I’d work to change it (and there are clearly things that I am working on) but I’m talking more about an aspect of your life where you’re uninhibited to be something you normally aren’t.  Maybe for some that is the opportunity to be more outgoing when you start a new job or move to a new city where no one knows you as the shy person yet.  Or maybe it’s that you go out dancing once a week, but you are seen as a reserved person. 

Whatever that departure is, it allows you to express yourself in a way that you don’t feel comfortable normally doing when it is tied to your name/person.

I think that while having this blog has allowed me to express more than I would normally in this way, it isn’t completely anonymous and it hasn’t really allowed me to talk about things that are more controversial than carrying umbrellas, vague references to dating, yoga, and owning a mac.  That’s okay, I guess I wasn’t really looking for this to be that type of blog, but more for the catharsis and the process of thinking, writing and sharing. 

I do wish for this blog I had come up with a catchy pen name, versus just E…though E is fine.  I have people in my life that call me E which I like, and it works as being identifying enough without revealing myself completely to the person who lands on this blog via happenstance. 

I’ve thought many times about writing stories/books. I’ve started a few, actually. I’ll have to think of a pen name for those at some point in order to not have my writing and my therapy practice be tied in any way, so I’ll have the opportunity to play ‘dress up’ in my writing, for those endeavors.

I must admit that I sometimes feign my identity in real life.  A very concrete example is when I’m quick enough with my response at a bar (when I’m pretty sure I’m not interested in the guy), I’ll introduce myself as a different name. The intention is not to be mean or misleading per se, but more to clearly have a boundary between this drunken guy and who I really am. 

I have a go to name.  It’s something easy to remember, that’s not too common or uncommon to avoid being suspicious and was one of the names that I wish I had been named when I was a kid.

I don’t actually have an alter ego created for this fake name.  She is just me, with a different name.  Although, I’d argue sometimes the name is enough.

If you think about it, for the most part we become our names.  We say, “I am ____”.  That is how I identify myself, that is how others identify me, that is me.  I think this is why I envision having a hard time changing my last name when I get married, because it has become so much a part of who I am and how I see myself.

I even feel that we also end up looking like certain names.  Do you ever notice that we often say things like “He doesn’t look like a Brandon” or “She looks like an Alison”.   And how is it possible that all strippers are named Trixi, Brandy or Candy?  Okay obviously, those aren’t usually their real names, but why do those names seem fit the category so well for being a stripper?

I think for this point I disagree with Shakespeare when he wrote Romeo and Juliet

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

I mean yeah, sure.  If we called roses bricks or something, it probably wouldn’t change the chemistry of the plant to make it smell like brick, but I don’t know if I would be as excited to tell everyone that the guy I was dating sent me 12 bricks to my work.

I also think that if a strippers name was Gertrude, she might not pull in as many 1’s that she would by going by Genesis or something.

So, I think there is something in a name.

On that note, I should probably go pay the bills that are attached to mine.

Until next time,

E, or A if you see me in a bar.