The initial response to the renaming of my blog has been excellent in the sense that there has been no response at all. I interpet this to mean that I have geeked things up to such an extent expectations are now way way down. It is not one of those "See, I'm clever" names. It's more "richly vague," as my old art director at Atlanta Magazine used to say, more "Hmmmm" with a dash of "What!?"
Vague anyway. Certainly geeky.
Yet I have discovered another force at work in the aftermath of Naming. That is, when you inhabit an identity, like it or not that identity begins to work its way out. Think of Vonnegut's "Mother Night" or Synge's "Playboy of the Western World." In one the imposture (Nazi progagandist but really a spy) is deliberate and in the second case (killer of Da but really a wimp) it is accidental -- but in both cases changes are worked. So now suddenly I feel the need to write about evolution or about cats.
Oh, I don't think I will write about both at the same time. Though maybe Darwin had several cats he collectively named Species, his eyes being weak and his time precious, and one day his wife said, "Where did all these damn cats come from anyway?" and Darwin replied, "So you are asking me about .... Whoa, there's an idea ...."
The new blog name is a virus, and it is replicating.
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2 comments:
Pardon me, Mr. Pabst. I didn't see your hand up there.
Dangerous ground here.
Columnists (even meta-columnists) and Cats.
It's a bold move to embrace the cliche, but will you be able to resist the inevitable.
Like the phrase "Jumping the Shark," as applied to TV shows that break the tenuous relationship with their viewers, perhaps we can apply the phrase, "Jumping the Cat" to columnists who give in the easy temptation of columnizing on their feline companions.
Or not.
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