Year in Review - 2013

Still the brain is central to all things in my life. What a surprise. While I read about the heart, the voice, the light, the tribe, the foundation, my true awareness circles around the brain. It has been nearly two years since I had surgery to remove the benign meningioma that was supposedly to blame for my ever-gray-day headaches and the partial aphasic seizures I was having. It has been two years since I began inculcating my body to accept that it would be on anti-seizure medications that leave me a bit foggy, and always in need of more sleep. It's been two years since the door was opened to painting and drawing as an alternative to writing for my vocation. It's been two years since I really began appreciating the little, independent details in a life - the ability to get around, to stay awake, to write and speak, to remember, to HEAR, to SEE, to FEEL what is real. I am ever grateful simply to be alive and to have love surrounding me so that I can make my way through the coming challenges. It feels like an opportunity to become more honest in life and true to myself that I lucked into and have to take advantage of always.

Rest Assured, by Vivi Sojorhn (c) 2013

I have learned a lot in 2013. I suppose mainly it is that I have real limits and that to respect myself, I have to accept this. The last year was a flurry of trying again to do everything I wanted to do. I even published a magazine on-line for six months. I was consumed with work, with finding my work. I didn't find it. I found instead that spreading myself over so many goals undid everything, including my feeling of well-being that was so fragile to begin with having survived brain surgery.

I leave 2013 with a list of over ten things I would love to accomplish, knowing that I have to choose JUST ONE OF THEM to work on at a time. Heavy sigh of release on my breath! I have never chosen to do just one thing in my entire life. This is completely new. I really don't know if I can be so focused. But, knowing all that I know about the state of my being, I know that if I hope to finish anything at all, it has to be a chosen, single focus - my health. It begins with my physical health and so before anything else gets started I am overhauling my schedule, our apartment, art and all, and my body with exercise and mindful things I tend to revolt against, like meditation and nutritious diet. Gasp. Once I feel I have a handle on the things within and around me, then I will look back at the list and see if there really is anything there for me.

How will I know that I am healthy? How will I be satisfied that I've done everything I can to make our space work for everyone (as that is actually not having oil pastels everywhere, and papers flying off the walls) and that it is time to move onto another thing on the list? How will I know that I'm what I am and have a foundation? Well...it starts with putting away Christmas 2013, small as it is, and it ends with having the feeling that I understand what I can really do in a day. Believe it or not, I'm still not sure. I'm not sure what is medication, and what is just not moving enough. I'm not sure what my power source is anymore. So it is time to find out.

A Little Fire, by Vivi Sojorhn (c) 2013

Meanwhile, I hope that the right next step surfaces out of the many possibilities. When I can sustain small projects to finish, when I can let go of the unnecessary, when I can walk my talk all things become possible again. I think I didn't give myself enough time to heal from surgery before diving into being productive, and my family has paid for that. So, it is time to focus just on healing with no other goal because I am blessed truly with FULL SUPPORT to do only that task, and in fact, have been implored to focus only on that. I'm dangerously gratified by the excitement around a piece of my artwork, or magazine, so that I can stop there and forget to figure out how to sell it. It isn't fair to my kids or my husband upon whom I am entirely dependent still. What I hope is that by the end of 2014, I will be independent and even supportive of the coming needs of my family --  a college student, a high school student, two dogs, a wonderful husband and aging parents. They are dependent on me being as fully here as I can be. There is no going back to being who I once was, but finding out who I can be is an oath for the year that I commit to with somber and serious will.

Somehow the flitting Monarch Butterfly, that seems to wander from flower to flower, through the shadow and sunlight aimlessly, through rebellious winds and wet storms, makes the journey to the land of its creation to begin a new cycle.  That's the kind of strength I'm looking for within, a compass that guides me to trust my first mind and to carry through to the finish.

The Big Shift - Part Three, Conclusions Leading to Solutions

Understandably, there is a backlash for calling anything a failure in this PC world we live in, but I would protest and say if a creation cannot deliver something solid that really helps its creators move forward and grow then it is a failure and to not acknowledge that is to turn away from its lessons. The point of The Arts was always to support the artists who participated. I did, of course, have a vision where it would have 10,000 subscribers and we would divide each momth's revenue between the costs of providing the platform, of putting the magazine together, and the work that made it an online experience that was valued. Almost like a gallery, was my concept. We never got close in six months. No matter how many likes (Over 9000 reached and 356 likes on the first day of publishing for The Arts | Birth), without substantial progress in subscriber rates, it was going to not meet the goal. It failed. I'm learning. The platform failed. I'm learning.

It succeeded, too! The Arts supported many artists and helped them have more faith in their own work! It provided a graceful exhibit of a broad group of creations around a central theme each month. It delivered on its promise to be both entertaining and inspiring. It provided artists and writers with a new platform, a new way to see how their work could be seen, collaborated with and more. It represented a FAITH that the art, writing, music, film MATTER. It was a HUGE SUCCESS. As a whole project it is, was magnificent.

