Beautifully put. But since Laing's 'The Divided Self: an Existential Study in Sanity and Madness' was a seminal book for me, I guess I don't think the phenomenon you describe is a benign one, however beguiling.
I've been thinking a lot recently about the relationship between naming and identity. It's a perennial favourite topic of mine and I've never been sure whether my early and ongoing love of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books was a result of this fascination or vice versa.
"Magic on Earthsea is verbal: All objects have a true name, in an old language still spoken by the dragons which is known simply as the Old Speech. By using this language, it is possible to have power over an object or living thing. To protect themselves from this, most characters have two names: one for everyday use and one, the true name, known only to select close friends and family members - sometimes no-one. For example, Sparrowhawk (use name) is known as Ged (true name) only to those closest to him."
So much of our identity is bound up in our name. In those dark and distant pre-Google days when the internet was young, I still remember the shock of typing my true name into Lycos - or Hotbot, or whatever it was that we used back then - and finding The Others. So many, even then. More than ever today.
There were several reasons why I once chose to write here under the name of Hg. Some were dull and pragmatic, befitting the dull and pragmatic man that I was trying to escape having become. The lure of uniqueness was the most interesting. I wanted to make sure that I was one of a kind.
Less attractively, I started off thinking of Hg as a use name that would protect me from people learning my true name and thus gaining power over me. I have Ms Le Guin to thank for the phrasing, if not the substance, of that paranoia. Thankfully I'm comfortable enough in my own skin these days to be able to acknowledge the trick, if not to abandon its employment.
However, in time Hg became more than just a name, he became a persona. He became a definable character, with an identity of his own. And then I decided that actually I liked Hg more than I liked myself, which is when things started to get confusing, then complicated, then interesting.
And now, to paraphrase those wonderfully pretentious festive Chanel adverts that will no doubt be hitting our TV screens any week now, I don't know where I end and he begins. It says "Posted by Hg" at the end of this piece; yet clearly this meta-morphosis is not Hg talking, otherwise he has surely gone insane.
Hg exists only in this place. His real-world presence is indistinct, except as a set of characteristics that form part of my personality. Yet "I" do not write here, this is purely the home of my online familiar: the virtual, black-hatted, grey cat. So which particular ghost rattles the machine's chains today?
Such thoughts preoccupy me... him... the two of us. We think of Bono, of Adam Ant and of Billy Childish. We sometimes even thinks of Gollum, my preciouses: half-blind, ring-starved and wholly mad in the darkness. We think of those whose names are not all that defines them, yet who could not be defined by anything else.
We wonder whether Paul Hewson, Stuart Goddard and Steven Hamper were ever their "real" names, or merely their use names, sufficing until they had matured sufficiently for their true identity to be determined and articulated. It does not escape our notice that the catalyst for their re-nomination was Art (or desire, in Sméagol's case, which is little different).
And so, this disembodied voice that is both me and not-me wonders, not for the first time, precisely how best it might be recorded and described. For as the mages of Earthsea know well, there is no power like the power of the word, no better magic with which to heal the divided self, no greater tool with which to craft an identity of enduring singularity.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 06 November 2007 at 22:37.
Received 12 comments so far.
Comments
Thanks Jean. I have to plead guilty to several charges:
1 - Appropriating The Divided Self's title without actually having read the book;
2 - Flirting with the trappings of insanity for purely artistic effect;
3 - Blurting out this stream-of-consciousness style post without having thought it through properly or refined any of its ideas to produce something a little more heavyweight.
In justification:
1 - Knots was a favourite book of mine for years (I wish I'd never lent my copy to someone, I never got it back);
2 - It's the healthiest way I know of dealing with the irrational contents of the primordial soup of my subconscious (a watched pot never boils over);
3 - Much of my writing evaporates under the harsh light of self-imposed perfectionism, so if I didn't publish this tonight then tomorrow I'd just think "Pretentious!" and delete it.
There you go, I'm my own prosecution and defence. How utterly appropriate.
No, no, I think everything you say here is fascinating and you say it vividly! I'm just, on the whole, not of the opinion that these kind of games are in the long one good for one - I think in the long run we probably do have a deep drive to unite our 'selves' and suffer if we don't. But of course, role-playing may be a necessary transitional stage towards integrating 'selves' we have repressed. Maybe the important thing is just to keep revisiting the questions.
