The New Name

I've been thinking about renaming this blog "The Island of Misfit Stories," to acknowledge the fact that generally the stories I post here have been rejected by at least six legitimate publishers beforehand. I cannot post anything here that I hope to publish elsewhere because nearly all publishers want first rights to the work. So usually I end up circulating each of these guys for about five months before I give up, curse the literary establishment's lack of vision, then put the stories up here instead. That's how this blog began: as a way for me to imagine that somebody is actually reading my work.

Originally I named it "Error: You Are Being Redirected" on a whim, because when I try to come up with real--that is, appropriate--names for things, they usually end up being terrible, cheesy, and obvious. When titling works-in-progress, provisionally I assign them either stupidly obvious titles, or off-the-wall absurd ones. Although eventually, if the work means anything to me, I will want to give it a name that suits it. The title, after all, is the reader's first impression of a piece.

(*Side Note*: My poetry professor in college, Sandra Meek, used to have a thing against poems announcing themselves as 'Untitled'. It's like meeting someone for the first time and, instead of introducing yourself, grabbing them by the shoulders and shaking them... which maybe is a good thing sometimes. But even then, you wouldn't introduce yourself as 'Untitled' first, would you? Would you?!)

As I was thinking about the idea of naming, I remembered an old religious essay I once read back in my more pious days by George MacDonald, titled The New Name. It was from a collection of Unspoken Sermons, and I remember this one grabbing me because of its unique conception of Heaven, and what it means to abide with one's Creator. MacDonald argued (imagined is perhaps a better word) that the first thing that happens once one enters Heaven is that s/he is given a white stone with a new name on it, one that "no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it" (the sermon is based on a verse from Revelation; 2:17). This is not a name like any we've received before, like Nick or Error: You Are Being Redirected. This name would reflect who we are, interiorly and exteriorly. Presumably it would be more than just a word, in the same way that 'eternity' is more than just a long time, but I think the point, the powerful thing about the sermon, is the idea of having nothing withheld; no secret to keep or mystery to ponder. To me, it sounds like everything I long to experience in writing; that is, an embodiment of what I am and what I fail to understand about myself. My personal Truth, in a word.

I'm not sure what the linguistic implications of this idea are. It does seem to suggest that, at the metaphysical level, there is a 1:1 relationship between an object and its name, whereas at the non-metaphysical level, there is often a dynamic relationship between words and the objects they signify (see Edward Said); often the name a person or thing is given actually influences that person or thing's behavior.

But to return to the point...

A long time ago--back when I was still selling cable door to door--I was talking to this old woman on her doorstep. Having by that point determined that she would not be changing her cable provider that day, somehow we fell to discussing how I was a writer, and I even told her about this blog (please comment if, by some deranged miracle, this is you and you actually checked it out!). Anyway, I told her the blog's name and her response was, "Oh my, that's really clever! Because then your site will pop up whenever somebody searches for the wrong thing!" This had never occurred to me before, and of course, once I thought about it I realized it was a fallacy, unless somebody out there is actually searching for error messages. But the paradox (which, let me emphasize, was by no means intentional) struck me as oddly appropriate. If you are reading this, after all, it is because for some reason, whether you stumbled upon this blog or know me personally, you sought out the unsought. You are reading what nobody else seems to want to read, and believe me, the fact that you're reading it is appreciated.

The moral of this story:

Sometimes words that begin as bullshit can, in the end, prove meaningful. Compelling even. That is a profoundly positive idea for me.