Possibly this talk of changing gears all sounds paranoid and terribly selfish. The truth is I will continue to promote the creative work of others, as much as I will continue to create and share my work, but I am taking a break for a bit to figure out how and what I want to share in 2014. It feels like the only reasonable thing to do at this moment for my own sense of self-trust.  It feels terribly lonely! Like I’ve just dropped thirty years of technology out of my life for some self-involved motive. Like I'm going into hibernation, and maybe rest will come first after all. I seem to be craving connection to the material world again for the first time in possibly years. I want my artwork and poetry to rest in your hands, on your walls, and not just on your laptops.

"Winter 1," by Vivi Sojorhn on Fresh Paint, 2013

In truth, I’ve never valued my creativity very highly. That is one of my flaws. I’ve always given it away. So the Internet was the best appendage of that flaw that could have come along. Whether it was poetry, scripts, drawings, paintings, singing…whatever I could create…I just shoved it out of the door of my heart. In part, I think because I, like any creative, have been hoping for discovery, for a mentor to come along and give me guidance. Reaching the ripe age of 50 in 2014, though, letting go of that concept seems to be quite rational. Besides this practice meant that I also tended to shove unfinished work out for approval, and that is like a bunch of self-loathing and neediness in a package to be honest.

Winter Backdrop, by Vivi Sojorhn on Fresh Paint, 2013

In fact, I do have mentors, though they aren't aware of it, and really often they are my peers, but I watch how they protect their time and their work and am in awe. Still, they ably share their skills and vision without laying it all out there. For instance, Mark Younkle, who was kind enough to let me share his regular morning Facebook posts as a repeating column in The Arts, How To Dive Deep. Here is an artist who has shared such a limited amount of his work on-line that he delays in creating a blog or website, but in a pithy paragraph, one or two pieces in a collection of artwork, a portrait of himself among his artwork, he makes me HUNGRY to read more and see more. To him, this doesn't seem to be so much a plan as simply the way he is, and he is not a shy man in social media, but he's a self-respecting artist. He also is generous in sharing work that he likes by other artists and composers. All of that reveals an artist and person that many have the desire to know and follow.

To learn to keep my creativity close to my heart until it is ready is my next practice. To work, to do the work, of overcoming my incredible inner resistance against succeeding is my next practice. To transform my domestication and accept my big life is my next practice. Pure and simple. Oh my. Am I saying this? Am I really going to do this?  I cannot tell you how frightening it is to me. Finding a sustainable pace without checking to see if I'm all right. I'm all right. I'm all right.

I’m going to keep my work, my writing and my art to myself until it is ready to be seen. When The Arts Redux comes back it will be with a long-term plan that is sustainable by my own energy levels, by a hefty amount of contributors who are hungry to be seen but willing to hold off sharing until someone is willing to pay a subscription to see it, and a PLATFORM that is as reliable as it can be (like at least three years of stability guaranteed!) I’ll find out how to do all that before heading out onto the waters.

My friends, you may only get a peek into my workshop now and then! Just smidgens of content leaked out on purpose. I’ve been saying it for months now, but I feel like last week shoved me into acknowledging that this is what I must do for myself for no other reason than to show faith in my work and the arts survival. I’m going to have to find a release valve somehow or “I’m a little teapot, short and stout…” will become my theme song! Perhaps, I can record only my progress through this big shift. This is a new practice for me and  acknowledging the value of my own work here on blogspot with bits and pieces might be the thing. I don’t even know that for sure at the moment.

"The Cold Crowd," by Vivi Sojorhn on Fresh Paint, 2013

It feels like a big shift to me. It may look small or obvious to you. It feels like maybe I’m taking myself a little bit more seriously. I hope I can handle the pressure. Only time will tell. I hope other creative people are inspired this year to take their work seriously enough to protect and limit exposure. Because the Internet is turning out to be a rather cold place at times after all. To understand the economics of art is no different than anything else - it is supply and demand, and we only have control of how our supply will be allowed to flow.. We have to support each other's privacy. I keep thinking of an International Artist's Guild to register work at least and find arbiters for indiscretions and outright theft on the Internet and beyond. Imagine an artists' labor union to set a standard expectation for beginners, and to support each other through hard times. A retirement home for artists! Har! We have to begin having faith that the work itself is important enough to hold close, even if we only do it for ourselves. And, if you already do, carry on! I am positive I will have more to say on this issue as time passes. But, I guess what I'm saying is to take your work seriously. What you have to say whether through music, image or writing is valuable if people are looking at it.

The Big Shift - Part Two, The Invisibility Cloak of the Artist

I have to admit, as I did along the way to some of the artists I’m close to, that almost as soon as I began The Arts, I wondered if I had just distracted myself out of doing my own work. Indeed I more or less stopped doing pastel work. I stopped writing blogs, obviously. Not a single new poem was written. I started some stories but never finished them. But, I also have to admit that the reason for this can also be linked with pure self-doubt.