I suppose what I'm trying to get straight in my own head is to what extent name, persona and identity are exchangeable concepts.
One identity with two personae and two names? Two names for two different identities? Two names for what is essentially the same thing?
Names are really just labels, I suppose. The person who we tend to call Marilyn Monroe was known at various times during her life as:
- Norma Jeane Mortensen - birth certificate
- Norma Jeane Baker - baptism
- Norma Jeane Dougherty - first husband
- Norma Jeane DiMaggio - second husband
- Marilyn Monroe - stage name
- Marilyn Monroe Miller - married stage name
The general theme is that she was "Marilyn" in public and "Norma Jeane" in private. Was it that simple? Or is even this simple duality rather fanciful?
Just thinking aloud here, with no firm conclusion. If I'm not careful, I'm going to start quoting Candle In The Wind in a minute!
And speaking of games, I've just discovered an online version of Knots. Fantastic.
I think all of our various forms of self-revelation are inevitably partial. No matter how much of myself I put out here on the web, no matter how much of myself I attempt to make visible & understandable in my offline interactions, I'm always only showing a part of who I am. So the question of who you "really" are -- [insert RL name here] or Hg -- is perhaps the wrong question. They're both facets of the self you know yourself to be.
There's value in having facets, and in recognizing that each of the names or personae is an attempt to grasp something indefinable and ultimately ineffable. (Perhaps as true of us as it is of God, who also has a great many names & personae, none of which begin to encompass the whole picture.) But there's also value in recognizing that the facets are all sides of the same reality -- the Rachel I present to my parents, the Rachel I present to my husband, the Rachel I present to strangers, the Rachel I present online -- are all the same person, whether I acknowledge that aloud or not.
(I could divagate here into a ramble about the impossibility of independent selfhood, but I'll spare you. :-)
Please, please don't mention the bougie in the vent.
Well I thought it was a smokin' post. Maybe the wind just extinguished the flame. (Joke. Bad one. Bah.)
How about throwing in some gestalt here?
Anyway, I see you as both personas. One is the other. And the other is one. So there :-)
(Note to self: do not post comments after drinking)
Oh, I have felt that split more often than I care to remember. You put it so eloquently!
Do you find that other's perceptions influence the process? For example, does everyone who knows the one you, know the other you? I feel more whole with the very few people who know both. But at the same time, I can't bring myself to introduce one camp to the other most of the time.
You're right. At that point it gets confusing and complicated. I'm sure there's a psychological disorder looming just around the corner...
Ani - there's a relatively small group of people who know me as both. They don't really seem to have any problem with it, as rr demonstrates so, er, clearly above. And it's not like Hg is the first online persona I've ever had, though this is the first time that I've stepped outside the character and started writing about the phenomenon itself.
Jean - well, Gollum wasn't exactly a confidence-inspiring name to invoke in the first place :-)
Very interesting thoughts. Having an online name different to a real one goes round and round in my head many times and causes more troubles than it solves. For instance I have a blog where I have used a fake name, but my son was involved in a "real world" event related to the blog and I can't mention it as it would show the name I have used as a fake. I should have used a "nickname".
For your situation, there is no problem. I assumed "hg" was a real name (it would have been a cool surname and I have had more than one customer with that name; maybe they weren't real either) but it matters not a bit that it is not real.
Interesting. I've seen Ng as a surname (it's Thai, or Vietnamese, I think), but never Hg.
It was originally just a contraction of "Hydragenic" and I used it for my e-mail address. Then I found myself referring to "Mrs Hg" on the site one day, and so Mr Hg was born by reverse association.
The fact that it's also the chemical symbol for mercury was what clinched it for me. So many poetic associations: Mercury is the Roman god of communication, mercury is pretty but also a poison, it's associated with speed (mercurial), etc.
Rachel - Sorry your comment didn't appear here for a few days. My blog software thought it was spam, for some reason, so I've only just spotted it in the junk folder. I've tinkered with a few settings now - hopefully legitimate comments are less likely to be blocked in future.
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