In Name Only?

I flirted with this thread in a previous post but was surprised to discover that I didn't pick it up again. Well the idea came again recently and I thought I would expound on it. I've always been interested in the business of naming. I'm always questioning the reasoning and effects of naming children, products, pieces of art, etc. There's a magic about naming something. I visualize what it's like and I see people bottling air or grasping at smoke. It can be like capturing and caging. But I feel it's only ever restrictive when it's done wrong.

Whenever I work on a piece of art I play with the idea of titling it at the outset. I do that because there's usually a singular energy or thought that I want to hold onto, titling it foists a net on the idea. Sometimes I don't have much of a thought in the beginning, instead I have a feeling. Feeling out the feeling is a lot like trying to remember something or someone. It's a bit like hunting. There's something out there that you know can guide you. That's what a title can be, a guide... a map. Sometimes it's there to direct you. But in the end it might change. You may find that you needed in the beginning you may not want in the end. Sometimes it just doesn't feel right to hold on. It's not a good thing to try and cage something that you should instead nurture... you might find that it'll turn on you. Sometimes a piece doesn't want to speak to you if the cage is too restrictive. The whole process is about communication... you never want your voice to drown out all else. And if you have found something that works... you have to be aware enough to realize when it doesn't. You get comfortable with a name after a while... it worked before, so why not now? Well things grow, things change. Sometimes there is something in a name. It matters, it all matters. It can shape and destroy entire worlds.

It's a fickle beast, names. Creatures die under it or strive because of it. It's all back-and-forth. Freedom for some and captivity for others. A lot of naming, prescient naming (the most profound sort), has to do with knowing your subject. You have to know it's strength or it's weakness... or maybe what I mean is that you have to know if what you're working with is a strong or weak entity; is it highly impressionable? Because a name can loom over a subject in such a way that the name becomes the whole. The spirit of what you were trying to honor chokes under the shade... it moves and sways to another tune, no longer it's own. People and pieces can become something because of a name... and sometimes those people and pieces aren't who they are or should be. But then, what should be? I don't want to get into my Destiny wrap right now. :P

Back to the magic of naming though... you hear about it through the grapevine, through the old tales. There's a thread here about Rumpelstiltskin that I can't follow right now. But I mention him because I want to bring to mind the idea of enchantment. There's a song I quite like, actually, very much love, Mother by Tori Amos. I think of Mother and this idea of becoming reborn through the power of love and it's connection to being renamed. I wonder what this means in regards to marriage. Taking on another person's name and becoming something else. Shifting your life in such a way that is seemingly superficial but actually deeply profound. All around are references to a new beginning. Casting off an old shell and becoming something new.... something united. I've always loved that idea. Being reborn... being changed by someone, enriched. And it's not a one-sided affair either, the change is two-fold. You change and they change... two come together to become one. And so I wonder what it means to have a name... but not the one you've known and grown with. I wonder of our true names... the ones not readily known or spoken, the ones written in our mind, body and spirit. And mostly I wonder of the magic in finding the one with the strength and tenderness to receive that knowledge and free us from our old selves.


DS333, pondering.