It is almost as if I were shouting, "Quick! Look over there!"

"Center Fold for Death" painting by Bo Gorzelak Pedersen

Rather than, "Please! Look over here! Buy my work!"

"Perfection" by Vivi Sojorhn on Fresh Paint, 2013

I had realized that I didn’t have the funds or space to support getting the pastel work to market. I had fallen into a funk about all of my ideas (portraits, inexpensive self-framing, and even reprinting) to make my artwork viable. Writing was, is, difficult partly because of the brain surgery nearly two years ago now, and partly because writing is … difficult. I wanted out. I wanted to do something that was not about me, and I wanted it badly. I still managed some satisfying art pieces on my handy Fresh Paint app, but the prints of this work did not take off as I’d hoped they might. I appreciate the many “likes” and words of support for this kind of artwork, but I can only consider it some kind of school. It is time for me to create work for sale. I have a daughter headed for college in a year and a half, and her brother not far behind!

Then in the last few weeks I had the experience of a fork in the road created by sharing this digital work on social media that excited me and then dropped the bottom out from beneath me. One person got excited about a little drawing I'd done on a phone app called Notebook, and asked if he could play with it and manipulate some different pieces from the one. To that I said, “Yes! Of course! Let’s see it!”

Winter by Phone App, 2013 (c) Vivi Sojorhn

My favorite embellishment, Altered Winter 2, Richard Christopher

The other person liked another digital painting, copied it and manipulated it digitally and then took credit for painting it originally five years ago! I was really surprised that another artist would do that. I don’t know why. I know about Muddy Waters, but still.

Autumn, 2013 (c) Vivi Sojorhn on Fresh Paint

I was, of course, glad he liked it, that he was inspired to do more, but that he did not give credit or respect me enough to ask permission really got me thinking about sharing my work on social media so openly.  This and losing The Arts, drove home to me that if I share my thoughts and words, my aspirations and ideas, my projects and creations openly then I am completely open to being left in the dust by my own creativity.  

"Cry Me a River," by Vivi Sojorhn on Fresh Paint, 2013

I wrote extensively about my concerns for the creative community throughout The Arts, but probably my last article is the sum up. Entitled "Internet Stillbirth" I express a rather dark opinion, and yet here I am again, sharing my images and thoughts. Tomorrow's part three piece is a further decision that I've made for my own sanity.

The Big Shift - Part One, The Success and The Failure

Ann Jacoby's Cover  Art for "Birth,"
December Issue of 

It’s been four months since I did a piece of writing for the Kosmic Egg Projects blog. I was busy, of my own volition, pursuing a concept I had about publishing and the arts. Is there really any way to explain something that caught my heart and dragged me in, except to say that it did just that? Once I started, no matter my growing concerns, I could not stop. I could not stop because I’d promised many people I admire and respect that I would do it, and I felt that this magazine on-line, and potentially a phone app of easy reach, would be a great way to share that respect I have for their work and give a new audience a chance to consider it. I couldn’t stop because I thrived on the person-to-person aspect of the project even if it were just short chats on social media and an email with some jpegs attached. I felt less lonely, less wandering than I had for a few years since my health gave me a challenge two or three. I couldn’t stop because I had a vision that went beyond the monthly periodical towards other types of publishing, and so I guess you could say it was HOPE.

Fionn Wilson's Cover Art for "Flesh"
November Issue of The Arts

Sean Woodward's Cover Art for "Death"
October Issue of The Arts

The magazine was part of a Beta Test for a developing platform called Periodical. There were no promises, but I plowed forward with the assumption that all good things rise to the top. It is with some embarrassment then, that I have to say The Arts failed to deliver whatever the developers needed to further fund their effort. My subscriptions over the course of six months ranged between 2 and 12. Yep. For $2.99 a month, my subscribers accepted that the first six issues of the magazine would be free, and supported my endeavor anyway. You may think, well, you get what you pay for, but really all along I knew that this magazine would be a very slow climb to find that sexy, enticing message that attracts a readership. 

Gwen Thelen's Cover Art for "Remember"
September issue of The Arts 

Deborah Morris' Cover Art for "Heart"
August Issue of The Arts

There are dozens of publications on the arts already, and I was looking for that unique angle that would catch the reader’s hearts as creating a curated monthly arts exhibit caught me. I broke all kinds of editorial rules. I had short articles, not long ones. I put links in each article that could lead a reader away from the magazine. I revisited the same artists more than once with the idea that at the end of the year we would have a one-off magazine about each one. And, also with the idea that I could link the articles together over time, so that even though the article itself was short, a reader could find out a lot about each artist, see more of their work.  I tried to embed audio links into early issues hoping that while a reader scrolled through the magazine, a musical accompaniment could set a tone, but the platform couldn’t sustain it. I put videos in articles, or as articles. I made images more important than editorial as often as I could.  Unless the piece of creation was writing – poetry, prose, critiques – in which case I collaborated those pieces with visual art that supported or contrasted the words. I used my own work to fill in the gaps if I had run out of time to ask for more artists to participate and also to share my own work where possible. Obviously, I played around with those six months with the idea that the magazine was under development, too, and that we’d have time to find our groove.

