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...

On enough caffeine to wake up from a migraine

This morning I woke up with an incredible migraine. It seems to happen in May in Colorado, and so I can only conclude that it definitely has something to do with barometric pressure change and weather. The same thing can affect my artistic choices, and this video means to talk about that...



http://youtu.be/-Ej5jIkl2cA

Humility and Art

Trying to find a way to say that I am very humble about the fact that I was given so many gifts during my childhood that made my artistic talent, and spent much of my life pretending it wasn't important, and didn't affect the way I see things. The fact that I am only now beginning to share what I know, and have experienced and am receiving so much praise for is something that I can't say, "Thank you," for enough. It is really just a foundation that I'm beginning to expose and I hope that I have time in my life to develop and make stronger.