John Mckie's Cover Art for "Atoms & Electrons"
July Issue of The Arts

https://thearts.periodical.co/ (here you can see it for a few weeks at least - the fledgling little magazine that arose out of many desires)

With the free platform gone, so goes The Arts. I’m not even sure at this point how I will preserve each issue. I will do my best, friends, and link the safety net here in the coming month. I want to apologize to all of the artists who eagerly contributed their work to the magazine. The heart of it is that as artists we all want to be seen as often and as deeply as we can in a world that seems to already be saturated with the work. 

Tomorrow I will explore this adventure of being seen as an artist, or being invisible as a creative person in the new world.

Gold Star for Me

You'd think because I chose to change my name and I'm making a splash about it, that I'd remember to actually introduce myself as Vivi Sojorhn. I'd say in actuality that I'm up to about a third of the time getting it right and I mentally give myself a gold star just for saying my own name these days. That's got to be a good way to start. Gold star every time I say, "My name is Vivi Sojorhn." It makes me smile.

All kinds of things have come up mentally about this change, including a partial aphasic seizure in which all words tangled themselves for a very short while in my brain. No need to wring your hands about it, as it hardly slowed me down more than an afternoon. This is part of my recovering from having the benign meningioma removed from my head in February of 2012. This made me think that really the reason I have changed my name is BECAUSE I CAN. I can choose to change my name, to paint a painting on my computer, to start a magazine, to laugh with my kids and kiss my husband, and do whatever I want to do BECAUSE I CAN. I am alive and count myself lucky.

Learning to Look Up, Digitally Painted 2013, by Vivi Sojorhn

Dislodging oneself from the rules that go with a name is profound, and different from expectations, OF COURSE. You may have noticed I tend to assume I can handle big stuff happening, and it turns out to be true. Apparently, when dying, Lord Alfred Tennyson said, "I have opened it," and from this perspective of having visited the Valley of Death in many of my experiences of the last several years, I sort of feel that changing my name has brought me closest to understanding what he may have meant by that. I feel that I've passed through a new door that is so subtle it is barely noticeable but so vastly different on the other side that I am in awe.

Sweet Surrender, Digitally Painted 2013, by Vivi Sojorhn

I find myself mourning for "Amanda" and feeling a part of me that is worn out and needing a good long rest, and is finally getting it. There is some deep part of me that is allowed to be quiet. I can't explain it now more than that I feel lifted often, though not all the time. I feel that I am more powerful in very specific ways that I did not guess at before I made the decision. Decisiveness being a primary strength. In that I've taken to walking quicker, to exercising less doubt, and, perhaps, to being a little bit or a lot more practical by response. I am the same person, and I am relieved to fully allow change. There is no clear beginning or end on this journey, only sweet surrender.

Name Change...Post Script

So I was walking my dog, Lucille, (who started out as Lucy but there were too many Lucy's at the pound), Lulu, Luciloo, Lulubelle, Lucille Diana...thinking about my name Vivi Sojorhn and if "Amanda" really can ever be gone and this is the image I got:

Amanda, the name of origin, with various last names is the piece of sand in the oyster of this life.

Abrasive to me for whatever reason, but causing a life unfolding to this point where "Vivianne *Vivi* Sojorhn" is the magical sheen, the opalescent pearl.

I forgot to mention that Pearl and Pearle were on my list of names that didn't make it. Maybe this will be my middle name after all.

Name Change: Part 4, Finally Choosing

Lady of the Lake, 2012 (c) A. M. Johnson

How did I finally land on “Vivianne Sojorhn” with a proper nickname of “Vivi”? It is so very different from my given name, my married names and all of the names I’ve auditioned before. It sounds foreign. There is nobody on Google sharing it. I had no problem getting a URL, or a gmail address for it. 

Vishnu and Ananta

About six weeks ago I started with names that sounded a lot more like my given name, “Ananda,” “Ananta,” “ Amandala,” and the list goes on. I liked the meanings and sound of the names. Ananda, for instance, was Buddha’s closest disciple, and known for his deep memory, and the name means “bliss” and is rather androgynous; though, more boys have it than girls. It also, I was told by a friend who knows, belongs to an incredible musician, the nephew of Ravi Shankar, Ananda Shankar. “Ananta” relates perfectly to my identity with Kosmic Egg Projects as it is the Cosmic Serpent that Vishnu dreams up the entire universe while riding. I really got attached to that name for a while, not that I am Hindu myself, but because one of my favorite books for the last decade has been “The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge”. However, I felt like I was in a hall of mirrors with names that were close to “Amanda” to the point where I found myself feeling that “Amanda” was a close as it was going to get. I would forever be drifting on “almost” no matter what I chose.

“Why not stay with Johnson?” I have been asked more than once as if I must be changing that name because I may leave. It is not for that reason at all. Johnson has been a very safe name for me. I have felt taken care of like never before by that name. During all of my health crises it has been a chrysalis in which I licked my wounds. It is clear to me now though that I feel like I’m hiding behind my husband by his name. My wings need more space for my own journey. I need to stand on my own roots.

For a last name, giving in to the idea that “Mojo” was not going to win over those closest to me in a respectable way, I fell upon “Journey” almost right away. I figured that whatever I put in front of “Journey” would be descriptive of how I feel about life itself. “Blissful,” “Dreaming,” “Kosmic,” etc all worked in front of “Journey,” but something about it was, well, too on-the-nose. Being a writer has given me the opportunity to name many characters along the way and I really do not like when a character’s name is so on-the-nose that knowing the name is knowing the entire story. It is a personal glitch that I could not abide by after a few weeks. I like a little more mystery and a little more personal detail than “Journey” could give me.

Holy Journey, Oil Pastels, 2012 (c) A.M. Johnson

Letting go of “Journey” reminded me of how many characters I’ve named, and I went searching in all of the names I’ve used in scripts and stories. I even looked at names that were high on the list for my kids’ names before they were landed. Elenore is one of my favorite names, and all of the derivatives - Noura, Norah, Lenore, Ella. Then there was Stella, after my great-great aunt and idol, Stella Starr and the Congo Parade. Names of characters I loved like Esme, Morgan, Codi, and writers I love, Barbara, Virginia, and Willa became possible. I looked at my grandmother’s names, Babette and Mary Kathryn (to be honest there are many Mary Kathryn’s now in my mother’s family and that, in truth, made the decision negative). As I went deeper into names of characters I began to think also of how to make sure it would be my name and not just a character’s name. I didn’t want to go back to a nom de plume. 

My answer was to take one or two letters from my birth names and put them in the names that I chose to audition. I also looked at what numbers were related to the names (a system used by the Kabalarians became essential) and how they added up to complement my own number 7. Things became very complex. You may have notice I’ve not done as much artwork in the last month or so. It is really because I’ve been playing an incredible puzzle called, Finding My Own Name, that includes meaning, known characteristics, numerology and pure inspiration. I guess it makes me feel the name has gone through a sort of gestation period to equal this surrender. I bow my head to my discovery.

On Our Way, 2012 (c) A.M. Johnson

The name "Vivienne" means “alive,” and that was most certainly me. After all I have been challenged with in the past, I still struggle everyday to be awake and living as fully as I can, but I won’t give up. I get the feisty feeling that what must be done will be done. As my own father described me recently as being “bad ass,” finally, this made me laugh. Even if my original name didn’t quite land me in that persona, I managed to make it to this point. Frankly, I had fallen in love with Vivienne, but it was missing something.

I started to blend in letters from my name “Amanda”, “Vivimene,” “Vivan,” “Emneiviv” and finally landed on “Vivianne” which seemed perfectly natural. “Anne” means grace, or graceful, and I loved that combination “Living gracefully,” “Graceful living,” as it is something I aim for (often doing pratfalls along the way, but I laugh!). I really also wanted to keep the “Vivi” part because I always wanted a nickname I felt great about, something easy, and what could be more lively than “Vivi”? Vivianne still needed a last name. 

I started shuffling the letters and adding one or two from my maiden name, as I had with “Vivianne”.I did not even try to bring the “M” in as the temptation towards Mojo, was gone. I used the “R” and the “S” and then I realized that the “S” was already in “Johnson”. So I narrowed down to the “R”. It came like this: first Roshjon, then Oshrojn, then Shojorn, and finally Sojorhn. I tried switching the “R” and the “H” to Sojohrn, but you can see that now the “R” and the “N” look like an “M,” so I dropped that. Of course, I loved Sojorhn as soon as I came upon it because it related loosely, not too on-the-nose now, to journey. 

Arcanum Two, Oil Pastels, 2013 (c) Vivi Sojorhn

Finally, someone asked me how it feels to change my name to Vivianne “Vivi” Sojorhn.

This is how it feels to me as I remember that I am Vivi Sojorhn now. I am no longer standing on the edge of reason. I have jumped. I cannot worry if it will work out because it must. How I move my wings or find my new bridge depends on how I serve the name, not how it serves me. As you know me as Vivi, Vivi shall be known and so I shall do my very best and that is all that is possible now. It is both thrilling and frightening and there is no turning back.

I am Vivi Sojorhn

Name Change: Part 3, Change Is An Inside Job

After the Fire, Digitally Painted, 2013 (c) A.M. Johnson

For me, the externalized expression of my name follows many, many internal changes, many changes in my physical existence, and lots of determined growth, not the other way around. I am only a month or so shy of being 49 years old, a point I consider and hope to be the middle-ish part of my life (and that might be stretching it considering what I've been through lately). Why in the world would I change my name so “late in life”? It seems, perhaps counter-productive to have to re-establish recognition, especially in a world of transparency where I have done much to establish “Amanda Morris Johnson”. I have lots of love that comes my way with my old names. Am I rejecting all of that? No. I don’t believe that I’m tossing out my history at all.  If I did, that would be pure illusion. It is not as if I’m a young Hollywood wannabe with a PR person in charge of rewriting my story.

Right now I am embracing my own growth and telling you my story because it all goes together.

Self-portrait 2013, Digitally Painted, 2013 (c) A.M. Johnson

So, the past five years amazed me almost constantly about what I thought I knew and didn't know, and what I do know but cannot count on beyond this moment. Both monstrously challenging with health falling down and getting back up again, but also coming to terms with my identity as being actually very strong, and not victimized by challenge. I am very flexible and appreciative of every moment good or bad. That has meant a huge release of my own expectations. I am very much alive and kicking.

Understanding that making little shifts can lead anyone to an entirely different arena, I see that I have made HUGE SHIFTS. All of these huge shifts (divorce, encore marriage, serious loss, brain surgery, new found career in art, rediscovered career in publishing) have simply landed me in a world that I feel so differently about that I barely recognize my old ways as my own...except the feeling that my name has been chained to my heart rather than shifting along with me. The expectations of who Amanda is have not let go and once again, I realize that this has to do with boundaries more than anything else.

Started out a Summer's Day,
Digitally Painted, 2013(c) A.M. Johnson

It is clear to me that actually physically leaving a very violent situation after 18 years was far more effective in changing the course of my life than changing my surname ever would have been. It is clear to me that I am right to have outgrown the family name I originated with but traveled far from both in distance and experience. It is clear to me that loving myself is more important than earning someone else’s love in shaping my experience. Those names are simply reflective of where I once was, and I do not owe anything more to them. Now I want to see myself, hear myself as I am today.

Surprise!, Digitally Painted, 2013 (c) A.M. Johnson

Didn't brilliant Shakespeare write, “A Rose by any other name smells just as sweet,”? However, this comes out of the mouth of a naive girl, Juliet, who wants what she wants what she wants. In fact, during the play, “Romeo and Juliet,”  Shakespeare points out just how important names are for defining a whole life and death scenario, and how they are reflected in the actions of his characters, the Capulets and Montagues. Perhaps, if the kids had been willing to entirely change their names and move onto a different world right away, they could have seen a different outcome. Fighting with names and their history turns out to be a deadly proposition. But I digress on philosophical whims about quotes used out of context.

Metamorphosis, Oil Pastels,
2013 (c) A.M. Johnson

Examining who I am today is a huge factor in choosing my name. How am I different from “Amanda Morris,” “Amanda Conti,” and “Amanda Johnson” in my own heart?  Is it possible to actually let go of a name that has been with me all of my life, coming from people who loved me or hated me, and from histories that were much longer than my own life? Hell yes, no need to harbor a stranger in my heart. Is changing a name like digging up roots and cutting them off? Hell no! It is growing strong roots that actually nourish me rather than fantasies.

Chrysalis, Oil Pastels, 2013 (c) A.M. Johnson

Still, the reactions of those closest to me, primarily my children and my husband, are really important. My husband is largely responsible for making our marriage a safe and ultimately the most incredibly freeing relationship to me. He says is it my choice, of course. Yet with only the slightest bit of worry in his eyes, he asks me, once I’ve found this name that fits, “So, will we still be married?” Of course we will still be married! Maybe we will have another wedding, though, I say with a grin, and he agrees! My children get excited about being the ones to name me, and shoot out a slew of choices. Some of them are really good and some of them are as funny as “Mocojo!” Will you still be our mom? Of course, I will still be their mom! Maybe it deserves a ritual to clarify all of this.

It is important to state here, I think, that I have already gone through a great deal of re-positioning myself with my family of origin. Going through divorce, marrying again, and health crises puts one in the position to reassess how a family works. The shifts are all real and physical for me already.

As a friend, Matthue Dayarus, a great name changer himself, said in response to my announcement, "changing the sound that other people fetch you by is a great boundary condition.” 

For me changing those boundaries started, bit-by-bit, long before finding this name did, and so I must emphasize that I don’t believe changing my name is going to be more than one of the conditions in a process already underway. It is a really good one though, and so when I came upon my very different name I noticed very different boundaries, ones that clearly stated that I am my own responsibility and my own expression. I still have connections to my family, to my past, but that is not all I am. It is as strange to me that this is such a miracle to me, as it may be to you, but there you have it. Like I was a caterpillar and now I have wings.

Name Change: Part 2, The Real Search Begins

Yes. I did that. I tried out “Amanda Content” and I had business cards that said “Content Content” because I loved the double entendre. It truly makes me grimace now. However, the need to separate myself from the past came on more quickly and strongly than I expected as my wasband and I grew more distant, and anger was roused easily. Suddenly in the midst of creating this brand, I found myself in the process of getting a divorce and wanting to make sure my children understood that I identified the last name “Conti” with them, that they were my family and that I would keep it for a feeling of consistency. This is something my mother did when she left my father, and I had really appreciated being the cause of her last name. As bad as it had been, I could not deny its gifts.

My family of origin, of course, encouraged me to return to “Morris,” the argument being that I would never have to change my name again and of course that “Morris” should identify me. It came up often that first year of freedom to the point of feeling a bit like badgering. I can’t say why I didn't do that except a general feeling that after all I had been through in life, and how far I had gone and come back again on my own, I felt I’d outgrown the name of my youth.  Still, the name stayed on the table as I drifted through my Argentine Tango phase, my many initiations in Freemasonry, and falling in love again.

Then I got married for a second time! My name could be “Amanda Morris Johnson,” and all of the past could be erased in a moment, I thought. I changed it publicly so that I would be known by that name from then on, but somehow I never made it over to the Social Security offices. My name legally remained “Amanda Conti” and does to this day. It began because I wasn't at all sure how my kids would adjust to me being in a committed relationship with someone other than their father. (They’re doing really well with it, incidentally.)

It carried on, I believe, because the symptoms of my brain tumor started to take over my life in terms of energy for the simplest things. I became a split name, unsure of how to sign anything, how to answer the phone, how to send out messages. In one world, my friends, I was definitely known as Amanda Morris Johnson. But on paperwork, by the U.S. Post Office, by the document, the bank accounts, the health insurance cards, I was still Amanda Conti. Talk about disassociation from a name! All this to say, it is not like I never felt a fear about changing my name.

The next level of name changing that I entered, as I coped with my new life, was how to blend my family’s names into a new surname. I had seen this way of naming work really well for couples that stay together, and also for little babies whose parents did not marry each other (either because of it being against the law, or because that was their philosophy) For several years I considered “Mojo” the obvious choice for a last name. It made me laugh with delight. My kids threatened to ban me from all public situations if I actually went with it. I thought it fit my writing a Tarot book and other magical tomes really well. They swore it made me sound like a naughty woman with huge boobs from an “Austin Powers” movie, not that I’m not. Wink. My husband related it to liberal media. Har. We had great commutes to and from school laughing about the potential reaction to “Amanda Mojo,” and, when I was drinking coffee, it often had to include two letters from my kids’ last name to become “Mocojo!”  Nevertheless things on the name front really did not budge at all, nor did it land.

Name Change: Part 1, The History of Some Names

Many people have asked me about my name change. How come I’m changing my name? How did I find “Vivi Sojorhn”? What do I expect from changing my name? How did I find the courage to change my name so suddenly? I found that I could not answer as if these were simple questions because my name has been with me as long as I can remember and there is a lot of history there. I figure the first time I really had an inkling I wanted to change my name was because I spent so much time naming the characters I wrote about. Then more so  when I was naming my own children, seeking out a name that felt like a gift to them, something they could stand carrying around. That is two decades ago. It has been a long process, like a lifetime practically. This entry is about how it all started.

I was named “Amanda,” after a black jazz singer in Chicago by the name of “Amanda Ambrose.” It took YouTube’s creation for me to finally hear her, but nevertheless, this is what I was told from the very beginning. In itself, it never bothered me for a moment that I could not verify this voice. I used the persona of a black jazz singer coursing through my name, as begging material to make friends with my black classmates by announcing now and then, “I was named after a black jazz singer,” in hopes of verification that she was someone to be named after. Certainly she was, but it wasn’t personal, I don't think. It was a lark.

I asked for more information about my name choice and what I got was that the name sounded cool and unusual. One parent wanted “Samantha” and the other wanted “Amanda” and “Amanda” won because the chooser was carrying me in her belly. I often wondered if I'd have been different had my father won. I don’t remember when but I started to seek out the meaning of the name. I’ve always been a little obsessed with words.  Later than childhood, but before I was fully adult, I learned that “Amanda” meant “worthy of love,” and that definition stuck with me ever after. It caused me to secretly wrestle with the notion of valuing love somehow and finding what is worthy and what is not. I started to question if it meant that I was worthy but not loved. Life is rough for teenagers...

Daddy and Pooh, Oil Pastels on Board,
2013 (c) A. M. Johnson

My maiden name, “Morris,” entered my family as they traveled to the Wild West in something like 1857. It was attached to my great-grandmother, May Eppstein, and her twin sister, Lillian Eppstein, because they married brothers Adolf and Ernest Morris. They, along with several of May and Lillian’s other sisters founded amazing Jewish organizations in Denver like the Denver Jewish Community Center, and Temple Emanuel, and made the Jewish Hospital, National. Adolf, my great-grandfather was an architect, and I know was a very good painter, better than I am, because we have his self-portrait and a few lovely landscapes of the early days in the state of Colorado on family walls. I carried obnoxious pride in my maiden name for a long time for their efforts, for my grandparent’s love and for my father’s talents and interests. My first name change happened on April 30, 1988, when I married my first husband. I was a conservative young lady and took my first husband’s family name, “Conti,” on the promise that he would take “Morris” for his middle name, too. I should have known.

That never actually happened, and testament to the importance of the carriage of names. It took me a long time to learn to manage my names, and I do believe this has to do with boundaries. I still kept signing “Morris” in the middle, though, as I had never had a middle name. For 18 years I was known as “Amanda Morris Conti”. Sometime later I learned that “Amanda” could be “beloved” and I embraced that definition of myself as well as I could in a difficult situation.

I had thought “Amanda Conti” would hold together and was fairly unique. Then I had my first website and  Googling became a normal activity. Therein I discovered that, in fact, there were other “Amanda Conti” women and even another in my own small town of Boulder, Colorado. Since the other one had a very different lifestyle than mine, with two young children, and a freelance writing career, I felt that the need to stop placing such importance on my family connections as it could be temporary after all. I think I did harbor the illusion that if I changed my name I could stay in the same life but it would be better. My first-time consciously chosen name change audition came as a purely professional “nom de plume,” and related to the new career of “web content provider”. Har.

Kosmic Egg Projects: The Murky Unconscious Fish

Kosmic Egg Projects: The Murky Unconscious Fish: Walk, Oil Pastels on Archival Paper, 2013 (c) A.M. Johnson Lucille and I had a nice walk this morning through suburban nothingness. Sh...

The Murky Unconscious Fish

Walk, Oil Pastels on Archival Paper,
2013 (c) A.M. Johnson

Lucille and I had a nice walk this morning through suburban nothingness. She’s been curious about things that I’ve denied her, so we did some of them today. We walked around the mall, behind gas stations and by Walmart’s endless parking lot. I thought about how much effort all of the wasteland entailed, and made peace with the list of 20 things to do today as a delusion that all of this is a necessity. Getting by is just that, and still I’m searching for the right choice. I am overwhelmed by my options.

***

I wish I’d discover something in my dreams to clue me in but five hours of sleep is not leading me to anything but derivative dreams about the TV shows I watch with my husband in an attempt to “veg”. Last night I found the Emmy-winning show entirely unbelievable and annoyingly full of delusional characters making stupid choices. I have found lately that this bothers me with most dramas. I want to stand up and shout, “Just stop it! Stop for a moment and look fucking around, you idiot!”  I suppose that means that I feel delusional, and that stupid choices abound.

On our usual walks, birds and water are regularly on the way for Lucille and me. I watch them like I would watch a dream, and maybe this is my mind’s way of making up for the fact that I can’t sleep as well. When I see a hawk fly above me I am lost in thought about how to get perspective on my situation. I fly out, like a hawk, over the lake of unconscious goo, and I don’t see much to make me happy. It is a mess down there, dark and foreboding.

How could it get any darker than what I already know?? What have I contained and hidden there that so stirs the waters of me? I feel nauseated and, if I am a hawk, then merely getting across the air above, the thinking-about-it part, is such an ordeal that I want to hurry to the other side even though I know resting on a branch will not assist me except to give me a moment to catch my breath before I fly over my unconscious again in my search.

Break Through, Digitally Painted,
http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/5-amanda-johnson.html

Transform me, now, into a loon, yes, an odd bird, aptly named. I will race up as high as I can into these thoughts, to the pinnacle of self-discipline and control, knowing all the while a breeze of circumstance could throw me off my game in a second. I will fly over this disturbing cauldron because I know therein lies my nourishment. When I reach the top, and pause for a moment feeling my hunger fully, I will let it guide me like a missile into the pot, towards the little fleck of something that I saw in the moment I turned to dive. I hope that it is a fish, a message from the deep, that feeds this desperation to understand the illusion I live by.

Plunging into the unconscious mind, it is deceptively warm on the surface, but I am not fooled by reflective light, and feel how icy and even more murky the immersion becomes. I cannot open my eyes to see my answer as it is too tenebrous. The only way to feed is following some sense beyond the obvious five. Deeper and deeper I am propelled and compelled to keep going by near starvation. There is no bottom and the meal of awareness that I am looking for seems to have betrayed me.

My choices fall away, as feathers from my wings. If I do not catch the thing, I don’t know if I have the stamina to do this dive again. I feel how ravenous I am to know what I know. I cannot go back to not knowing and expect to survive out there. I am running out of breath down here to the point where I don’t remember how this all started. I only know that I can feel I may be getting closer than I have ever been before...